German Soviet Republic?

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

This thread is about the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Does anyone have any sources of information about it? How did Stalin and the Soviet leadership justify abolishing it? Was there a struggle? Were there other ethnic groups who faced similar repressions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_German_Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republic

[ComradeOm]

Were there other ethnic groups who faced similar repressions?Numerous others. That the Volga Germans survived until 1941 is largely due to their location in the interior of the country. The 'national operations', which began roughly around the period of the Great Purge, were targeted at those ethnic groups along the border of the USSR who were considered untrustworthy. Its an often overlooked aspect of Stalin's programme of mass violence

[thejambo1]

thanks for posting this one,not one im too familiar with.

[Ismail]

Here's a good read on deportations and such: http://web.archive.org/web/20020917111927/www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/All42-Settlements.html

Also includes the Volga Germans.

Edit: More like a flawed read. See below.

[ComradeOm]

Here's a good read on deportations and such: http://web.archive.org/web/20020917111927/www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/All42-Settlements.htmlWell that site displays the typical bunk from Stalinist apologists. Everything is framed exclusively in terms of 'state security' and the mere 'accusation of treachery' is justification for the employment of indiscriminate mass violence. The article also, unwittingly, gives an insight into the national chauvinism that lies at the heart of Stalinist ideology. That is, it is deemed "fully in accord with Marxist-Leninist principles" to arrest and relocate entire communities on the basis of their ethnicity alone

Its also worth noting that the national operations of the NKVD had begun before 1939 and were much more numerous than Khrushchev suggests. Far from being "eight small nations", the programme was directed at a whole range of nationalities from at least 1937. According to Baberowski and Doering-Manteuffel (The Quest for Order and the Pursuit of Terror) "Latvians, Estonians, Koreans, Finns, Kurds, Greeks, Armenians, Turks, and Bulgarians... living outside their 'homeland' were considered a danger to the Socialist order". Such populations were systematically 'cleansed' from the border regions of the USSR from the mid-1930s onwards. In the period August 1937 to November 1938 alone (ie, before the mass relocations that Khrushchev mentioned) over 350,000 Soviet citizens were arrested and deported, relocated, or worse. The only criteria that marked the victims being their ethnic heritage. A thundering disgrace

[Ismail]

Looking back at the article (it has been two years since I read it), I agree that it has serious flaws and I probably shouldn't have posted it. I do, however, take objections with your blanket attack on "Stalinism."

No one is saying that the deportations were good, Bland (wrongly) said that they were totally justified; the ones listed in that link as examples. I agree with Sultan-Galiev on the issue of Russian chauvinism. As the MIM noted:

Sultan-Galiev was for the formation of a "Colonial International" to replace the Comintern as organization of central importance. He also called for the "dictatorship of the colonial nations over the metropolis."

The reason we have to re-evaluate Sultan-Galiev is that his most central theoretical predictions appear to have turned out true:
# He predicted that Russian socialism would either be conquered by the Western bourgeoisie or turn to state capitalism via forces similar to those in the NEP, because the Russian proletariat would not manage a strong enough revolutionary impetus. In fact, it would turn toward copying the labour aristocracies.
# He pointed to the revolutionary impetus from the East and of course he turned out right that Mao alone was more significant than anything that happened in Western Europe in the last 100 years.Russian nationalism and the ethnic deportations during the war did much to set back the gains of the previous 20 years under Stalin of allowing cultural autonomy to flourish (two good reads on this are Affirmative Action Empire and Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan). As MIM noted, it is ironic that the two people to get nationalism fairly correct in this period were Bukharin (who wanted to focus more on the east) and Sultan-Galiev, both of whom belonged to the right of the party. Zinoviev, as the MIM noted, also seemed more sympathetic to the anti-colonial movements. Stalin did however represent a Russia-centric view, while Trotsky in the 20s and 30's seemed to ignore the colonial movements entirely as revolutionary centers.

Furthermore, saying that national chauvinism runs "at the heart of Stalinist ideology" is also incorrect. Bill Bland, the man who wrote that article, did have incorrect views on nationalism. To chalk them up to the overall views of all "Stalinists" would be incorrect. What about the Third Worldists within both Maoism and Hoxhaism?

Out of all the things I can criticize Stalin on (and there isn't much), national policy during this period was probably the biggest. That and the centralization of the Comintern, which led to Stalin's advice to the Chinese Communists in the late 20's being followed above the Chinese themselves, which led Mao to correctly note in 1943 that "The Comintern has long ceased to meddle in our internal affairs (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_36.htm)," because he realized that any international based firmly in one country was a bad idea. Furthermore, Lenin's words on the labor aristocracy should have not been virtually ignored by Stalin (and seemingly Trotsky, for that matter).

From the MIM:

V. I. Lenin
Collected Works, Vol. 31
Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960, pp. 248-9

"Speech on the Terms of Admission to the Communist International July 30"

"Crispien went on to speak of high wages. The position in Germany, he
said, is that the workers are quite well off compared with the workers
in Russia or in general, in the East of Europe. A revolution, as he sees
it, can be made only if it does not worsen the workers' conditions 'too
much'. Is it permissible, in a Communist Party, to speak in a tone like
this, I ask? This is the language of counter-revolution. . .The workers'
victory cannot be achieved without sacrifices, without a temporary
deterioration of their conditions. We must tell the workers the very
opposite of what Crispien has said. If, in desiring to prepare the
workers for the dictatorship, one tells them that their conditions will
not be worsened 'too much', one is losing sight of the main thing, namely,
that it was by helping their 'own' bourgeoisie to conquer and strangle
the whole world by imperialist methods, with the aim of thereby ensuring
better pay for themselves, that the labor aristocracy developed. If
the German workers now want to work for the revolution they must make
sacrifices, and not be afraid to do so. . . .

"To tell the workers in the handful of rich countries where life is
easier, thanks to imperialist pillage, that they must be afraid of 'too
great' impoverishment, is counter-revolutionary. It is the reverse that
they should be told. The labour aristocracy that is afraid of sacrifices,
afraid of 'too great' impoverishment during the revolutionary struggle,
cannot belong to the Party. Otherwise, the dictatorship is impossible,
especially in West-European countries."
COMINTERN
Alan Adler, ed., Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First
Four Congresses of the Third International
London: Ink Links, "On Tactics," pp. 293-4

"Our Attitude to the Semi-Proletarian Strata"

"In Western Europe there is no class other than the proletariat which is
capable of playing the significant role in the world revolution that,
as a consequence of the war and the land hunger, the peasants did in
Russia. But, even so, a section of the Western-European peasantry and
a considerable part of the urban petty bourgeoisie and broad layers
of the so- called middle class, of office workers etc., are facing
deteriorating standards of living and, under the pressure of rising
prices, the housing problems and insecurity, are being shaken out of
their political apathy and drawn into the struggle between revolution
and counter-revolution. . . ."

"It is also important to win the sympathy of technicians,
white-collar workers, the middle and lower-ranking civil servants and
the intelligentsia, who can assist the proletarian dictatorship in the
period of transition from capitalism to Communism by helping with the
problems of state and economic administration. If such layers identify
with the revolution, the enemy will be demoralized and the popular view
of the proletariat as an isolated group will be discredited."

[MC5 adds: The above was accepted by the COMINTERN including Lenin,
Stalin, Zinoviev and Trotsky.]
V. I. Lenin
Collected Works
Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963-1970, Vol. 28 of 45, p. 433

"Letter to Workers of Europe and America" 1919

"...in all the civilized, advanced countries the bourgeoisie rob--either
by colonial oppression or by financially extracting 'gain' from formally
independent weak countries--they rob a population many times larger than
that of 'their own' country. This is the economic factor that enables
the imperialist bourgeoisie to obtain superprofits, part of which is
used to bribe the top section of the proletariat and convert it into a
reformist, opportunist petty bourgeoisie that fears revolution."And as Hoxha noted in Eurocommunism is Anti-Communism (1980):

The development of the economy in the West after the war also exerted a great influence on the spread of opportunist and revisionist ideas in the communist parties. True, Western Europe was devastated by the war but its recovery was carried out relatively quickly. The American capital which poured into Europe through the "Marshall Plan" made it possible to reconstruct the factories, plants, transport and agriculture so that their production extended rapidly. This development opened up many jobs and for a long period, not only absorbed all the free labour force but even created a certain shortage of labour.

This situation, which brought the bourgeoisie great superprofits, allowed it to loosen its pursestrings a little and soften the labour conflicts to some degree. In the social field, in such matters as social insurance, health, education, labour legislation etc., it took some measures for which the working class had fought hard. The obvious improvement of the standard of living of the working people in comparison with that of the time of the war and even before the war, the rapid growth of production, which came as a result of the reconstruction of industry and agriculture and the beginning of the technical and scientific revolution, and the full employment of the work force, opened the way to the flowering amongst the unformed opportunist element of views about the development of capitalism without class conflicts, about its ability to avoid crises, the elimination of the phenomenon of unemployment etc. That major teaching of Marxism-Leninism, that the periods of peaceful development of capitalism becomes a source for the spread of opportunism, was confirmed once again. The new stratum of the worker aristocracy, which increased considerably during this period, began to exert an ever more negative influence in the ranks of the parties and their leaderships by introducing reformist and opportunist views and ideas.

Under pressure of these circumstances, the programs of these communist parties were reduced more and more to democratic and reformist minimum programs, while the idea of the revolution and socialism became ever more remote. The major strategy of the revolutionary transformation of society gave way to the minor strategy about current problems of the day which was absolutized and became the general political and ideological line.You should also check out my 'Soviet Social-Imperialism: An Introduction (http://www.revleft.com/vb/soviet-social-imperialism-t106563/index.html)' thread.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Thanks for your posts. Ismail, this is from the first link you posted,


". . . the interests of Socialism are higher than the interests of the right of nations to self-determination".

Lenin is right, and I think that branding ethnic groups as enemies of socialism is a completely anti-socialist position because it puts the "interests of nations" ahead of socialism.

I think it was a mistake for socialists to let the "Great Patriotic War" become a nationalist war, a war between the "Russian nation" and the "German nation." They should never have forgotten that Germans, Turks, Chechens, and all the others were never the enemies of socialism.

The article you linked to also mentions that the Meskhetian Turks were deported after the war in 1947 because they too were a "security threat." We can't attribute the nationalist deportations just to the conditions of WWII; they continued after the war and we see that they weren't "temporary measures" because even after the "apology" to the Volga Germans in the 60's, they were still barred from returning to their homes; the actions of the Soviet bureaucracy were alarmingly disconnected from genuine socialist politics and internationalism by the 1930s, when the nationalist deportations began.