Читаем Russia полностью

And despite all these pressing concerns, the new regime set about building an empire — albeit an empire of a different kind to that of the tsars.

In November 1917 Lenin and Stalin, his commissioner for nationalities, published a Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia. It proclaimed them to be equal and sovereign, and asserted their ‘right to free self-determination, up to the point of secession and the formation of independent states’. It also pledged the ‘free development of national minorities and national groups inhabiting the territory of Russia’. ⁷ On 24 January 1918 the situation was clarified by a Declaration of the Rights of Oppressed Nationalities. This transformed Russia, and by implication the Empire - or what could be salvaged of it - into ‘The Republic of the Soviets [Councils] of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’Deputies. The Soviet Republic’, it continued, ‘is constituted on the basis of a free union of free nationalities as a Federation of Soviet National Republics.’ The declared aim was to create a genuinely ‘free and voluntary union of the working classes of all the nationalities of Russia’. ⁸ The fact that the term ‘Russia’ itself denoted both a nationality and an empire was not addressed. The policy, based on the idea that nationalities could realize themselves while happily coexisting with one another, could be traced back to the earliest followers of Herder. Yet, as we now know, nations will compete and even fight unless restrained by some higher authority or greater force. How the new regime would be able to square the circle of nationalism remained to be seen, but the declaration conveyed the message that nationalism was consistent with socialism.

In the short term the policy enjoyed some success, but it was military power rather than political ideology that often decided outcomes on the ground. Indeed, the policy was founded on interest as well as principle. The new regime wanted to win over the non-Russian nationalities in its struggle against the anti-Communist White forces. That was why, in the words of one historian, ‘the Russian Communist Party bent over backwards to appease non-Russians’, even to the extent of ejecting Terek Cossacks from their farms and handing the land over to Chechens, with whose Sufi leader, Ali Mitaev, it was in momentary alliance. ⁹ It was therefore thanks to the Soviet regime that Chechens were able to claim a moment of sovereignty in 1921, though Mitaev was to meet his death at Soviet hands only a few years later.

In the wake of the German withdrawal from the Baltic provinces in 1918, Bolshevik forces moved into Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to help establish Soviet republics. There was some indigenous support for these regimes, but in the end they could not hold out against opposing forces, and the three Baltic entities became independent states. Lenin had already launched Finland into independent statehood and abrogated any claim to Poland, but he was not prepared to write off the idea of a zone of nations around the Russian Republic which would cohere with it.

The first success was Ukraine, which fell into the throes of civil war and chaos following the departure of the Germans. Local Bolsheviks fought supporters of Ukrainian independence. Polish forces occupied a substantial part, including all Galicia; anti-revolutionary White Russian forces under General Denikin also entered the fray, while independent gangs of robbers, ‘Cossacks’ and anarchists caused mayhem in many districts. Serious famine added to Ukraine’s woes, as did outbreaks of black typhus, massacres and pogroms. Humanitarian aid sent in from the West, as it was into Russia, barely touched the problem, and the proximity of French troops did not help. At last, with the help of Ukrainian groups which decided to throw their lot in with the Bolsheviks, but mainly thanks to the disintegration of the White forces, most of the country emerged as the ‘Ukrainian Soviet Republic’. Since a Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic had come into existence at the beginning of 1919, the new Soviet Russia could be said to have achieved a second ‘ingathering of the Russian lands’, first achieved by Ivan III (see Chapter 4).