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Soviet Union [USSR] POLICY TOWARD NATIONALITIES AND RELIGIONS IN PRACTICE
Since coming to power in 1917, the Soviet regime has failed to
develop and apply a consistent and lasting policy toward
nationalities and religions. Official policies and practices have
not only varied with time but also have differed in their
application from one nationality to another and from one religion
to another. Although all Soviet leaders had the same long-range
goal of developing a cohesive Soviet people, they pursued different
policies to achieve it. For the Soviet regime, the questions of
nationality and religion were always closely linked. Not
surprisingly, therefore, the attitude toward religion also varied
from a total ban on some religions to official support of others.
The Soviet Constitution, in theory, describes the regime's
position regarding nationalities and religions. It states that
every citizen of the Soviet Union is also a member of a particular
nationality, and every Soviet passport carries these two entries.
The Constitution grants a large degree of local autonomy, but this
autonomy has always been subordinated to central authority. In
addition, because local and central administrative structures are
often not clearly divided, local autonomy is further weakened.
Although under the Constitution all nationalities are equal, in
practice they have not been. Only fifteen nationalities have had
union republic status, which grants them, in principle, many
rights, including the right to secede from the union. Twenty-two
nationalities have lived in autonomous republics with a degree of
local self-government and representation in the Council of
Nationalities in the Supreme Soviet. Eighteen additional
nationalities have territorial enclaves (autonomous oblasts and
autonomous okruga) but possess very little power of self-
government. The remaining nationalities have no right of self-
management. Stalin's definition in 1913 that "A nation is a
historically constituted and stable community of people formed on
the basis of common language, territory, economic life, and
psychological makeup revealed in a common culture" has been
retained by Soviet authorities through the 1980s. But, in granting
nationalities a union republic status, three additional factors
were considered: a population of at least 1 million, territorial
compactness of the nationality, and location on the borders of the
Soviet Union.
Although Vladimir I. Lenin believed that eventually all
nationalities would merge into one, he insisted that the Soviet
Union be established as a federation of formally equal nations. In
the 1920s, genuine cultural concessions were granted to the
nationalities. Communist elites of various nationalities were
permitted to flourish and to have considerable self-government.
National cultures, religions, and languages were not merely
tolerated but in areas with Muslim populations were encouraged.
These policies toward the nationalities were reversed in the
1930s when Stalin achieved dictatorial control of the Soviet Union.
Stalin's watchwords regarding nationalities were centralism and
conformity. Although Georgian, Stalin pursued a policy of drawing
other nationalities closer to the Russian nationality
(
sblizhenie--see Glossary). He looked toward Russian culture
and language as the links that would bind different nations
together, creating in the process a single Soviet people who would
not only speak Russian but also for all intents and purposes be
Russian. Native communist elites were purged and replaced with
Russians or thoroughly Russified persons. Teaching the Russian
language in all schools became mandatory. Centralized authority in
Moscow was strengthened, and self-governing powers of the republics
were curtailed. Nationalities were brutally suppressed by such
means as the forced famine of 1932-33 in the Ukrainian Republic and
the northern Caucasus and the wholesale deportations of
nationalities during World War II, against their constitutional
rights. The Great Terror and the policies following World War II
were particularly effective in destroying the non-Russian elites.
At the same time, the onset of World War II led Stalin to exploit
Russian nationalism. Russian history was glorified, and Soviet
power was identified with Russian national interests. In the post-
World War II victory celebration, Stalin toasted exclusively the
Russian people while many other nationalities were punished as
traitors.
The death of Stalin and the rise of Nikita S. Khrushchev to
power eliminated some of the harshest measures against
nationalities. Among the non-Russian nationalities, interest in
their culture, history, and literature revived. Khrushchev,
however, pursued a policy of merger of nationalities
(
sliianie--see Glossary). In 1958 he implemented educational
laws that further favored the Russian language over native
languages and aroused resentment among Soviet nationalities.
Although demographic changes in the 1960s and 1970s whittled
down the Russian majority overall, they also led to two
nationalities (the Kazaks and Kirgiz in the 1979 census) becoming
minorities in their own republics and decreased considerably the
majority of the titular nationalities in other republics. This
situation led Leonid I. Brezhnev to declare at the Twenty-Fourth
Party Congress in 1971 that the process of creating a unified
Soviet people had been completed, and proposals were made to
abolish the federative system and replace it with a single state.
The regime's optimism was soon shattered, however. In the 1970s, a
broad national dissent movement began to spread throughout the
Soviet Union. Its manifestations were many and diverse. The Jews
insisted on their right to emigrate to Israel; the Crimean Tatars
demanded to be allowed to return to Crimea; the Lithuanians called
for the restoration of the rights of the Catholic Church; and
Helsinki watch groups (see Glossary) were established in the
Georgian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian republics. Petitions,
samizdat (see Glossary) literature, and occasional public demonstrations
voiced public demands for the rights of nationalities within the
human rights context. By the end of the 1970s, however, massive and
concerted efforts by the KGB had largely suppressed the national
dissent movement. Nevertheless, Brezhnev had learned his lesson.
Proposals to dismantle the federative system were abandoned, and a
policy of further drawing of nationalities together
(sblizhenie) was pursued.
Language has often been used as an important tool of the
nationality policy. According to the Constitution, the Soviet Union
has no official language, and all languages are equal and may be
used in all circumstances. Every citizen has the right to be
educated in his own language or any language chosen by him or his
parents. Nevertheless, demography and Soviet policies have made
Russian the dominant language. Under Brezhnev, Soviet officials
emphasized in countless pronouncements that the Russian language
has been "voluntarily adopted" by the Soviet people as the language
of international communication, has promoted the "social,
political, and ideological unity" of Soviet nationalities, has
enriched the cultures of all other nationalities in the Soviet
Union, and has given "each Soviet people access to the treasure of
world civilization." Russian has been a compulsory subject in all
elementary and secondary schools since 1938. In the schools of all
the republics, where both a national language and Russian were
used, science and technical courses have been mainly taught in
Russian. Some higher education courses have been available only in
Russian. Russian has been the common language of public
administration in every republic. It has been used exclusively in
the armed forces, in scientific research, and in high technology.
Yet despite these measures to create a single Russian language in
the Soviet Union, the great majority of non-Russians considered
their own native language their first language. Fluency in Russian
varies from one non-Russian nationality to another but is generally
low, especially among the nationalities of Soviet Central Asia. A
proposal in the 1978 Georgian Republic's constitution to give the
Russian language equal status with the Georgian language provoked
large demonstrations in Tbilisi and was quickly withdrawn.
Soviet policy toward religion has been based on the ideology of
Marxism-Leninism (see Glossary), which has made atheism the
official doctrine of the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has
consistently advocated the control, suppression, and, ultimately,
the elimination of religious beliefs. In the 1920s and 1930s, such
organizations as the League of the Militant Godless ridiculed all
religions and harassed believers. Propagation of atheism in schools
has been another consistent policy. The regime's efforts to
eradicate religion in the Soviet Union, however, have varied over
the years with respect to particular religions and have been
affected by higher state interests.
Soviet officials closely identified religion with nationality.
The implementation of policy toward a particular religion,
therefore, has generally depended on the regime's perception of the
bond between that religion and the nationality practicing it, the
size of the religious community, the degree of allegiance of the
religion to outside authority, and the nationality's willingness to
subordinate itself to political authority. Thus the smaller the
religious community and the closer it identified with a particular
nationality, the more restrictive were the regime's policies,
especially if in addition it recognized a foreign religious
authority such as the pope.
As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities have
sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit
it for the regime's own purposes; but their ultimate goal has been
to eliminate it. During the first five years of Soviet power, the
Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200
Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled.
Believers were harassed and persecuted. Most seminaries were
closed, and publication of most religious material was prohibited.
By 1941 only 500 churches remained open out of about 54,000 in
existence prior to World War I.
The German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 forced Stalin to
enlist the Russian Orthodox Church as an ally to arouse Russian
patriotism against foreign aggression. Religious life revived
within the Russian Orthodox Church. Thousands of churches were
reopened and multiplied to 22,000 before Khrushchev came to power.
The regime permitted religious publications, and church membership
grew.
The regime's policy of cooperation with the Russian Orthodox
Church was reversed by Khrushchev. Although the church remained
officially sanctioned, in 1959 Khrushchev launched an antireligions
campaign that was continued in a less stringent manner by his
successor. By 1975 the number of operating Russian Orthodox
churches was reduced to 7,000. Some of the most prominent members
of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and activists were jailed or
forced to leave the church. Their place was taken by a docile
clergy who were obedient to the state and who were sometimes
infiltrated by KGB agents, making the Russian Orthodox Church
useful to the regime. The church has espoused and propagated Soviet
foreign policy and has furthered the Russification of non-Russian
believers, such as Orthodox Ukrainians and Belorussians.
The regime applied a different policy toward the Ukrainian
Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Belorussian Autocephalous
Orthodox Church. Viewed by the government as very nationalistic,
both churches were suppressed, first at the end of the 1920s and
again in 1944 after they had renewed themselves under German
occupation. The leadership of both churches was decimated; large
numbers of priests--2,000 Belorussian priests alone--were shot or
sent to labor camps, and the believers of these two churches were
harassed and persecuted.
The policy toward the Georgian Orthodox Church has been
somewhat different. That church has fared far worse than the
Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet regime. During World War
II, however, the Georgian Orthodox Church was allowed greater
autonomy in running its affairs in return for the church's call to
its members to support the war effort. The church did not, however,
achieve the kind of accommodation with the authorities that the
Russian Orthodox Church had. The government reimposed tight control
over it after the war. Out of some 2,100 churches in 1917, only 200
were still open in the 1980s, and the church was forbidden to serve
its faithful outside the Georgian Republic. In many cases, the
regime forced the church to conduct services in Old Church Slavonic
instead of in the Georgian language.
The Soviet government's policies toward the Catholic Church
were strongly influenced by Soviet Catholics' recognition of an
outside authority as head of their church. Also, in the two
republics where most of the Catholics lived, the Lithuanian
Republic and the Ukrainian Republic, Catholicism and nationalism
were closely linked. Although the Roman Catholic Church in the
Lithuanian Republic was tolerated, large numbers of the clergy were
imprisoned, many seminaries were closed, and police agents
infiltrated the remainder. The anti-Catholic campaign in the
Lithuanian Republic abated after Stalin's death, but harsh measures
against the church were resumed in 1957 and continued through the
Brezhnev era.
Soviet religious policy was particularly harsh toward the
Ukrainian Catholic Church. Ukrainian Catholics fell under Soviet
rule in 1939 when western Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet
Union as part of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Although the
Ukrainian Catholic Church was permitted to function, it was almost
immediately subjected to intense harassment. Retreating before the
German army in 1941, Soviet authorities arrested large numbers of
Ukrainian Catholic priests, who were either killed or deported to
Siberia. After the Red Army reoccupied western Ukraine in 1944, the
Soviet regime liquidated the Ukrainian Catholic Church by arresting
its metropolitan, all of its bishops, hundreds of clergy, and the
more active faithful, killing some and sending the rest to labor
camps, where, with few exceptions, they perished. At the same time,
Soviet authorities forced some of the remaining clergy to abrogate
the union with Rome and subordinate themselves to the Russian
Orthodox Church.
Prior to World War II, the number of Protestants in the Soviet
Union was low in comparison with other believers, but they have
shown remarkable growth since then. In 1944 the Soviet government
established the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christian Baptists
to give the government some control over the various Protestant
sects. Many congregations refused to join this body, however, and
others that initially joined the council subsequently left. All
found that the state, through the council, was interfering in
church life.
The regime's policy toward the Islamic religion has been
affected, on the one hand, by the large Muslim population, its
close ties to national cultures, and its tendency to accept Soviet
authority and, on the other hand, by its susceptibility to foreign
influence. Since the early 1920s, the Soviet regime, fearful of a
pan-Islamic movement, has sought to divide Soviet Muslims into
smaller, separate entities. This separation was accomplished by
creating six separate Muslim republics and by fostering the
development of a separate culture and language in each of them.
Although actively encouraging atheism, Soviet authorities have
permitted some limited religious activity in all the Muslim
republics. Mosques functioned in most large cities of the Central
Asian republics and the Azerbaydzhan Republic; however, their
number had decreased from 25,000 in 1917 to 500 in the 1970s. In
1989, as part of the general relaxation of restrictions on
religions, some additional Muslim religious associations were
registered, and some of the mosques that had been closed by the
government were returned to Muslim communities. The government also
announced plans to permit training of limited numbers of Muslim
religious leaders in courses of two- and five-year duration in Ufa
and Baku, respectively.
Although Lenin found anti-Semitism abhorrent, the regime was
hostile toward Judaism from the beginning. In 1919 Soviet
authorities abolished Jewish community councils, which were
traditionally responsible for maintaining synagogues. They created
a special Jewish section of the party, whose tasks included
propaganda against Jewish clergy and religion. Training of rabbis
became impossible, and until the late 1980s only one Yiddish
periodical was published. Hebrew, because of its identification
with Zionism, was taught only in schools for diplomats. Most of the
5,000 synagogues functioning prior to the Bolshevik Revolution were
closed under Stalin, and others were closed under Khrushchev. For
all intents and purposes, the practice of Judaism became
impossible, intensifying the desire of Jews to leave the Soviet
Union.
Data as of May 1989
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