Russia and Nationalism During the Russian Revolution

Russia and Nationalism During the Russian Revolution

Nationalism: "Devotion to one's nation; a policy of national independence ... A form of socialism, based on the nationalizing of all industry," according to the Oxford Universal Dictionary On Historical Principles. In AskJeeves.com "nationalism" is defined as "Love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it," and " ... The conviction that the culture and interests of your nation are superior to those of any nation."

The last definition is part of the way in which nationalism has also become kind of a "catch-phrase" for extreme patriotism, such as the United States policy of "manifest destiny," that any territory America wished to conquer was okay, because it was our destiny to conquer and expand our country.

The question as to how nationalism played a role in the Bolshevik Revolution leads a reader into some of the more interesting aspects of assigned books about the revolution. In the book by Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution: 1917-1932, the author writes about the fact that the "revolutionary regime had ... To consider its position in the wider world" (62). The Bolsheviks believed that they were "to be part of an international proletarian revolutionary movement."

They were counting on their revolution in Russia sparking "similar revolutions throughout Europe," Fitzpatrick wrote. The Bolsheviks believed during the Civil War in the middle of 1918 that this was a "class war" (63), in international and in domestic terms. It was, to the Bolsheviks, a war against the Russian bourgeoisie brought by the Russian proletariat, and a war of international revolution "against international capitalism."

On page 76, Fitzpatrick writes about the Bolshevik lack of common sense and reality, which was apparently brought on by their being blinded by nationalistic fever: "The Bolsheviks' perception of the real world had become almost comically distorted ... By 1920. They sent the Red Army to advance on Warsaw," because, they were absolutely in their nationalist obsession, "it seemed obvious that the Poles would recognize the troops as proletarian brothers rather than Russian aggressors." Their nationalism (belief they were right and others wrong) even went to the point of being glad that the famine and war associated with the Civil War created "bands of homeless children"; the children's plight would mean that the Bolsheviks could then raise the children in Bolshevik orphanages, and propagandize them, keeping them from being exposed to the "bourgeois influence" of older families in Russia.

How did nationalism shape the policies of Stalin and Lenin? On page 105, Fitzpatrick points to the fact that Stalin hoped that his bold plan to press forward with industrialization (the "Five-Year Plan") -- no matter "what the cost," in the author's words -- would compare favorably with Lenin's "momentous decision to seize political power in 1917." Stalin wanted badly to become "Stalin the Industrializer" -- a very nationalistic-sounding phrase -- and his slogan, "Socialism in One Country" was, Fitzpatrick writes, "a useful rallying cry and good political strategy." Those strategies and slogans, however, carried with them "disturbing undertones of national chauvinism ... " the author explains. "National chauvinism" would be another way of defining nationalism, and clearly this is what was happening in Russia during Lenin and Stalin's stewardship there.

In The First Socialist Society: a History of the Soviet Union From Within, by Geoffrey A. Hosking, readers can see that a grass-roots kind of nationalism grew suddenly from the working class, right after the demise of the czar. This brand of nationalism would fall under the definition at the top of this paper, " ... Devotion to one's nation ... A form of socialism ... "

Indeed, being proud of their culture, even though there was political chaos in the aftermath of the October Revolution, peasants seized land for themselves when the provisional government that had promised that "The land must belong to those who work it with their hands" (37). "Nowhere was the exuberant improvisation of the revolutionary period so evident as in the multiplicity of organizations created by the workers of Russia's cities," Hosking writes on page 39. "Pride of place," he explains, was a driving force for the peasants and workers.

Lenin's view of how nationalism, pride of country, would simply take over and provide momentum for the new nation that was formed out of the rubble of the October Revolution. He believed (46) that "ordinary working people could take power into their own hands, and administer complex economic systems." This vision he alluded to as the "commune state."

Nationalism in its extreme, of course, is a brutal political policy, where the head of government institutes strategies such as Lenin did (69-71) "when emergency justice became more acceptable." And then when "it became unnecessary for an actual crime to be proven," and a person's "very existence could be held to imply that he was at war with the Soviet system," that gave Lenin's regime license to mass murder: "The towns must be cleansed of ... bourgeois putrefaction ... All who are dangerous to the cause of the revolution must be exterminated." This was similar to what Hitler -- a man who took nationalism well over the top -- did in Germany a few years later in trying to exterminate the Jews, blaming them as "dangerous" to his cause.