The Nationality Problem of the Soviet Union • Chapter 1

There exists an immense literature about "nationalism" in the languages of all civilized nationalities. England and America have contributed much to the study of this problem. The works of one American scholar — C. J. H. Hayes — especially deserve to be mentioned with great appreciation. The tremendous number of publications and the various approaches to this phenomenon by the different branches of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences are the best proofs of the paramount importance of the national idea at the present time.

In Europe among Slavic nations, there is a tendency to make a distinction between the "national idea" of a nation, containing, together with the emotion of patriotism and fellow feeling among all the members of it, all its legitimate rights and aspirations, and "nationalism," which has the tendency to make the nation an absolute ethical-political principle and represents an excess, an exaggeration of a nation's aspirations, including usually an infringement upon the legitimate rights of neighbor nations, consequently, "nationalism" means "chauvinism." In Italian, French, and American⁠1 special adjectives preceding the term "nationalism" try to keep the two complete different meanings apart. But at present in American publications they are often confused. The term "nationalism" is often used in both meanings so that the reader must guess what kind of nationalism is meant. Thus it is an absolute necessity to use different words for the different meanings and to establish a border line between them, similar to the American distinction between legitimate geopolitics and German "Geopolitik."

Because we reject all intolerant, aggrieve chauvinism as a crime against humanity, we prefer in this study to use the term "national idea" for all legitimate rights and aspirations of a nation. Sometimes we also use the term "nationalism," with the same meaning but reserve for all negative expressions of nationalism the term "chauvinism."

It is not our special aim in this work to look for a scientific formulated definition of these phenomena: "national idea" and "nationality"; or specially to investigate their roots or their formation in space and time. Here we are only treating the "national idea" as a psychological, p2 sociological, and political fact, and we concentrate on one aspect of this idea. In our opinion it is the most important aspect: The role of "language" in the national ideas of nationalities in the Soviet Union, beginning with the final date of her formation (1922‑1924) — when the Communist Party took over the rule of this large Eurasian State. All other chapters serve only as the necessary background for American readers to understand the whole nationality problem in the Soviet Union.

However, this limitation of our topic does not exempt us from the duty of presenting our general view about the national idea, its origin, and its paramount importance in European history and in the revolutionary process that formed the present Soviet Union — process still far from complete. Therefore, the problems of the national ideas of all the nationalities of the Soviet Union, problems completely neglected or systematically misrepresented by American Communists and academic fellow travelers, deserve special attention.

1. The National Idea and the Language

In the development of the national idea from its primitive elements until today language plays a paramount role. In present research this role is quite generally neglected or underestimated.

Language is the means of thinking and of expressing thought; the means of communication, and, consequently, the basis of forming and developing society. Thus, language embraces all individuals of a people, unifying them into a speaking community, thus creating all the higher social forms. The wish to establish communication between human beings, the wish to exchange thoughts, created language. Therefore, community of language is a condition of the growth and development of the successive concentric circles from the small group to the modern nations. Languages, therefore, represent in their vocabulary and meanings a documentary archive of this evolution, an archive of the whole cultural history of nationalities.

But the vibrating words express not only meanings. They express also emotions and feelings with which many meanings are interwoven. Besides, the expressed sentences of each language have their own music and characteristic cadence, contain a special sentence melody, with accents and rhythms, from which emerges the language of folklore and literature as an art. This manifold music of language expressing the diapason of all the feeling of man connects human beings with the manifold voices of nature into one great ocean of sound and rhythm. They all are expressions of life. Where life is, there is sound and rhythm. Only death is silent.

The importance of language in the life of a people, nationality, or nation cannot be overestimated. Language with its thinking and emotional processes is their creative force and represents their national heritage. Wilhelm von Humboldt (Kraft der Worte) is right: "The true, genuine home and mother country (of a nationality) is the mother language."

Historical facts are drawing our attention to the great importance of language and writing in the formation of peoples, nationalities, nations, p3 facts established for the earliest times of human history. Here we limit ourselves to the ancient Classic and Hebrew-Christian traditions. What is at their very basis? Language.

God manifested Himself to the Jews not in an image, but by sound; the "word," logos, became the intermediary between Him and the chosen people. Language and faith and law permeated one another. Through the language of Moses and Jesus were expressed Judaism and Christianity, the Ten Commandments, and the Sermon on the Mount. Language and faith created the nationhood of the ancient Hebrews and effected their liberation from Egyptian bondage, inspiring even today every oppressed nationality with imperishable hope, because "The Lord says: Fear not, for I am with thee." The language of this faith proclaimed that the oppressor may triumph for a moment, but "his house is built on sand" and will not withstand the irresistible moral laws of life. The Hebrew liberation from Egyptian slavery inspired the imagination of all neighboring peoples and even today on the American Liberty Bell are the words of Moses:⁠a "Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof." Since this great liberation, people have never been content to live in chains, they have all been inspired by this Hebrew ideal of a free mankind and from it they all got the invincible revolutionary weapon for their liberation: the Bible. In the Hebrew language God's name, containing the greatest mystery and power, became the creative force of the people and formed this high tension of Messianism, so peculiar to the Hebrew national idea. The language was serving God; God manifested in it His teachings. Since that time all languages aspire to serve God in liberty.

This paramount importance of language for the formation of national individualities we notice also in Christianity, which inherited the Old Testament. In the Scriptures God's Son ordered His disciples to teach the true faith in all languages to all peoples. Thus later Greek and Latin shared the honor of being used for the translation of the Gospel and for serving God at ceremonies.

These ideas penetrated into the Greek cultural sphere, which was formed by Greek expansion and by the cultural unification of the seashores of the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and of southern Italy including various nationalities. Later these ideas penetrated the Roman multinational cultural sphere, which embraced the seashores of the whole Mediterranean Sea. Both multinational cultural spheres, Roman and Greek, developed the first "international intermediary languages" of our civilization, which are still preserved as the traditional unifying symbols in the Roman Catholic Church (the Latin language) and in the Eastern Orthodox Church (the Greek language — now only partly used).

Any people coming in contact with Christianity becomes conscious of the fact that in his language is the divine logos. Christianity sanctified the languages of peoples, making the peoples like the individuals equal before the Lord.

Soon there developed in the East, in the eastern Mediterranean, and in the Black Sea basin as a corollary of these Christian ideas a longing p4 among the converted peoples that their languages also might serve the Lord; this was also a practical wish of the missionaries and clergy because only in the native language could Christianity really penetrate into the lowest level of the population, to the peasantry. The Christianization of a population meant virtually the elevation of an ethnographic mass to the rank of a nationality by dedicating its language to God's service. Thus began in the East the translation of the Gospel into some of the oriental languages, which does not interest us, though we regard as very important the translations into Armenian, Georgian, and Gothic, so closely connected with the clear formation of the national ideas of these nationalities. With these traditions of the Black Sea basin is connected the introduction of Old Bulgarian (863) into the Church service for the Slavs. Old Bulgarian was then a living vernacular and, as the differences between the Slavic languages at that time were small, it was generally understood. Therefore it was used also originally as the literary language of the Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Ukrainians, Byelo-Ruthenians, Novgorodians, and Muscovites. With the gradual nationalization of this language by the strong penetration of the separate vernaculars and the varied pronunciations of the respective peoples is connected the development of the national ideas of these nations. From Old Bulgarian developed the present Old Church Slavic, used, as Latin is used in the West, in the Catholic Churches of the Ukrainians, Byelo-Ruthenians, Croats, and the Orthodox Churches of the Bulgarians, Serbs, Ukrainians, Byelo-Ruthenians, Russians.

Thus, as we see, the monopoly of Greek for Church services was broken rather early in the east, but in the West this process regarding Latin started much later. In medieval and in early modern times in western Europe the national ideas were based primarily on "state and dynasty" subordinated to the Common Church and the Holy Empire. Therefore Latin constituted in Western and Central Europe the intermediary language of the Church, science, literature, and diplomacy and separated the common man from all sources of learning and power. The centers of Church and State administration, usually connected with important economic centers, developed in the course of time in England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc., their vernaculars as literary languages of the Church sermons, until Luther's Bible translation and King James version broke also in West and Central Europe the monopoly of Latin and the invasion of vernaculars into Church services started, accompanied by a deep nationalization of the masses. The invention of the printing press accelerated this process, simultaneously making the vernacular languages a forceful weapon in the fight for individual and national freedom during the gradual dissolution of the Common Church and Empire. Great writers publishing their works in the vernacular soon accomplished the formation of the modern literary languages as the paramount expressions of the modern national idea.

The rise of modern imperialism and intolerant chauvinism soon established in Europe two classes of nationalities and languages: those of ruling nations, and those of oppressed nationalities, thus creating the modern nationality problem in its cultural aspect. The imperialism of p5 European powers aimed not to exploit economically the conquered nationalities but above all to "swallow" them by suppressing and destroying their languages and substituting the languages of the victorious nations. That chauvinistic cannibalism of our age regarded this method as the easiest way to increase the size of a nation and strengthen it to full homogeneousness. Consequently, the languages of the subdued nations were excluded from church, schools, press, literature, theater, by the victors, and their use was forbidden. This linguocide (killing of languages) is intellectual genocide and the first stage of real genocide.

On the other hand, the fight of an oppressed nationality for its national freedom against political and economic oppression always starts with the fight for the freedom of language; any political renaissance is preceded by the renaissance of the language and literature of a nationality. Every ruling nation in Europe, English, German, French, Italian, Russian, constantly fought to have its language adopted as the intermediary tool in international life. Each tried to gain the first place in this race by practicing not only the brutal method of "swallowing," but also by special "cultural propaganda" and the formation of special "cultural spheres" for their languages. English ruled international commerce; French until World War II was the language of diplomacy and the intermediary language in the Near East; German was spoken in Central Europe and Scandinavia; Italian expanded in the Mediterranean; Russian was imposed on the peoples of the Russian Empire. World War II simplified the problem. every nation must now choose between English-American and Russian as an international intermediary language, between the language of freedom and language of Communism.

2. The Roots and Elements of the National Idea

Surely, we must look on the national idea as a naturally home-grown phenomenon, determined in its origin by the influence of natural surroundings and from the very beginning interwoven with race, State, religion. The natural geopolitical forces which influenced the development of primitive State formations, also formed the roots of the ethnographic groups, the basis of "national ideas and nationalities." These efforts established conditions for their emergence and growth by means of the common territory, common race, common work, common beliefs; above all the common language stimulated them, constituting simultaneously one of their decisive elements. Thus the common scenery of nature, the great power of landscape we put into the very foundations of the national idea — this power even today partly retains its importance. In the landscape is hidden a powerful might, and this deep intimacy between earth and man is glorified by the peasant writers of all nations. The native soil enters into bone and tissue, binding the human being to itself, to the "mother country." The earth stamps the human being like a coin, leaving its marks on the whole culture of a people. The landscape and the soil are also a kind of fate for a people; they not only form the style and character of the culture, but they shape the "soul" of a people, its character and language. This common "mother territory," common flora and fauna, common climate — they create on the one p6 hand a deep common attachment to this "mother," the feeling of home, and on the other hand common habits, common customs, common food, common folklore and folksongs amongst the "children." Consequently, within each group of "children" (of the common "mother" country), there developed the reciprocal "feeling of belonging to one another," the feeling of being a part of a living group, clan, tribe, people, inside the common mother country. The sight of the still living patriarch, the grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren — this endless succession of generation, between the common two mysterious ends: birth and death, created not only the feeling of physical continuity in the living groups, but also the common historical memory, common consciousness of the present, and the common expectation of the future, determined by the common gods, who were identified with the surrounding elementary forces of nature. In this "growing together" of families, clans, tribes into higher forms of group-consciousness, expressed by the common language, is the cradle of the national idea. Thus, through centuries, on the basis of stable geographical contiguity there gradually developed historical and cultural traditions, economical interests, and finally the individuality of a people.

Consciousness of this individuality is the birth of the national idea. Encounters between different peoples awakened the consciousness of primitive national individuality on both sides; and the difference of languages played a decisive role in this process. Feelings of superiority or hostility arose. In the subsequent processes of expansion and struggle for survival of these nature-grown protonationalities, the differentiation of languages into the languages of the victors and the vanquished was of great importance.

We have sketched briefly the roots and elements of the national idea. From the rather complicated structure of this nucleus to the modern national idea is a long way, in which this nucleus becomes closely connected with the whole history of Europe. Therefore only European history can explain the present form of the national idea, its dynamism and the dominating role it plays in modern times.

3. The European Background of the National Idea

We accept the theory that the European continent was the original home of the Indo-European family of languages and that the geopolitical units of Europe with its three seas — the Baltic, the Mediterranean, and the Black — contributed to the gradual formation of the peoples' individualities, parallel with the gradual differentiation of the original dialects of the Indo-European protolanguage into its language branches. Gradually, one by one, the Indo-European peoples appeared out of the dark of prehistoric times before the footlights on the stage of history. First came the Aryans, then the Greeks, the Thracians and Illyrians, the Italic peoples, the Celts, the Germanic peoples, and still later the Slavs and the Balts. The nucleus of the national idea passed through the forming of common tribal names into the stage at which community of language and race dominated the conception of a peasant individuality. All Greeks were kept conscious of their unity by the common language p7 and called the non‑Greeks "Barbarians" (etymologically: a foreigner, one whose language differs from the speaker's); later the Slavs called their German neighbors Niemce (Polish), Nemce (Czech), Nimtsi (Ukrainian), "the mutes"; the Germanic peoples called the Slavic neighbors: "Slavs" — which according to one etymology of this still uncertain word⁠2 can be an original Germanic loan-word meaning "to be silent," "to be dumb"; because the Slavic and Germanic peoples mutually did not understand their languages.

Together with the mother-language aspect, the nucleus of the national idea went through a stage dominated by the community of religion. In both cases the borderlands of the language spheres of religious communities were the territories of increased "national" feelings on both sides.

But of the greatest importance is the political aspect of the "national idea," and its later connection with the basic problems of European history.

The majority of historians are in full agreement about the basic problems of European history.

From ancient times, the peoples of the Mediterranean cradle of our civilization, and later — through the Middle Ages until present times — all the nationalities of Europe have been confronted with two problems:

a) The problems of freedom; in course of time, with freedom of the individual, of the nations, of the churches;

Thus the whole of European history is a history of the struggle for freedom of individuals and nationalities, and for the establishment of a higher authority for the protection of freedom.

Consequently, freedom of nations is in the very center of this historical process, for without it there can be no freedom of the individual. The clear formulation of the idea of legitimate nationalism we find already on the very threshold of our civilization. We fully agree with the opinion that they are contained in the national consciousness of old Israel and Hellas.⁠4 The Greek philosophy, the Roman law, the Christian universalism of the Middle Ages which embraced also the Old Kievan Rus′-Ukraine in the tenth century have shaped the successive stages of the national idea and its struggles for freedom and order, for "Europe." The heavy blows of Asia and Islam, of the Tatars, the Turks and the flanking movement of the Arabs forged together the community of European Christian nations, in spite of the divisions between Rome and Constantinople. Common danger created in spontaneous neighborly cooperation the idea of federalism for the protection of freedom. Thus p8 under the leadership of the Lithuanians (whose nobility was already christianized but whose dynasty still wavered between the new faith and paganism), a wall from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea was erected in the fourteenth century against the Asiatic nomads and the attacking Moslem by the Byelo-Ruthenians and Ukrainians. Later Poland joined this federation, transforming it into the Jagellonian Commonwealth which dynastically embraced also Bohemia and Hungary for a short time. The common fight for freedom inside Europe created also the Swiss Confederation — a living example for the successive centuries of what "Europe" should be.

Protected by this human wall of the Lithuanian-Byelo-Ruthenian-Ukrainian-Polish nations, strengthened in Central Europe by the Austrians and upheld in constant fights at the cost of tremendous casualties and material losses — Western Europe, relatively undisturbed, could pass through the successive phases of modern European history, with all the blossoms of civilization, the intellectual quickening, the overseas explorations, the economic expansion, and could risk even the religious upheaval. One after another the modern Western nations appeared as leading stars on the stage of European history, as dominating powers in politics, economics, literature, language, and art: Spain and Portugal, France, England and the Netherlands, when in Central Europe the rise of Prussia began in the decaying Holy Roman Empire under Hapsburg rule. These tremendous economic, religious, and military upheavals, together with the earlier breakdown of medieval feudal institutions, were accompanied by national movements, which consolidated everywhere in the West the absolute monarchy, apparently guaranteeing the national independence of nations, but suppressing all personal liberty, and in conquered countries also all national liberty.

Situated between the European divine-right absolute monarchies and the Muscovite tyranny, the Polish-Lithuanian-Byelo-Ruthenian-Ukrainian Commonwealth faced a tragic fate. In spite of all her shortcomings (above all, the serfdom of the peasantry) it is a matter of fact that she represented in the East the European civilization, and in Europe the republican idea, with a President elected for lifetime, called King, with a constitution, a representative diet, even with the absurd veto right. But in this advanced fortress of European culture against Asia the leading Polish gentry proved incapable of solving the national, social, and religious problems inside the commonwealth, and especially unable to free the peasants from serfdom and elevate them to full citizenship, to full freedom. The consequence was the Ukrainian revolution (1648) under Hetman Bohdan Chmelnycky. In the Ukraine not the gentry but the peasantry became the driving force of the national idea, fighting for an Ukrainian Republic of free armed peasant Cossacks. The mistake made by the Hetman in using the Muscovite tyranny for the protection of the Ukrainian national democratic idea was a fatal mistake, leading on the one hand to the partitioning of the commonwealth by the absolute monarchies of Prussia, Austria, Russia, and on the other hand to the enslavement of Ukraine by the Russian tyranny.

p9 In the revolutionary fight against the absolutism of the divine-right monarchy the national idea got its modern form throughout all of Europe and merged with the ideas of popular sovereignty and democracy. In the course of the last two centuries modern nationalism in Western and Central Europe developed many aspects: the humanitarian, Jacobin, traditional, liberal, integral nationalism.⁠5 The modern national idea has some distinguished godfathers in modern history, in the events which even now by their ideological content are giving to all national ideas a terrific dynamic force in current affairs: the American Revolution, with the ideas of the American Declaration of Independence, and the French Revolution with the Rights of Man. They stimulated throughout Europe, inside every nation, the fight for individual freedom, for "human rights" and for national freedom amongst all the nationalities which in the course of history had lost their independence.

The Napoleonic era, not having solved nationality problems but strongly stimulated the national ideas in Central and Eastern Europe on the one hand, showed also on the other hand the unhealthy aspects of exaggerated nationalism which ended in the reaction under Russian leadership and the establishment of Europe's order by the "Concert" of the great powers, acting according to the "balance of power" principle. The international situation included now in European politics a victorious new power advancing into East and Central Europe: Russia.

The modern form of the national idea is characterized by a limited influence of natural environments, by the great influence of poets, who "discovered" the masses and their art, folklore and life-wisdom, and in the "romantic movement" idolizing the past; by the influence of scholars, who gave a new national interpretation of history and of thinkers, stimulating love and patriotism for the mother country, the mother language, and its people. In its present form the national idea is merged with democracy and with industrialization, which gave nationalism a dominating role, based on modern information and propaganda. This idea forms the state of mind of modern nationalities; it creates the expressions of their consciousness; it acts as a common will in present times shaping the present and planning the future. Therefore, this idea requires the highest form of organized human activity: the national sovereign State, as the source of creative cultural energy especially in the sphere of language and of economic well-being. Thus, this idea took shape, imbuing the nationalities not only with very distinctive consciousness of national individuality, but also with the feeling of the basic solidarity of a nationality in past, present, and future. Consequently, the supreme loyalty of a human being is due to his own nation — its civilization, language, and European cultural heritage.

But this dynamic force of the modern national idea has also managed to shake off the subordination to Christian morality and has developed a "national cancer," which sooner or later brings catastrophe to the aggressive, egoistic, and intolerant nations. Modern imperialism with p10 its colonialism, the economic exploitation and political oppression of subdued nationalities (above all, of their languages) is the result of the moral anarchy that created this "cancer" of chauvinism. Chauvinism is a force disuniting humanity and an offspring of tyranny; the legitimate national idea, a child of freedom and democracy, is a uniting force of humanity, which can be realized under freedom by democratic cooperation.

Our modern times are completely dominated by the national idea. We have witnessed the dissolution of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and German Empires, and recently the transformation of the British and Dutch Empires into commonwealths of free nations. Free Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Roumania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia — finally free Ireland and rebuilt Israel show the victorious march of the idea of the freedom of nationalities.

Our modern times attempted after the two World Wars (both of which were fought under the banners of freedom and self-determination for nationalities) to realize also the superstructural organization for the protection of freedom: the League of Nations in Geneva and its second edition, the UN.

Finishing this brief survey of the development of the national idea, indissolubly interwoven with the struggle for individual, national, and religious freedom in Western, Central, and Southern Europe, we must stress the fact that these ideas are European, or, as is often said, "Western European." The conflict of Russia with this idea (since the Swedish-Ukrainian alliance of Charles XII and Hetman Mazepa, who tried to protect Europe against the spread of Muscovite tyranny, was defeated by Peter I at Poltava in 1709, after which the Ukraine was finally incorporated and Muscovy was transformed from an Asiatic State into the European power, Russia) — the account of this conflict forms the content of the next chapter.

4. Present Criticism of the National Idea

To bring our survey up to date we must mention the present criticism of the national idea in the English-speaking world. At the present time this criticism is rather fashionable in some liberal and left-wing spheres. Thus, with the exception of the atomic bomb, the national idea is made responsible for all the ills and troubles of our present time. If we disregard the anarchist outlook of the German Rudolf Rocker⁠6 this criticism has in reality two sources:

a) The first source is the old British imperialism, camouflaged as "defender of internationalism," charging the national idea with "Balkanization" of Europe and hindering the formation of higher supernational units, thus becoming a great obstacle to modern trade, commerce, and cultural intercourse.

This English criticism was very active during and after World War II and sought to preserve the British Empire by discouraging the nationalities in Asia and Africa from claiming their rights of self-determination p11 and perhaps dissolving the Empire. This fear proved completely unfounded, because England, in spite of some rather sad pages in the history of the national idea in the Empire, contributed much to the general progress of the nations included in the British Empire.

Leading in this criticism was E. H. Carr (from 1916‑1936 in the Foreign Office Service; 1939‑1940, Director of Foreign Publicity at the Ministry of Information; later professor of International Politics, University of Wales). Carr's criticism is based on a complete misinterpretation of historical facts. The blame for the sad "Balkanization" cannot be laid upon the nationalities which after centuries of slavery attained statehood. The "Balkanization" was exclusively the achievement of the leading European powers, and of their rivalry in a territory that geopolitically was uniquely important. It is not the national ideas of the small nations that are responsible for that, but the imperialism of the powers which abused the national ideas for their own interests.

Carr's criticism is founded also on a conceited ignorance of the national program of the peoples who were or are struggling for self-determination. All of them always had, besides their own statehood, also a vision of a supernational organization to which they wished to belong. Consequently, all the nations fighting for their freedom know well the cultural and language spheres which are their wider families. The fact that the idea of the Balkan federation or of the Danube federation could not be realized in Europe after World War I is again a consequence of the rivalry of powers which for decades fostered anarchy in Europe.

Carr's "my country right or wrong" attitude represents in some parts the lowest level of English scholarship, and some of his thoughts, connected with our topic, deserve to be preserved for posterity in order to see quantilla sapientia mundus regatur. In 1941, Carr⁠7 writes about the Soviet aggression against the Baltic States:

"When Soviet Russia during the course of 1939‑40 gradually reabsorbed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania into the Russian orbit, it was reported that, while these measures were bitterly resented by the older generation, which had lived through the "liberation" period of 1919, they were greeted with relief by the younger generation, which was convinced that only incorporation in some larger unit could restore prosperity to these little countries, and this sense of the helplessness and hopelessness of the small national unit has spread rapidly in the Balkans, especially since the outbreak of war."

In 1945, Carr⁠8 contributed the following comparison to the discussion about the rights of nationalities:

"Whatever differences of outlook and method divide the three great powers, they are all united in loyalty to one principle; in the British p12 Commonwealth an Englishman, Scot or Welshman or Frenchman or Dutchman, — in the U. S. A., a German, a Pole, an Italian; in the U. S. S. R., a Lithuanian, a Moldavian or a Kazbek without finding any avenue of political and economic opportunity on that account, or any carrierº placed on devotion to one's own language or national customs! In the Soviet Union the predominant emphasis is laid, except in the sphere of language and culture, not on the national rights of the Kazbek Republic, but on the equality enjoyed by the Kazbek throughout the Union with the Uzbek or the Great Russians."

The first statement of Carr, besides being a document of moral atrophy, is a Communist propaganda falsification; the second shows the Soviet expert in his whole stature as a scholar. Cynicism, absence of any moral conscience, insular incapacity to understand and to recognize the American nation, complete ignorance of the basic facts of the Soviet Union, and of Communism, finally the invention of a "Kazbek" nation,⁠b qualifies this scholar surely for the membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Here is a rival of Lysenko. . . . In the year 1939, Carr in his Twenty Years' Crisis advised the democracies better come to terms with Nazism and Fascism which seemed to be the movements of the future. Today in his Studies in Revolution he is impressed by the success of Russian Communism and it seems that Carr sees in Stalinism the ideology of the future, which as a historical and dialectical continuation replaces the liberal democracy.

b) The second source of constant propaganda against the national idea and the self-determination rights of nationalities, especially in U. S. A. are the White Russian émigrés and the official Soviet propaganda. Here in U. S. A. they joined forces in the press, university publications, and lectures against the self-determination rights of non‑Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union. Thus, American naturalized citizens of Russian descent and Soviet diplomats work hand in hand to defend the "indivisibility and unity of holy Russia–Soviet Union."⁠9 Only their methods are different — and to this political action we will dedicate our last chapter.

What of the future of the national idea? We should like to reply with a quotation from the book of Sir Arthur Keith, A New Theory of Human Evolution (Philosophical Library):

"What of the future? Is nationalism merely a passing phenomenon: Will nations be ultimately swallowed up in a universal government? I dare not look forward for more than a few centuries; within this limited period I feel confident that nationalism, far from weakening, will grow ever stronger. Modern nations are still imperfectly nationalized; the process will not cease until every nation is integrated into a unity such p13 as was met with in the evolutionary units of primal humanity. Nations are giving lip‑service to the U. N. O., but everywhere we find them searching for economic independence and self-sufficiency, and strengthening the social bonds and services which give unity and solidarity to nations. Everywhere nations become more national in thought and in deed."

Ex‑president Hoover's opinion is rather important. According to The New York Times, December 2, 1951:

"Former President Hoover criticized as 'fuzzy-minded' those who contend that nationalism is an evil. The eradication of nationalist feelings 'is not the road to the freedom of mankind,' Mr. Hoover said.

"The former President addressed 700 young persons at the ninth annual youth forum at the Astor Hotel.

"Mr. Hoover said that 'lasting peace must include full maintenance of the independence and self-government of nations.'

"That nationalism is a powerful and progressive force has been witnessed by all of us in the creation of the State of Israel,' he said. 'We have seen history written.'

"Mr. Hoover added that it was the nationalism of the countries forced behind the Iron Curtain by the Soviet Union that would ultimately 'free them from the Communist tyranny of the Kremlin.'

" 'The cooperation of independent nations is the only foundation upon which international peace can be permanently built and sustained,' Mr. Hoover said. 'In self-government lies the safety and guarantee of individual rights. It is said that vigilance is the price of liberty. It might be added that the seat of liberty must be kept near enough home to keep your eye on it.' "

Together with a deepening of nationalism will grow, in our opinion, the feeling of unity among nationalities. Unity, not mechanic uniformity, is the key to progress and lasting peace. Mankind will never accept the domination of a single culture, language, philosophy, or ideology. Nationhood, like personal freedom, is an absolute value — also for all non‑Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union.

A decisive influence on the course of world affairs had and will have Woodrow Wilson's doctrine of the "self-determination of peoples" and his conception of the League of Nations, which manifested the birth of an international conscience. The torch of democracy and freedom of the American and French Revolutions was by this great man rekindled and kept aloft and from these American ideals has since come liberty for Ireland, India, Burma, Israel, Philippines, Indonesia, and the new edition of the League of Nations, the UN.

The abandoning of Woodrow Wilson's principles in 1920 and 1945 was the way into the present catastrophe.

The Author's Notes:

1 Cf. the address of Secretary of State Hull delivered July 23, 1942, in which a distinction is made between "healthy nationalism" and "extreme nationalism," and Pope Pius XI clearly distinguished "moderate" from "excessive" nationalism, which he condemned as "harsh and egoistic." Regarding the Catholic point of view cf. J. J. Wright, National Patriotism in Papal Teaching (Boston: Stratford Co., 1942).

3 Cf. O. Halecki, The Limits and Divisions of European History (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1950), pp185‑202.

4 Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944), pp27‑60.

5 Carlton J. H. Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Nationalism, R. R. Smith, Inc., 1931.

9 Whether the letter of a group of Russian intellectuals published in The New York Times, July 8, 1951, is a real change in the attitude of Russian émigrés to the self-determination rights of the non‑Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union remains doubtful.

Thayer's Notes:

b Presumably an invention based on Mt. Kazbek, one of the highest mountains in Georgia.