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previous: Chapter 5 (Part 1) This webpage reproduces a chapter of The Nationality Problem of the Soviet Union by Roman Smal-Stocki published by The Bruce Publishing Company Milwaukee, 1952 The text is in the public domain. This page has not been proofread. If you find a mistake though, please let me know! next: Chapter 6

 p141  Chapter V

The Russian Communist Policy
with respect to the Languages
of the non‑Russian nationalities 1920‑1926

(Part 2)

2. The Russification of All Non‑Russian Languages in the Soviet Union
by Application of Marr's Linguistic Theory

We have illustrated the application of Marr's linguistic theory to the Ukrainian language. The Ukraine was the center, but only a part of the whole Russification area covered by the Russian Communist Party throughout the whole Soviet Union. The Russian Communist Party employed for this purpose everywhere the remnants of the old Tsarist bureaucracy and "black hundreds," hooligans, who now got the opportunity to continue their old practice, as under Tsaristic rule, hiding the Russification and pogrom against the non‑Russian nationalities behind a new Communistic-international smoke screen of slogans and phrases. We dell'here only a short survey of what was happening at the same time to the remaining non‑Russian languages in the Soviet Union.

(1) Non‑Russian Slavic languages

Byelo-Ruthenian (Byelo-Russian). The Byelo-Ruthenians proclaimed after the downfall of the Russian Tsarist regime their Byelo-Ruthenian Democratic Republic. The fate of this State was similar to that of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic. But soon there developed a strong democratic opposition which from 1924 to 1932 acted as a conspiracy and found its expression in a well-organized linguistic opposition. In 1933 it was discovered and suppressed, and the Byelo-Ruthenian language became the object of Marr's linguistic policy. A Russification offensive just as violent as against the Ukrainians was directed against the Byelo-Ruthenians, their language and culture. A good survey of it is given by a book by the academician S. Ya. Volfson, edited by the "Byelo-Russian" Academy of Sciences: Science [Liberal Arts] in the Service of National-Democratic Counter-Revolution, Minsk, 1931.

All fields of culture were thus systematically arcade according to the same plan as in the Ukraine, with the same methods, techniques, arguments. The same program of "unification" with the Russian culture, language, and orthography was carried through by the same type of vilification and slander, the Russification being constantly proclaimed as "internationalization."

Volfson and his henchman Greenblat attempted to prove in their articles that the whole Byelo-Ruthenian linguistic opposition was connected with the organization, "Union for the Liberation of the Ukraine"  p142 and directed by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, especially by the academician, S. Yefremov. The Byelo-Ruthenian linguists, above all their leader, Lyosik, are accused, first, of having changed the translation of the national term Byelarus' into foreign languages from the French: Russie Blanche into Ruthénie Blanche, from German: Weiss-Russland into Weiss-Ruthenien. Behind this accusation is the "unification" mania of Moscow, which atmospheres, by the establishment of identical terms: Russland-Russie, to disguise from foreigners the fact that it is the name of a separate Slavic nation, different from the Russian. The Byelo-Ruthenian linguists objected to this trick, demanding a semantically true and unequivocal translation, and introduced the historical medieval term for the country into the present translation. They were fully authorized to do this as the representatives of the Byelo-Ruthenian Academy of Sciences. The old word Rus′ cannot be translated into foreign languages as Russia, Russie, Russland, because the meanings of these terms are entirely different. Thus even such a conscientious Soviet-Russian scholar as the academician, Grecov, uses in his book (published in an English translation in Moscow) Kievan Rus′ — not "Russia," as is done in the U. S. A. by Professor George Vernadsky, who even introduced into American terminology the completely baseless term, "Ancient Russia" — which as "Russia" never existed.⁠1 This semantically well-founded desire of the Byelo-Ruthenian linguists for an unequivocal term for their country, nation, and language was declared a "counterrevolution." The Russian "unifiers" aim by their terminology to create in the minds of foreigners the impression that "Byelo-Russia" is a simple "country" of "mother Russia."

The Byelo-Ruthenian linguists were also accused of teaching the "separateness" and "independence" of Byelo-Ruthenian as a separate Slavic language inside the Slavic family of languages; of having developed the theory that Byelo-Ruthenian is st language of the oppressed and exploited masses, a proletarian class language, in opposition to the Russian language, a product of the Russian bourgeoisie; of stressing the similar of some speech sounds with the Polish (which is a linguistic fact). Consequently this point is also suspected as an "orientation toward the West"; of creating and using a puristic Byelo-Ruthenian terminology; of having opposed the use of "Russisms" in vocabulary, forms and phrases; of having created a "counterrevolutionary" orthography for the Byelo-Ruthenian language; of having introduced into the Byelo-Ruthenian dictionaries "archaisms, vulgarisms" of the peasantry and of having given quotations from old Byelo-Ruthenian chronicles and Gospels of "feudal times"; and by all these crimes of "building a barrier between the Byelo-Ruthenian and Russian nations.

 p143  Volfson's methods in the discussion rival the methods of Khvylya, Finkel, and Kaganovich. Here are some examples from the "Byelo-Ruthenian linguistic discussion." In "reading in the heart" he is unequaled: Prof. Lyosik is accused of having introduced in the examples of his grammar from Byelo-Ruthenian vernacular counterrevolutionary propaganda. Wolfson writes:

Set out we see, Volfson arbitrarily puts together all the examples into an accusation made by the Communist Party — and the defendant is defenseless against this kind of logic. Finally in 1933 the Byelo-Ruthenian Soviet Government published the order for the Russification of the Byelo-Ruthenian language and orthography, according to Marr's linguistic principles, applied likewise to the Ukrainian. Volfson in his article states some points more clearly than his comrades in Ukraine: "Regarding the Russian proletariat, its position is clear. The hegemony of the proletariat in the linguistic sphere will be realized according to the demands of the working class for hegemony over the whole cultural and ideological spheres." Anything purely Byelo-Ruthenian is declared bourgeois "vulgarism" or medieval "archaism" which only hinders the "unification" with the "brother-language" of the Russian proletariat.

The Byelo-Ruthenian Scientific Society in Vilna closely analyzed all the new regulations Ost Russian reforms. The extraordinary plenum  p144 of this society summed up the reforms in the following points,⁠2 formulated by the leading linguist Prof. Jan Stankiewich:

Polish. The Poles remained a numerous minority in the Soviet Ukraine, especially on the right bank of the Dnieper; partly they belonged to the industrial proletariat of the towns, partly they were peasants. With respect to the Polish language the Russian Communist policy was the same as toward the Ukrainian and Byelo-Ruthenian. The Poles were, however, in a better situation, and Soviet Moscow temporarily granted them some concessions in order that the Polish language of the Communist Polish papers, printed in the Soviet Union and smuggled into Poland, might be understood in Poland, and that the Polish linguists and writers in Poland might not begin a protest action against the Russification of the Polish language in the Soviet Union.

But in reality the Russification of the Polish language was steadily carried out, not writer B. Jasienski in the Mysl Bolszewicka (1928), in a special article, "For the Revolution in Language," warned the Polish Communists that the (Polish) language of the Polish workers is completely infiltrated with Russian words and phrases. He warned Soviet Moscow that if such a Russification would be intensified "the Polish masses in the Soviet land would be unable to communicate in a common language with the proletarian masses of fascist Poland." Very characteristic is Jasienski's statement that the Polish language of the peasantry remained pure, and only the active Polish Communists, through collaboration with Russian Communists in the everyday party work, lost the purity of their mother language. Therefore another Polish Communist writer demands "that any Polish propagandist must above all master fully the pure Polish language, because the Polish peasants demanded that the speaker has to know the Polish language as the priest does. . . ." In the Polish Communist papers Mysl Bolszewicka (Nos. 4‑5, 1929) and Orka (No. 54, 1929) were published hundreds of Russian words and phrases which Russified the Polish language of the Communist publication to such a degree that without a knowledge of Russian a Pole could not understand this "Polish."

Consequently in the years 1929‑1930 there developed among the Polish Communists in the Soviet Union a very energetic puristic tendency against Russian and for words. The Polish Communist papers, like Kultura Mas (The Culture of the Masses), had a regular "language corner" under the title: "Tworzmy Polskie Slownictwvo Radzieckie" ("Let Us Create a Polish Commute Vocabulary") in which puristic terms were created for the "Polonization" of the Russian Soviet terminology.

But in 1934 a new Russification started; such publications as K. Sliwinski, Na Front, Charkow, Kijow, are already written in a Polish-Russian jargon. The "unification-amalgamation-fusion" according  p146 to Marr's principle started in full strength. In 1936 Soviet Moscow liquidated in Kiev the "Polish Teachers Institute," which educated personnel for the grammar schools, and liquidated also the "Institute of the Proletarian Polish Culture" of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, in which the Polish linguists and writers had their small center for the cultivation of their mother language.

(2) The other non‑Russian languages.

All the remaining non‑Russian languages are non‑Slavic. Some of them belong to the Indo-European family of languages, like the Moldavian, Armenian, and Iranian languages, but the rest belong to completely separate language families.

Concerning these non‑Russian nationalities the Russian Communist Party was faced with a threefold problem:

a) The problem of the alphabet,

b) The application of Marr's views for their Russification, and

c) The political background of the "linguistic oppositions."

The problem of the alphabet may be briefly stated in the question: Have the old traditional alphabets of these nationalities to be respected? If but, what kind of alphabet has to be introduced, the Russian-Cyrillic or the Latin? Thus the question of the alphabet developed into a paramount problem of Soviet cultural policy and its many zigzags in this field are good material for the study of the Russification of the non‑Russian nationalities, conducted by the Russian Communist Party. We have already seen what a great role this problem played in the Ukrainian linguistic discussion.

As aboveground and excellent example of the "double-accounting" principle, we should first mention how the question was presented in the Russian ethnographical territory about 1930. Not only was the idea of the Latinization of the alphabet advocated in some works by Marr himself (Pismennost' i Revolucya, Vol. I): "A mighty implement for the relaxation of Lenin's national policy, the true revolutionary alphabet of the masses, not only in the Soviet Union, but also outside the Soviet borders is the Latin alphabet." Also in 1932 there appeared in Moscow, published by the Communist Party, the pamphlet by Khansurov: Latinization, the Implement of Lenin's National Policy. Here is written:

In order not to offend the Soviet Musulmans the Russian Communist ordered Khvylya as a "Ukrainian" and later his henchman, Rovinsky (Pravda, No. 47, 1934), to attack Khansurov. About Khansurov's statement he writes:

Soon the Russian Communists, at the Seventeenth Party Congress put Khansurov under heavy artillery bombardment. The Russian Communist Razumov directly asked:

As we see, the Russian Communist Party was well aware that the Latin alphabet includes also a "cultural orientation toward the West," and that the Latinization of the alphabet would be tantamount to a recognition of the "superiority of the West." Consequently Soviet Moscow  p148 permitted until 1934 the Latin script to be extolled even as the "October script," but after realizing the implication the decision was made to Russify all alphabets, with the exception of the Armenian and Gruzian (Georgian). Apparently here the party decided to respect Stalin's Caucasian mother countries (the Georgians say his ancestry was partly Armenian) and here the alphabets are treated according to Stalin's formula "Socialist in content, national in form" as a part of the national form. But all the other languages were mercilessly Russified. The Russian alphabet natural language was on the way to being proclaimed the absence and language of the international proletariat.

A scandalous case is the Russification of the Roumanian alphabet in the Moldavian Republic. There can be no doubt that the Moldavian is a Roumanian dialect and constitutes, with Roumanian, one language. In order to stop any Roumanian influences, Moscow Russified the Moldavian alphabet, and thus one nation and one language was artificially divided. Thus a Romance language is separated by the alphabet from the Romance group of languages, the Roumanian language is split in twain and a Russianized-Moldavian jargon was created.

The Russian script was also imposed on the Iranian languages, and the existing Latin scripts were abolished (about 1938‑1950). The Russian script was also introduced into the Finno-Ugric languages, with the exception of Karelo-Finnish. Here in 1940 the Russian script was abolished not Latin accepted so that Communist propaganda might be conducted in Finland proper.

The Turco-Tatar scripts of the Soviet Union were modifications of the original Arabic script: then the Latin script was introduced, but about 1938 the Russian script was made compulsory. Thus all Turcic literary languages were Russianized despite the fact that whole generations were used to the Latin script, for instance Yakut used Latin script 1930‑1937, Crimean Tatar 1928‑1937, Karachai Balkar 1924‑1937, Kumyk 1931‑1937, Kazan Tatar 1928‑1939, Azerbaijan 1928‑1940, Kazak 1928‑1940, Kirghiz 1927‑1940, Turkmen 1927‑1940, Uzbek 1927‑1940. Thus temple Turco-Tatarian nations were separated from every cultural influence of modern Turkey and her Latin script.

The languages of the Caucasus were also Russianized about 1937; for whole generations these had used the Latin script: Abazir 1932‑1937, Adyghe 1926‑37, Avar 1928‑1937, Darghin 1928‑37, Ingush 1922‑1937, Kabardin 1923‑1937, Chechen 1925‑1937, etc.

The Mongolian traditional writing met the same fate. Thus Kalmuk had from 1648‑1922 a script on the traditional Mongolian basis, but in 1922 it was Russianized, and in 1930 Latin was introduced and in 1938 again it was Russianized; Buryat up to 1931 Mongolian, 1931 Latin, 1938 Russified; etc.

(3) The application of Marr's linguistic technique, aiming at the amalgamation of the non‑Slavic languages with Russian.

Roumanian. The "Moldavanian"º language is forced to accept the whole Russian terminology, which is proclaimed to be the "international terminology"; piatiletca, udarnik, colhoz, sovhoz, culacul, comsomolul, etc., etc. The language is crowded with Russian phrases, even Russian  p149 constructions. Any purism is declared "fascism," "sabotage," "nationalism." For the Russification of Roumanian the Russians applied the tactile of "parceling out" a language, which was developed also on all other languages to unrivaled mastery. Thus the Roumanian language in the Moldavian Soviet Republic is proclaimed as "Moldavian," with a different Russian script from the excellent Latin script of the Roumanian. At the same time all of Roumania was forced to learn Russian and to use it as an intermediate language, the former use of French and German having been banned. By this "parceling out" of the Roumanian language the Russians broke the "linguistic resistance" of this Romance language, which as a united whole would have presented a strong obstacle to Russification, and reserved for the Communist Party also the possibility of the "Moldavanization" of all of Roumania and her "voluntary" entrance into the Soviet Union and Soviet culture, by accepting the Russian script and the Moldavian-Russian jargon as the "proletarian Roumanian literary language."

This technique of "parceling out," dividing languages which have an old historic-national terminology, into dialects, then declaring these dialects must be raised to the status of literary languages, but meanwhile banning from them the previous terminology as "nationalist, bourgeois, fascist," introdu­cing the whole Russian terminology as obligatory, and declaring its use even as a symbol of loyalty to Communist Moscow — such measures crushed many languages which had victoriously withstood all the attempts of Tsaristic Russification.

Turkestanian problems. The Turkestanian scholar, Dr. M. H. Erturk, summed up the Russian language policy in the following article,⁠3 The Tragedy of the Turkestanian Turki Language:

Turco-Tatar. These methods were applied effectively to the Turco-Tatar languages. To deal with these languages the Russian Communists organized the "Central Committee of New Alphabets." In the beginning this committee had to elaborate Latin scripts for them, but on August  p151 17, 1935, its real tasks were revealed: (a) to control the development of culture and language, so that they ran parallel with the "Sovietization" of the countries; (b) to correct all "mistakes." By the "parceling out" there were created some 70 Turco-Tatar "languages," the development of common literary languages for the separate groups was prevented, and for all the languages thus artificially created the Russian script and the whole Russian terminology were introduced. The chief works of Lenin and Stalin were immediately translated into these Russified Turco-Tatarian jargons. These successes were achieved after a bitter fight, as we see from the reports of the committee, because "the whole culture and literature was under the influence of the nationalists."

Especially difficult was the fight against the "nationalism" of the Kazan Tatars. In 1920‑1921 they organized their Language Institute, which created a puristic terminology, collecting all the terms of the vernacular, which had existed for a long time. The Russians constantly fought against this terminology until in 1933, when the Communist Party barred this terminology as counterrevolutionary and forced the introduction of the Russian. In the Tatarian paper Culture and Enlightenment (No. 158, 1935) the Commissar of Education finally ordered: (1) all have to learn the new Russian terminology and to use it; the old purist one is to be eliminated; (2) the socialist-international terminology is to be taken from Russian without any changes; (3) the whole scientific terminology is to be taken from Russian without any changes. Thus in every 200 "Tatarian" terms, 179 are Russian.

The Crimean Tatar also violently opposed the Russification of their language; this nationality is at present "liquidated" completely — a rather interesting result of Lenin's national policy. Only in 1934‑1935 did Soviet Moscow break the linguistic opposition among the Tatars, by sending to Crimea a special commissar for that purpose, Aleksandrovich. He enforced his program: (1) fight against nationalism "in defense of the development of the Tatarian literary language"; (2) the creation of "favorable conditions" for this development. He attacked all Tatarian linguists and writers as "nationalists," saying they had dominated the linguistic conferences in 1927 and 1929 and "tried to develop the literary language under the influence of the Turkish language. Because of their great hatred for Russians, they checked the entrance of Russian terms and raise obstacles against Communist influences." Aleksandrovich insisted not only that the whole Russian terminology be introduced into Tatarian, but also that original Russian pronunciations of words be most carefully preserved in Tatarian, including even the accents. He subjected all literary and philological institutions of the Tatars to the corresponding Russian institutions in Leningrad and Moscow.

The same policy of Russification was applied also to Azerbaijanian. Immediately after the occupation by the Russian Red Army, the Azerbaijanian language, a Turkish dialect, was especially persecuted. The teaching of Russian was reintroduced in all schools. Soon there developed against it an opposition in which also many Azerbaijanian Communists participated under the leader­ship of the general secretary of  p152 the party, Khanbudagov. Later, the Russian dictator of Azerbaijan, Kirov, expanded the teaching of Russian in all schools, on the ground that this was necessary because the teaching language in the academical schools would be Russian. . . . At the same time the Russian Communists banned the use of the Azerbaijanian literary language, which has a tradition of nearly a millennium. The country was "parceled out" in dialects and of course the whole Russian terminology had to be accepted. The old historical-national terminology of the Azerbaijanian language was barred. This was carried out under the well-known slogan, "Culture must be Socialist in content, national in form."

But, as in the Ukraine, the Russian Communists there developed into zzzz Lyebyed theory. They argued that "the content determines the form." The form of the Socialist content must be Socialist. The language of the Socialist culture is Russian, consequently there should be no other national forms, that is, no other languages. The paper Bakinskii Rabochyi, February 8‑16, 1927, reports this discussion. The Russian propagandists of this "theory" were quieted with the assurance that the "national form" is only a temporary expedient, leading to the "common language" of the future. . . .

In the Russification of the next years we can establish the following stages: (a) The Russian Communist Party proclaimed all traditional-national Azerbaijanian terminology as expressions of the Mahometan feudal and capitalistic culture. As Azerbaijan entered into the phase of "socialist culture," and the language Socialism is Russian, the whole Russian terminology was obligatory for the newly created literary jargons. (b) At the twelfth meeting of the Azerbaijanian Communist Party and the seventh meeting of the Communist Party of the Caucasus the motion that the Russian language, the language of Lenin-Stalin, be recognized as the unifying language of all fifteen nationalities of Azerbaijan and the whole Caucasus was carried. For the strengthening of this international solidarity the teaching of Russian in Azerbaijan had to be intensified. (c) With all the forces of the State and party apparatus, and by the introduction of the Russian script the Azerbaijanian nation, her language and culture, were systematically and artificially estranged from her next kin, Turkey.

But in spite of all the pressure, the Russian chairman of the Soviet of Commissars Rakhmanov had to confess in 1935 that the teaching of Russian in Azerbaijan was in a "pitiable state," and called upon the party to conduct a merciless fight against the nationalists, who sabotaged the teaching of Russian. Finally a special decree was issued on August 4, 1935, signed by Stalin and Molotov, demanding the intensification of the teaching of Russian.

North Caucasian problems. The language problem in the Northern Caucasus, among the so‑called highlanders, the Gortsy, is very complicated. This country is populated by a number of small peoples, who look upon themselves as a cultural whole, in spite of the differences in their languages. Here the Russian policy was to eliminate their tendency to establish the Turkish language as an intermediary language of the country, and to enforce the use of Russian for this role. Thus in  p153 Dagestan in 1923 and 1928 the Turkish language was recognized as the "official State language." But in 1930 the Russian Communist Party forced the revocation of this decree "as an expression of the farm-owning upper class and the bourgeois-nationalist intelligentsia" and by "parceling out" Dagestan created 28 languages, at the same time introdu­cing Russian as the obligatory "common and intermediary language." Introduction of the Russian terminology into all native languages was compulsory, and Russian specialists immediately prepared and published the respective dictionaries. Even the Caucasian Communists protested against this Russification carried out by the Russian Communists. Akhmed Tlyukhnyaev⁠4 criticized these dictionaries thus:

The Russian Communists especially "purged" the languages of all Arabic loan-words, which centuries ago had become fully naturalized in them. But about 1933 the Russian Communist bureaucracy suppressed by terrorism the linguistic opposition, and the commissar for the Russification of Dagestan, Cekher, could appeal to the teachers for a full application of the new terminology. He said: "You must at last understand that Russian is no more the language of Nicholas II and his missionaries, but the language of the great Lenin." He got a loud interesting interruption: "Nu, i kakaia zhe raznica?" "Well, what's the difference?"

Finno-Ugric. Now, some information about the Finno-Ugric languages. The example of the fate of the Finnish language in Finnish-Karelia and Ingria may be sufficient. It is interesting that here even the name of the Ukrainian Skrypnyk had to serve as a justification of the Russification. After many zigzags in 1935 Soviet Moscow started a full offensive in order to deprive the Finns of Ingria and Karelia of their national rights, which once were guaranteed to them in the Dorpat treaty. Already in 1922‑1923 Soviet Moscow was accused by Finland in the League of Nations of not keeping its promises; but without result,  p154 because Soviet Moscow was not then a member of the League. after 1925 Soviet Moscow began to exterminate them; thus the Finns in Ingria "disappeared" completely, by systematic genocide and expulsion to Siberia. In Karelia the Russian Communists initiated a witch hunt for "Karelian national communists." The Central Committee dismissed the Secretary of the Communist Party of Karelia, the Finn K. Rovio, and nominated to this post a Russified Latvian from Riga, P. Irklis. Soon Irklis and the Russian Chudov prepared the material for the accusation against Rovio and the chairman of the administration of Karelia Gilling,⁠b who "have committed deviations toward local nationalism," "who have distorted Lenin-Stalinist national policy," "neglected to educate the people in the spirit of proletarian internationalism and Soviet patriotism," and even "encouraged fascism, as their Ukrainian colleague Skrypnyk has done."

The administration was accused of neglecting the teaching of Russian in schools and ignoring the order that all active Karelian Communists must fully master Russian. The Finnish Communists who emigrated from Finland into Karelia were accused of stimulating Karelian "nationalism," opposing the Russian "Lenin-Stalinist language," thus also opposing the interests of the "Soviet fatherland." There were even cases in which the Karelian Communists refused to accept official documents in Russian, Irklis points out.

Of course, officially, the whole action of Russification started under the slogan, "Socialist in content, and national in form." But in order to insure the "Socialist content," the Russian Communist Party forbade the organization of Karelian Clubs, party sections, propaganda meetings separate from the Russians; all school textbooks were to be revised, all Finnish Communists who had emigrated from Finland had to be purged, and all measures had to be taken for the fight against "local nationalism" and for "the effective diffusion throughout the country of the language of Lenin and Stalin of the language of the great Soviet fatherland and the world revolution." All Communist Youth Clubs were purged, also all staffs of publications. All Finnish Communists who returned to Karelia from Finland, the U. S. A., and Canada were fired from all key positions and replaced by Russian Communists. All hundreds of Karelian technical specialists were moved from the country into Siberia.

Finally, Dr. E. Gilling, chairman of the board of commissars of the Karelian Republic, was expelled, and replaced by the Russian P. I. Bushuyev; Gilling was put to death.

Yiddish. In connection with all these language reforms the fate of Jewish language in the Ukraine is interesting. The Jews used as their literary language the Yiddish, an old medieval dialect from the Rhine. The Bulletin of the All Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, Nr. 2, 1934 (Visti VUAN), published the results of the Linguistic Jewish Conference, organized by the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture of the Academy, which lasted four days. In this discussion the editors of the Jewish news­paper Sztern and of course, the indefatigable Khvylya, participated. Khvylya delivered a paper, Analysis of the Problems of  p155 Class Struggle on the Jewish (partly also on the Ukrainian) Language Front.

The attitude of the Russian Communists toward the Yiddish language interests every student of Soviet linguistic policy. The Jews as a nation are lacking in their constituent elements of a Yiddish-speaking peasantry as a basis of their nation. They are scattered in islands over the whole Ukraine and Byelo-Ruthenia and other Soviet countries; they had to live under the continuous, power­ful influence of their environments, therefore they are "bilingual" or often multilingual, and their language has been penetrated by many Polish and Russian words.

The Jewish linguist, Shtef, said, "It would be ridiculous for anybody to demand of us a proletarian culture. The Jewish culture is in itself most proletarian." Also the other Jewish Communists and scholars declared that the Yiddish language was always the language of the oppressed masses, and was never spoken by the Jewish bourgeoisie.

But Khvylya found a "right deviation" and also a "left-liquidatory deviation":

At first glance anyone would be astonished to hear that Khvylya opposes Russianisms in Yiddish. But the point is that after 18 years of complete destruction of the Jewish religious life in the Soviet Union, there was going on a complete Russification of the Jewish workers. They were speaking a Yiddish-Russian mixture. At the meeting it was stressed that the backward part of the Jewish workers, having no constant link with the Yiddish press and books, does not understand sufficiently their literary language. Well, the "Jewish nationalists" were attempting to save this backward part of the Jewish workers — and this part is the overwhelming majority — for the Jewish nation, by accepting all their "Russianisms" instead of the "Germanisms" and "Hebraism" in the literary Yiddish language.

But the Russian Communists already considered these half-Russified Jewish workers as Russians who had only to take the last step to full Russification. Consequently, the Russian Communists and Khvylya could not be fooled by the "Jewish nationalists" with their "demand to exclude Germanisms and legalize the Russisms"; the hidden "nationalist" aim was revealed and anathematized as "deviation." On page 44 of the Bulletin it is directly stated:

This is the new Russian Communist term for this policy: "healthy assimilation." The old Russian Tsaristic regime was more honest; it called the spade a spade, with the term "Russification."

(4) The political background of all "linguistic oppositions." As happened in the Ukraine behind all the "nationalist opposition" in the above-mentioned languages there were political conspiracies aiming at the self-determination of the oppressed nationalities. They were the reactions against Russification.

A Tatar member of the "Commissariat of Nationalities," Sultan-Galiev, was the leader of a conspiratory organization in Tataria and Bashkiria, which included the prominent politicians Mukhtarov, Mansurov, Sabirov, Deren-Ayerly, Firdevs, Enbaev, and many others. He was accused in 1923‑1924 of collaborating with Persia and Turkey for the liberation of the Mussulmans oppressed by Soviet Moscow.

In Turkestan and Bokhara the resistance was led by the Basmachi partisans under the leader­ship of Validov. The nationalities of Central Asia created a whole series of conspiracies and oppositions under the leader­ship of Maksum, Abrakhmanov, and Khodzhibaev.

The Georgians also opposed this policy under the leader­ship of Mdivani, Makharadze, Tsintadze, etc.

The Karelian-Finnish background we have already mentioned. The fate of the Ingrians was tragic. This highly civilized Protestant nationality occupying the hinter­land of Leningrad was virtually annihilated. Many thousands of intelligentsia and priests were exiled in 1929‑1930 to far‑off regions, to Siberia, the Alma Ata regions around Lake Aral. Very extensive deportations started in 1927, in 1935 they began again, and were particularly violent in 1936, when all northern Ingria was emptied of Ingrians and colonized by Russians.

All the non‑Russian nationalities mentioned lost many thousands of the intelligentsia, of writers and scholars, by systematic killing and liquidated in the slave labor camps. Their losses were no less than those of the Ukrainians.

Let us close this chapter (1929‑1936) with the remark that on September 18, 1934, the Soviet Union was admitted to the League of Nations in Geneva, and that the Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Litvinov, delivered a speech, a quotation from which may serve as the "Big Lie" background for this epoch:

The representative of Switzerland, Motta, former President of Switzerland, was the only man who had the courage to oppose the admittance  p157 of the Soviet Union to the League, describing the fate of Ukraine and Georgia, and warning the League of Nations in vain.

The Soviet Union, a State which fought the democratic opposition of the non‑Russian peoples inside the Soviet Union with the law of collective responsibility was admitted to the League of Nations by civilized, democratic, Christian nations:

The law of collective responsibility, published in Izvestia June 9, 1934, provided that all dependents of a man who dodges military service are condemned to deportation for five years to remote regions, even if they were not aware of the fact, and for ten years if they were.

This law of collective responsibility of the family applies also to all forms of crime designated at high treason, counterrevolutionary activity, political dissent, and absence from work

This law, in force until today, is the weapon of the Russian avant-garde of "humanity" against the non‑Russian nationalities. It became, as genocide, Soviet Moscow's favorite method for the "solution" of nationality problems.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 The Byelo-Ruthenian struggle against the Russian Communist semantical tricks produced a movement among the emigration, to use for Byelo‑Rus′ the unmistakable term of the leading Byelo-Ruthenian tribe of the Krivichs, and to call their country Krivia. Naturally, this question will be decided after the downfall of Russian Communism in the free Byelarus.

2 Cf. Dr. Jan Stankiewicz, "Reforma gramatyki jezyka bialoruskiego B. S. R. R."; "Dr. Jan Stankiewicz, Walka o jezyk w B. S. R. R.," Sprawy Narodowosciowe, Nr. 1, 1934.

3 Miliju Turkestan, Nr. 70/71, March, 1951.

4 A. Tlyukhnyaev, "The creation of national terminology — a most important part of the cultural revolution in national territories," in Revolucia i Gorec, August, 1931.

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Thayer's Notes:

a Sic, 1588 . . . 1888 . . . 262. "1888" is almost certainly the relevant typo in the printed book, since the first Turkish news­papers appeared in about 1830.

If "1588" were also a typo, to be corrected to 1568 (palaeographically plausible whether the printer worked from a typescript or a handwritten text), the emended dates would be accurate, allowing for one- or two‑year differences of opinion. Venetian broadsheets of the late 1560's are often taken to be the first European news­papers, and from 1568 to 1830 we have 262 years.

b Edvard Gylling (properly, following his own Finnish spelling).

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