Professor Vladimir G Treml Economics, Duke Notes for Economics 293 and 294 September 1996 NATIONALITY ISSUES: BACKGROUND NOTES I. The Russian Empire, populated by some 80 distinctly different nationalities, was dominated by Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians) who accounted for more than 70 percent of the total population. In the period immediately following the October revolution and during the Civil War the former Tsarist Empire disintegrated. Principalities of Finland, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania became separate and independent states, and Bessarabia was annexed by Rumania; the separation of these areas in 1917-1918 resulted in a loss of 31-32 millions of former citizens of the Russian Empire. Ukraine (at the time partially occupied by the German Imperial Army), Belorussia, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia became independent republics/states. Thus, the first Soviet state governed by Lenin and the Bolshevik Party -- the Russian Soviet Federation of Socialist Republics (RSFSR) -- was established on a much smaller territory populated mainly by Russians. Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders repeatedly stressed that the Party respected national identities and cultures and accepted ethnic minorities' rights to political and cultural autonomy. The "Declaration of the Rights of Peoples of Russia" issued by the Party in November of 1917, guaranteed all nationalities "the right to self-determination including the right to secede." Similar declarations were repeated in all subsequent versions of the Constitution of the USSR. The federal system established in the 1924 Constitution and elaborated in the 1930s remained essentially unchanged until the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The basic federal structure of the USSR accorded recognition to separate nationalities. Administratively, the country was divided into union republics (15 in early 1990s) each named after the largest titular nationality populating it, e.g., the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. Each republic, with its own language, had its own constitution, government, seal, flag, and its own criminal and civil legal codes. Within republics large areas populated by separately identifiable ethnic groups were accorded the status of autonomous republics, ASSR, (20 in 1991) and autonomous regions such as oblast and okrug (about 70). The government consisted of union ministries and state committees (i.e., ministries such as defense and foreign affairs which operate only at the union level and were not duplicated at the republican level), union-republican ministries (ministries which operated at the union and republican level, such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs), and republican ministries which administered strictly local issues. The system was highly centralized and the power of republican governments was severely limited. For example, in the 1980s republican ministries controlled less than 10 percent of industrial production of the country. The USSR had one central bank (Gosbank) and a single currency, the ruble, with the monetary policy, such as it was, determined in Moscow. The state budget of the USSR was divided into the Union (central) and republican budgets with the latter accounting for about 45 percent of the total. It did not mean, however, that republics controlled 45 percent of all budgetary funds, because a large share of republican expenditures and revenues was still controlled by Moscow ministries. The Russian republic (RSFSR) was in a special category emphasizing her special status: there were no separate union or union-republican Russian ministries and the USSR ministries managed the respective areas. The Communist party was organized on the same principle -- the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was administering the party organizations in RSFSR while the other fourteen republics each had a separate republican communist party. Republics and autonomous ethnic regions were populated not only by titular nationalities but by a number of other ethnic groups. Internal migration, forced resettlements initiated by the state, changing regional demand for labor, and other factors contributed to complex nationality mix in most areas. In the late 1980s, titular nationalities comprised 80 or more percent of total population in five republics (RSFSR, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Lithuania). In Latvia and Kirgizia titular nationalities accounted for slightly more than half of the total population. And, on the other end of the spectrum, Kazakhs comprise only 40 percent of the population of Kazakhstan. Non-titular (mainly Russians) nationalities were usually concentrated in urban areas. II . Stalin was the People's Commissar for Nationalities in the first Bolshevik government with the responsibility for implementing policies aimed at reunification of lands which formerly belonged to the Russian Empire and for designing the new federal structure of the country. By the use of military force and political maneuvering employing local communists Moscow came to control these regions and their economic and political ties with the RSFSR expanded rapidly.(1) In 1922 all regions transferred the right to conduct foreign diplomatic relations to the RSFSR; center's monopoly of foreign trade was declared in 1923. The process of reintegration was completed by 1923 when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR) was formed; and the first USSR Constitution was ratified in 1924. At the time, the USSR encompassed four union republics: the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Transcaucasia. In the early 1930s, Stalin declared that "nationality problems" in the USSR have been successfully resolved. By the terms of a secret protocol of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, sovereign states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were occupied by the Red Army and later annexed to the USSR becoming union republics; parts of Eastern Poland were incorporated into republics of Ukraine and Belorussia. Somewhat later the Red Army marched into Rumania occupying what was known before 1917 as the Bessarabian region, which became the Moldavian union republic in 1940. Altogether, accommodations with Hitler resulted in annexation of regions populated by about 22 million people. In all newly annexed areas Soviet military and security forces arrested, executed, or deported to labor camps large numbers of local political, educational, industrial, scientific, and religious leaders replacing them with local loyal Communists or Russians and other Slavs. About one million Poles, to give but one example, were deported East, many of them to concentration camps. Tens of thousands of officers of the former Polish Army captured by the Red Army in 1939 were secretly executed without trial. III Russian was the official language of the Soviet state, and teaching of Russian was mandatory in all regions of the country. However, indigenous languages were recognized in republics and autonomous ethnic areas and were taught in schools; Central Asian (Turkic) languages, particularly the written forms, had been developed during the Soviet period. Ethnic and traditional aspects of culture in the arts, dance, music, and literature were not repressed. There is strong evidence, however, that Moscow influenced and manipulated the development of native cultures, and sponsored rewriting of histories to strengthen (or to manufacture, in many instances) the evidence of strong traditional ties of ethnic minorities with Russia. Under the slogan "Ethnic in Character, Socialist in Essence," Moscow encouraged the preservation of ethnic cultural attributes as long as the context was not in conflict with the official communist ideology or the imperial designs of the USSR. Any nascent nationalistic and independence movement in non-Russian lands, objections to oppression by Russians, or to forced Russification was brutally suppressed by the security police. There had been no overt discrimination against ethnic minorities, but Slavs, mainly Russians, have always dominated the Soviet system. Traditionally, the First Secretary of the Party, the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers in union and autonomous republics were of the titular nationality, but second secretaries and deputies were almost always Russians appointed from Moscow. Heads of republican KGB and MVD (security police) and military districts were also always Russians. There have invariably been a disproportionally large share of Russians among Party, scientific, government, and managerial elites. Most commissioned and noncommissioned officers in the Soviet Army were Russians or Slavs while military construction troops (i.e., the least prestigious) consisted largely of Central Asians. During World War II a number of smaller nationalities suffered from Stalin's paranoia. In August of 1941, ethnic Germans who had lived for two centuries along the Volga river and in Ukraine were accused (without any evidence) of collaborating with Nazis and deported to Central Asia; the Autonomous Republic of Volga Germans was disbanded. Later in the war a similar fate befell several Muslim Caucasian nationalities and Crimean Tatars -- accused of collaborating with Germans, they were all deported to prison camps or resettled in inhospitable areas in Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia and Siberia. In all cases, entire populations, including children and the elderly, were moved by force and on a very short notice; people were allowed to take very little of their personal belongings with them. Tens of thousands died during these forced deportations and later in special prison-like settlements in remote areas. Particularly brutal was the forced deportation of the entire population of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic to Kazakhstan. Russians and other Slavs were brought in and settled in vacated areas. The republic was disbanded in 1944 not to be restored until 1957 when the people were rehabilitated and allowed to come back.(4) More than one million people were affected by these forced resettlements during the war years. Large scale deportations and persecutions of ethnic minorities ended with Stalin's death.(5) Strong political and police pressures, however, continued: in mid-1960s a large number of prominent writers, scientists, and journalists in Ukraine, Lithuania, and the Transcaucasian republics were accused of crimes of "bourgeois nationalism" and sentenced to long prison terms. IV. There is no doubt that non-Russian ethnic minorities have suffered politically, culturally, and socially under the overcentralized, Moscow-dominated Soviet empire. A less obvious but nevertheless observable process of forced Russification directed from the center was also taking place and was strongly resented by ethnic minorities. It would be more difficult to assess the historical record of Moscow policy with respect to economic development of republics. The traditional colonial-type exploitation of regions populated by national minorities resulting in a net transfer of economic resources to the center was never characteristic of the Tsarist or the Soviet empires. The officially proclaimed policy goal of the Soviet Union was the equalization of industrial development level and of living standards in all regions of the country. This goal has not been achieved but the available evidence suggests that generally speaking a modest net transfer of resources from the industrialized Slavic core of the country to Central Asia and to a lesser extent to Transcaucasus did take place. In some periods, investment in industrial development and capital infrastructure was higher on a per capita basis in the South, the South East, and Far East. Investment in education resulted in faster overall growth of literacy in Central Asia than in the rest of the country. Similarly, the growth of public health facilities was higher in less developed areas. Some republics, however, had legitimate complaints about Moscow's heavy hand in developmental policies such as the excessive expansion of the cotton monoculture in Central Asia, location of missile testing grounds in Kazakhstan, and environmental disruptions caused by large paper mills, poorly designed metallurgical complexes, nuclear power stations and chemical plants built in republics in accordance with the center's plans without regard of local conditions or preferences of local people. In the post-war period differences in per capita national income in republics did not change much despite the greater flow of investment and other state funds to Central Asia. The Baltic republics had the highest per capita income followed by Russia while Central Asian republics remained at the lower end of the range. The absence of open economic exploitation of republics by Moscow, or even evidence of net transfer of resources from the center to poorer republics, was apparently not enough to ensure the loyalty of ethnic minorities to Moscow. Historically, political and cultural discrimination as well as brutal police oppression, persecution of ethnic elites, and forced resettlements produced strong and lasting anti-center, anti-Communist, and probably anti- Russian feelings in republics and ethnic enclaves. V The question of economic interdependence of former Soviet republics is rather complex. Republics differ greatly in terms of natural resource endowments, levels of industrialization, and labor skills. Russia is by far the largest and the richest newly independent state accounting for between 60 and 65 percent of the total population, labor force, national income, and industrial production of the former Soviet Union. Russia is rich in natural resources with large deposits of oil, gas, coal, gold, metal ores and minerals and has well developed heavy (particularly defense) and light industries, and educational and research facilities. But several other newly independent states have good industrial bases: Ukraine has coal and a well developed metallurgical, machinery, and power industries; Kazakhstan has oil, coal, metal ores, and machinery; Baltic republics, Georgia and Armenia have achieved a high level of industrial development. Economies of former Soviet republics and regions had been highly integrated. The latest data we have are for 1990 when these states were still integral parts of the Soviet Union and their trade with each other and the outside world was determined by administratively set prices(6) and the slowly disintegrating but still extant instruments of central planning and control. Taking these factors into the account we can note that a relatively high 19 percent of intra-republican consumption came from export out of domestic production of other republics (ranging from a low 7.4 percent for Russia and a high 24 percent for Armenia and Tadzhikistan). About five percent of total intra-republican consumption was accounted by imports from the rest of the world (a low 3.3 percent in Kazakhstan and a high eight percent in Russia). Republics exported out of domestic production on the average about 18 percent to other republics and two percent to the rest of the world. The traditional Soviet policy favoring industrial concentration resulted in a significant number of single plants producing a large share if not the entire output of certain machines, semifabricats, or chemicals supplying the whole country. For example, the small Latvia republic produced virtually all telephones used in the USSR and a single factory in Armenia had a monopoly on output of some key pharmaceutical products. Thus, creation of fifteen independent states created some problems with respect to exchange and pricing of monopoly products. There is no reason, of course, why even a small underdeveloped republic cannot survive as an independent sovereign state as long as it could obtain the needed goods by trading with others former republics or the outside world. Population dynamics are markedly different among republics: for many years Slavic and Baltic republics had low rates of natural population increase averaging about 2.5 persons per 1,000 -- Muslim (Central Asian) republics, on the other hand, reflecting high birth rates averaged increases of about 30 persons per 1,000. As the result of these difference by 1990 the share of ethnic Russians dropped to about 50 percent of the total population of the USSR, down from 55 percent in 1959. VI During the Soviet period the various nationalities had lived without open frictions and conflicts. Viewed against the background of a virtual explosion of ethnic violence of the late 1980s the seeming ethnic harmony can be only explained by deft party nationality policies and brutal police oppression. The presence of strong anti-center and anti-Russian feelings does not mean that the non-Slavic minorities lived in peace among themselves. Just the contrary -- violent conflicts among ethnic minorities marred the period of perestroika. Several serious inter-ethnic clashes should be mentioned. The conflict between Armenians (Christians) and Azerbaijanis (Shiite Muslims) over the Nagorno-Karabakh region located in Azerbaijan but populated mainly by Armenians, was and is particularly important. The region has been in turmoil since the spring of 1988. Tens of thousands have been killed so far on both side. In 1992-1994 the region was in the state of civil war with both parties using heavy military weapons and helicopters, stolen or taken over from regular Soviet Army units. In Georgia, Muslims Ossetians and Abkhazians have been in a state of virtual civil war with Christian Georgians, requiring the presence of MVD troops. Regional conflicts are not restricted to separatist nationalistic issues and inter-ethnic frictions. There are also territorial claims and counterclaims, such as Kazakhstan versus Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan versus Tajikistan. Religious frictions such as, for example, between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches in the Western Ukraine, were equally destabilizing. VII The centralized Soviet system of government was kept operational and socially and politically stable by elaborate Communist Party controls and the omnipotent security police apparatus. The whole system began to unravel once Gorbachev deliberately weakened the role of the Party in economic matters and was reluctant to employ the full brutal KGB/MVD force to ensure political compliance. In the early 1990s the central government was becoming increasingly paralyzed, Moscow's laws and decrees remained on paper while both economic and political powers were shifting to republics. The most visible manifestation of this development in the 1990-1991 was the refusal of most republics to turn over their shares of taxes to the union budget. Gorbachev was always a strong believer in preserving the Soviet Union as a single federation of republics and had rejected earlier attempts of the three Baltic republics to declare independence. By mid-1991 he was prepared to compromise and to sign a union treaty creating a "Federation of Sovereign Republics" but political developments made it no longer feasible. In August of 1991, eight prominent conservatives and their supporters among the KGB, the central Party apparatus, and the military staged an anti-Gorbachev and anti-reform coup d'etat forming a "Committee for State Emergency" which attempted to take over the government. Poorly planned and executed the coup collapsed in three days.(7) The political situation in the country, however, did not returned to the pre-coup days. The center of power clearly shifted to Yeltsin, and to the Russian Federation. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia declared their secession from the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev was powerless to stop it. Thus, in 1991 the Soviet Union still existed as a state with a central government headed by President Gorbachev, with a single currency (the ruble), an unified state budget, and with a powerful nuclear-arms equipped military. But the real power was in the hands of republics while the USSR government was virtually impotent. In December of 1991, presidents of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belorussia met in Minsk and declared that the three republics are forming a Commonwealth of Independent States and thereby dissolved the Soviet Union. At a meeting at Alma Ata few days later eight more republics (Georgia entered later) joined the CIS. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as the President of the (by then non-existing) Soviet Union and the red flag over the Kremlin was dramatically replaced by a white-blue-red flag of Russia. The USSR as it existed since the early 1920s, was no more. The Alma-Ata accord creating the Commonwealth was sketchy and incomplete. The monetary and economic sections of the agreement were left vague: in principle, all former republics promised to proceed with market reforms, balance their budgets, liberalize prices, and transfer most state property to private ownership. All members of the Commonwealth agreed to assume the responsibility for the foreign and internal debts of the former Soviet Union. According to the agreement the assets and wealth of the former USSR were to be distributed among the new states but de facto the new states claimed assets (including weapons and other military ordnance) of the former USSR located on their territories as theirs. By mid-1992 all tactical nuclear weapons have been moved to Russia and the Russian military began disarming and dismantling them. Strategic nuclear weapons remained only in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. The collapse of the highly centralized Soviet economic planning and administration system and disruptions caused by separation of former republics led to continuing deterioration of economies of all members of the Commonwealth. In the 1990-1993 period Gross Domestic Product of newly independent states dropped 30 to 50 percent. Inflation was rampant. In 1993 total trade among the former 15 Soviet republics dropped by more than two- thirds of the 1990 level and their trade with the outside world dropped by half. By 1994 all newly independent countries had introduced their own currencies but except for the three Baltic republics these currencies continue to be mainly inconvertible. Several attempts, primarily initiated by Moscow, had been made to move towards stronger economic and political integration of the Commonwealth but without much progress. Each of the newly independent states pursues its own agenda and, to a greater or lesser degree, is afraid of the potential Russian dominance of the region. Kazakhstan and Belarus are more prepared to establish closer ties with Russia while Ukraine continues to be the strongly suspicious of Russian imperial intentions. Russia's military leaders persists in pressing for a collective air-defense system and for some unification of armed forces, but without much success. The CIS did not become a viable regional system. At a special CIS meeting held in February of 1995 for the purpose of establishing closer ties among the states no single binding resolution was passed; at this meeting the President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, described the CIS as a "shapeless organization without a future." ENDNOTES (1) The process of reunification of lands of the former Russian empire was too complex to be summarized here. Lenin's central government cajoled, used intrigues, and military force to bring these areas back into the union with the RSFSR. On several occasions Moscow organized puppet governments which would challenge popularly elected local governments and demand reunification with the RSFSR. Moscow would then recognize the puppet government, send in the Red Army to eliminate the legitimate government and to sign a full unification or a federation treaty.Developmental policies pursued by Moscow often led to movements of Russian skilled industrial labor to newly established manufacturing enterprises and government offices in non-Slavic regions. (2) Subsequently the latter was divided into the Georgian and Azerbaijan republics. Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, which had been autonomous regions within the RSFSR, gained the status of separate union republics in the early 1930s. Kirgizia and Kazakhstan (formerly autonomous republics within the RSFSR), and Armenia became separate union republics in the late 1930s. (3) Official and unofficial anti-semitism is a separate issue. Ostensibly condemned in the 1920s and 1930s it reappeared in the postwar period. We have undisputable evidence that in the 1960s and 1970s quotas were used to restrict admission of Jews to institutions of higher learning and to some occupations. A certain share of Slavs appear to have always harbored antagonistic feelings toward the Jews. A sample survey covering 4,200 persons in ten Soviet cities conducted in early 1991 by the Jewish Scientific Center of Moscow is instructive in this respect. According to this survey, 11 percent of the respondents wanted the Jews to leave the USSR and more than half felt that "the fight against Zionism needed to be strengthened." (4) Chechens and Ingush who are mainly Muslims have been always hostile towards their Russian conquerors; they strongly objected to forced collectivization in the early 1930s and as the German Army moved close to the region in 1943 sporadic minor anti-Soviet uprisings took place. The Chechen region declared independence from Russia in 1992 but the declaration was not accepted by Moscow. In late 1994 Yeltsyn moved Russian troops to the republic resulting in bloody clashes and deaths of close to 90,000 of armed Chechen rebels, civilians and Russian military personnel. After several months of fierce fighting the capital of the republic, Grozny, was virtually destroyed by Russian bombs and artillery fire. Yeltsin and his military commanders were strongly criticized in Russia and abroad for the bungled and bloody operation. (5) The process of rehabilitation of falsely accused and resettled peoples was very slow, and few of them were allowed to move back. Ethnic Germans were officially rehabilitated and all charges against them were dropped in 1964; Crimean Tatars were similarly cleared in 1967. The former autonomous republic of Volga Germans has not been restored and Germans and Tatars were effectively barred from returning to their lands. (6) Prices are important in evaluating the impact of interrepublican trade. For example, the domestic price of petroleum was much lower than the world market price. Since Russia supplied most of petroleum used by other republics Russian exports in rubles are somewhat understated and would have been higher if measured in world market prices. Of course, other domestic prices also differ from world market prices and from implicit internal equilibrium prices. The overall pattern of republican commercial interdependence would probably look quite different if export and import prices were to be set by market forces. (7) Gorbachev, who was vacationing with his family in Crimea, was placed under house arrest and held incommunicado by the KGB. The hero of the day, Yeltsin, declared the Committee for State Emergency unconstitutional and dismissed their decrees as illegal. Gorbachev was freed and returned to Moscow; charged with state treason conspirators were arrested.