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ABSTRACT
This article concerns the interventions of the Kremlin (the center) into the administration of a republic, and negotiations between the center and the republican nomenklatura regarding power and the boundaries of political autonomy. My theory is that a vague interpretation of the concepts of nationalism in Soviet nationality politics allowed the Kremlin to fulfill the function of the highest arbiter and provided the opportunity for interference into the administration of the republics. This article shows how anti-Soviet protests in Lithuanian society influenced decision-making in Soviet nationality policy.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. In the literature, the term ‘nomenklatura’ has been used to denote different groups or phenomena. It was a list of key positions within the Communist Party system with a corresponding roster of individuals qualified to fill those posts. A broader definition of the term could be used to designate the Soviet ruling class. In this article, I use this broader notion applying it to a Soviet republic’s elite.
2. The particularism of the nomenklatura, national communism or regionalism, as it used to be referred to in official discourse. Leaders in Moscow and the CPSU CC apparatus referred to the promotion of a republic’s economic interests and cultural peculiarities as localism (mestnichestvo). In this article, notions of localism, the particularism of a republic’s nomenklatura, and national communism are used as synonyms.
3. From the concept of nationalism, I separate aspirations of ‘regionalism’ and broader economic autonomy, referred to as autarchy, which manifested in the republic. The concept of nationalism includes exclusively anti-Soviet phenomena, such as the activities of underground dissidents and anti-Soviet massive protests.
4. Latvijas Valsts arhīvs – Partija arhīvs (hereafter LVA–PA), 101. f., 26. apr., 58. l., 98–116 lp.
5. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (hereafter RGANI), f. 5, op. 31, d. 100, l. 21.
6. For more, see Smith and Ilic (Citation2011).
7. LVA–PA, 101. f., 21. apr., 48a. l., 64 lp.
8. LVA–PA, 101. f., 21. apr., 48a. l., 67 lp.
9. LVA–PA, 101. f., 21. apr., 48a. l., 89–92 lp.
10. The significance of the Soviet occupation, the discontent, and the struggle against the regime in Lithuania was probably most convincingly revealed in: Žalimas (Citation2005).
11. The division into ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ line Soviet nationality policy in academic literature was introduced by Terry Martin when referring to Soviet national policy during Stalin’s rule, see: Martin (Citation2001, 21).
12. While the term ‘national communism’ is mostly ascribed to the distancing of a Communist country’s leadership from Moscow, researchers investigating the Soviet periphery suggest that the activities of local nomenklatura in Soviet republics went beyond simple localism, and can also be termed national communism. See Bleiere (Citation2016) and Sirutavičius (Citation2015).
13. Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas (hereafter LYA), f. K-1, ap. 3, b. 703, l. 167.
14. RGANI, f. 5, op. 64, d. 99, l. 69.
15. RGANI, f. 5, op. 64, d. 54, l. 25–31.
16. RGANI, f. 5, op. 66, d. 109, l. 22.
17. RGANI, f. 5, op. 64, d. 55, l. 32, 33.
18. RGANI, f. 5, op. 66, d. 109, l. 22.
19. LYA, f. 1771, ap. 249, b. 3, l. 8.
20. For more on the possible causes of the collapse of the USSR, see Rowley (Citation2001).
21. LYA, f. 1771, ap. 205, b. 1, l. 37–39.
22. Rahvusarhiiv (hereafter RA), f. 1, n. 5, s. 110, l. 2–14.
23. The examples of the 1956 and 1978 protests in Georgia suggest that there was possible support for a nationalist protest (if there had been one) among Estonian national communists. There exist testimonies to the effect that the allies of Vasil Mzhavanadze, First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, unofficially supported the 1956 protests (Blauvelt Citation2009, 660). In 1978, when thousands of students protested in Tbilisi against the revocation of the status of Georgian as a state language, Eduard Shevardnadze, then First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, not only resolved the situation without spilling blood and with Georgian remaining the state language, but Shevardnadze was even promoted to candidate (non-voting) member of the CPSU Politburo, the pinnacle of Soviet power in Moscow (Interview with Eduard Shevardnadze, 1 September 2011).
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Saulius Grybkauskas
Saulius Grybkauskas is senior research fellow at Lithuanian Institute of History. He has published monographs Sovietinė nomenklatūra ir pramonė Lietuvoje 1965-1985 (Soviet Lithuanian Nomenklatura and Industry in Lithuania in 1965-1985, 2011) and Sovietinis ‘Generalgubernatorius’ Komunistų partijų antrieji sekretoriai Sovietų Sąjungos respublikose (The Soviet ‘Governor General’: Second Secretaries of the Communist Party in Republics of the Soviet Union, 2016), and has co-authored several books on soviet Lithuanian history.