National in Form, Socialist in Content: USSR National and Language Policies in the Early Period

Abstract

The article traces the early Soviet national and language policies based on historical, historiographic, sociological, and sociolinguistic sources. The post-revolutionary 1917 policies in the USSR involved autonomy, federalization, linguistic diversity. The 1920s-1930s inaugurated the economic level-off of the outskirts with the center; indigenization of education and administration; development of native literatures, press, theatres; language construction; latinization. The 1930s marked strengthening of Russian (and Union-republican) languages, conceptualization of “convergence in a Soviet nation”, cyrillization. We conclude that USSR’s national and language policies reveal a pattern fluctuating from liberal (democratic self-governance of nationality territorial units, non-script languages construction, use of nationality languages, development of nationality media, cultures, literatures) to etatist (strengthening of the major nationality language, return to unifying patriotic ideology and education, civic consolidation).