MINORITIES AS A PROBLEM

Southland Times, Issue 23406, 13 January 1938, Page 2

MINORITIES AS A PROBLEM

NATIONAL GROUPS AT FRONTIERS UNEXPECTED DIFFICULTY FOR SOVIET The problem of minor nationalities, especially in the frontier regions, is proving unexpectedly difficult in recent times if one judges by the constant diatribes in Moscow newspapers, especially Pravda, writes Walter Duranty from Moscow to The New York Times. From the outset of the revolution Lenin appreciated the delicacy of the “national problem” and he stressed the importance of a correct adjustment between the freedom of national minorities to develop their own institutions, language and cultural background and the licence that might build up a local jingoism and an indifference, even hostility, to the interests of the rest of the country.

The Bolsheviks thought they could show the world something new in ruling a far-flung “empire” by giving minor nationalities the widest possible measure of self-government with the local Communist Party acting as a cement to hold the mass together and to insure its loyalty to the central authority.

The system worked well and successfully resisted the counter-revolutionary activites of former bourgeois elements in the outlying regions. This was true even when the opponents were assisted from abroad, as in Karelia in the winter of 1921, in Central Asia, two or three years later, and in the Far East. Although in some cases Moscow felt that local nationalism was somewhat overdone and found it necessary to restore the obligatory teaching of Russian and at least one Russian newspaper of the Communist Party to cement its influence it proved effective until a year or two ago. Then the whole basis of Soviet management of the minor nationalities was threatened by defections from local Communist Parties.

In Karelia, bordering on Finland; in the Ukraine, bordering on Poland; and in the Far Eastern provinces the joint conspiracy of external and internal spies, enemies and wreckers proved virulent.

Even in Transcaucasia and Central Aisa, where foreign influence is less active, there was an alarming recrudescence of jingoism which, in many cases, went beyond neglect or disobedience of the orders of the central party organization, to conspiracy, sabotage, and deliberate treason. Sometimes, no doubt, it was only a matter of small-town grafters, practising favouritism, nepotism, petty waste, and misgovernment. But invariably there was found behind and above such minor miscreants a dangerous conspirative element in high places. It is really surprising to read the accounts purporting to show how shrewdly and minutely some of these high-placed conspirators built up their machines. They introduced persons whose past was so doubtful because of their social origin or previous antiSoviet activities that they were utterly subservient to patrons and protectors, whom they followed blindly in subtle schemes. These schemes were aimed not merely to waste and deteriorate Soviet property, but to create ill will towards the central government in the minds of local workers and peasants. To some extent what ocurred among the National minorities offers a parallel to the state of things during the collectivization period before political sections were established at the beginning of 1935 to bring order from chaos. Or, to use a more familar parallel it was like the “Carpetbag” era in the Southern States after the Civil War. Somewhat belatedly the Soviets are discovering the truth of the old Roman proverb “Who shall guard the guardians?” and it is being forced to organize National administrations with hurried, if not undeserved, seventy.