THE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONALITIES i/
What is the meaning of Moscow's programme as set 01
Dy Postyschev? It means that Moscow has definitively adopts
lie new course with regard to the nationalities and has abai
doned the "rotten compromise" of the first period of Russk
nationalism. The attempt to enforce the sociological ideob|
of Lenin while feigning recognition for national individuali
has been given up, and a policy has been adopted which mu
inevitably be accompanied by far-reaching consequences. T]
new programme means war to the knife on all the nation
movements, whether among the Ukrainians, the White Russiar
the Caucasian peoples, the Germans, the Finns or the Je\*
Whether the struggle is carried through with the whip or wi
the velvet glove is simply a matter of expediency.1
But this decisive change in the Kremlin's policy towards t
nationalities has yet another cause. The autonomous Sovi
republics and districts which were set up along the fronti
from Finland to the Black Sea for propaganda purposes ha
proved a disappointment. The correspondent of the Kolnisc
Zeitung, who has lived for many years in Moscow, has dubb
these the "Irredenta Republics," whose propagandist val
he states to have been disappointing. Instead of appealing
the peoples and nationalities across the frontier, these pseud
national regions along the western fringe of the Soviet Uni
have turned into centrifugal factors—a severe disappointmc
for Stalin, who, as Commissary for the Nationalities unc
Lenin, played a leading part in their formation.
It is a matter of course that in these circumstances t
1 Later utterances of Postyschev*s indicate that he is encountering seri
difficulties in carrying through his policy in the Ukraine. The Wisty of K
(March 69 1935) reports bi™ as saying in a speech before the party cc
mittee that cultural life in the Ukraine must be "UfcramianiTied" in orde
take the wind out of the sails of the Ukrainian nationalists and separati
who had won over the masses by declaring that Moscow was Russifying
Ukrainian Soviet Republic.
In another speech (frceoda> June 1935) he appeals to the Ckromui
writers of the Ukraine to join in spreading abroad accounts of the aehk
ments of the Communist State.
K