Popov (1927, 1930) on Bolshevik Failure to Grasp the National Liberation Dynamic

In 1927-28, on the tenth anniversary of the October revolution, new accounts were written. They denied the divided roots of Ukrainian Bol­shevism and constructed what the party considered to be a more appro­priate image of unity and mass support.

However, it is clear from these statistics that even in 1926, Ukraini­ans made up less than half the party membership and were generally excluded from higher positions. Overall, the “higher the post and the greater the power and authority, the less one could find Ukrainian per­sonnel” (Dmytryshyn 1956, 82). It is significant that only 23.9% in the central government administration knew Ukrainian, even though the republic’s population in 1926 was 75.4% Ukrainian, 8.1% Russian, 6.5% Jewish, and 5.0% Polish.

At this time, Nikolai Popov produced party histories that aligned with the Ukrainization drive. They indicated that in the past, a chasm had separated the party from the masses, which was exemplified by the refusal of many party members to even admit the existence of a Ukrai­nian language.

In the twenties, when he still followed the line established in 1923, he argued in his Oktiabrskaia revoliutsiia (October Revolution, 1927) that the main enemy in Ukraine was great-power chauvinism:

the tsarist government counted on the complete eradication of the Ukrainian language and its replacement with Russian. It went as far as banning the printing of books and newspapers in Ukrainian, prohibiting lectures in Ukrainian even in private schools, and com­pletely forbidding use of the language in public. It is hard to find examples of similar persecution in history. The government did not apply such savage and barbaric methods in dealing with the Polish and Jewish languages. Even the word Ukraine was declared subver­sive [kramolnym], substituting it with the word Little Russia (just as the Polish landowners called Eastern Galicia, the part of West­ern Ukraine in which they dominated under Austrian rule, Little Poland). Paid by the tsarist government, professors wrote entire “scientific studies” arguing that no Ukrainian nation or language existed, but only a branch of the Russian people and a dialect of Russian. Propaganda of this nature by the tsarist government influ­enced a significant part of the Russian bourgeoisie, urban popula­tion and intelligentsia.

(Popov 1927, 15)

The empire’s privileging of the Russian nation, according to Popov, ran through all legal and government practices.

The governing apparatus down to the last civil servant viewed them with haughty contempt. The school and press systematically spread enmity and distrust of “foreigners” among the Russian popular masses. The powerful Orthodox Church worked to the same ends,

Repressed Memory 17 using the full support of state power. This work left its mark not only on the psychology of civil servants, many of whom now serve in our Soviet institutions, but also on the psychology of the masses.

(ibid., 59)

As a result, argued Popov, Great Russian chauvinism remained a wide­spread phenomenon that also affected communist party members. Even after the important Twelfth Congress of the RKP(B) in April 1923 pro­claimed a policy of indigenization (korenizatsiia), many people were still convinced that Soviet power had been established in order to create “a single indivisible Russia.” They felt, he wrote,

that the Russian nation should dominate in a Soviet republic just as it did in the tsarist empire. The Twelfth Congress noted in its resolu­tion on the national question that many workers in our state appa­ratus hold an arrogant, contemptuous attitude toward the needs of national republics. Such an attitude is undoubtedly the result of Rus­sian chauvinism.

(ibid., 61)

In 1930, Popov continued this line, reminding readers that the par­ty’s inability to deal with revolts had forced it to absorb the Borotbists, but when instructions arrived from Moscow demanding membership reviews, the older members had taken advantage of this opportunity to expel the Borotbists. Popov calculated that 20,000 people (22.5% of the membership) had been expelled in 1921 (Popov 1930, 266). He com­plained that many Russian members saw no difference between Ukraine and Penzensk or Tambov, and “were ready to consider any suggestion of difference as an expression of Ukrainian nationalism” (ibid., 6).

Popov agreed with Ravich-Cherkasskii and Rafes that the party did not understand the national question (ibid., 112).

We support Ukrainians in their protests against all the government’s circulars, [...] but in general we cannot support the Ukrainians, because this movement is not beneficial to the proletariat. Russia without the Ukrainian sugar industry cannot exist; one could say the same about coal, bread (the Black Earth region). These branches of production are closely linked with Russia’s entire industry. In addi­tion Ukraine is not an economy because, unlike Finland, it does not have banking centers.

(ibid., 123)

However, Popov did deviate from Ravich-CherkasskiPs views in one respect. He rejected the idea that the Ukrainian party’s antecedents could be found in the USDRP (Ukrainian Social-Democratic Revolutionary Party) and the RUP (Revolutionary Ukrainian Party). Although he admit­ted that the CP(B)U made many mistakes, especially in failing to under­stand the national question, and that this was because it was and still partly remained “a party of the Russian or Russified proletariat, upon whom the Russian bourgeoisie exerted and partly still exerts an influ­ence,” he insisted that even in pre-revolutionary years, the Bolsheviks “had contact with Ukrainian elements of the working class” (Popov 1930, 11-12). In other words, Popov affirmed that the CP(B)U's true lin­eage went through the Russian Bolsheviks, who in spite of their failure to grasp the national question were a working-class party. Other elements joined this fundamentally healthy core group, not the other way around.

Popov broke with a stereotype dear to many Russian members when he rejected Ravich-Cherkasskii’s argument that Ukraine’s colonial status made it more backward than Russia (ibid., 15). Bolshevik mythology, he thought, idealized the central Russian lands as industrially developed and supposedly the source of progressive revolutionary leaders, while por­traying Ukraine as backward and counter-revolutionary.

Popov’s went on to revise Ravich-Cherkasskii’s thesis that three entirely separate currents came together in the CP(B)U, arguing instead that Jewish workers had contacts with the Ukrainian masses and hugely influenced the tactics of Ukrainian social-democracy (ibid., 30). This was because in Ukraine, unlike in Poland and Belarus, the Jewish proletariat did not significantly differ in its lifestyle from the rest of the local popula­tion (ibid., 62).

Popov therefore aligned the development of Bolshevism in Ukraine and Russia, but at the same time argued for the specifics of the Ukrainian situation and the importance of the national dimension. He rejected the idea of isolated, parallel streams and denied the formative influence of

Repressed Memory 19 non-Bolshevik parties and traditions. In this way, his books represented a shift toward satisfying Moscow’s demands in the years 1927-30 for a narrative that privileged the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) but simultaneously supported the indigenization drive.