Soviet Nation-building: Organizational Practices and Problems of Federalism. 1920s.

Abstract

The article analyses some problems of Soviet nation-building and the formation of the federal system in the 1920s, using a new source on the activities of the Nationalities Department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). The activity of the Department of Nationalities of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1919-1937) was directly linked to the implementation of nationality policy in the RSFSR, although it occupied a subordinate position in the emerging Soviet system of national-state building. During the formation of the USSR and after the liquidation of the People's Commissariat for Nationalities, it was the Department that accumulated in its practice the integrative organizational, administrative, socio-cultural, and other functions that were associated with the modernizing efforts of the authorities in the multi-ethnic space of the USSR and the RSFSR itself. As part of the executive body of the supreme power of the largest USSR republics, the Department dealt with many operational and planning issues related to the organization of local executive bodies on national issues, helping the representations of autonomies in the capital, preparing normative acts on nation-building issues, and providing direct administrative, financial, economic, social and cultural support to autonomies. The relationship between the center and the autonomies was a major focus, and the tasks of the Nationalities Division required them to act as intermediaries in their cooperation with various agencies in the center and in the regions. The author focuses on several fundamental issues of nation-state building through the prism of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Department and its head S.D. Asfendiyarov in 1926-1927, when the important discussions and appeals of the leaders of several autonomies to the center were held to settle the relations between different subjects of the federation, all-Russian and all-union process of state building.