the soviet and post-soviet review 42 (2015) 247-273

brill.com/spsr

Against Culturism: Reconsidering Stalin

on Nation and Class

Roland Boer
University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia
Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
[email protected]

Abstract

This article argues that the key to Stalin’s early theoretical work on the national ques-
tion may be read as an attack on culturism – the propensity to identify an intangible
‘culture’ (often with religious factors) as the basis for collective identity. Although his
criticism is directed at a number of social democratic organisations at the turn of the
twentieth century, it also has pertinence for today due to the persistence of culturist
assumptions. Two factors are important in his criticism. The first is to define ‘nation’ in
order to sideline the culturist position, although his own definition is not without its
problems. The second tackles the question of the structure of the state: does one begin
with ‘national culture’ or with class? Stalin proposes that class is the determining fac-
tor, which then enables a very different approach to ‘national culture’. The unexpected
result is that the unity provided by a focus on the workers and peasants produces both
new levels of cultural diversity and enables a stronger approach to ensuring such
diversity. The approach undertaken in this article pays careful attention to Stalin’s the-
oretical and philosophical arguments as they appear in his written texts.

Keywords

Stalin – Otto Bauer – Bund – national question – class – unity-diversity

The unexpected value of Stalin’s early theoretical work on the national ques-
tion relates to its sustained attack on culturism – a notably persistent tendency
even in our own time. By culturism I mean the propensity to identify an intan-
gible ‘culture’ as the basis for collective identity, to which may be attributed

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248 Boer

certain traits, such as ways of thinking, behaviour and temperament. Often,

such culturism includes religio-cultural factors, in which religious features
have entered into a particular culture and thereby enable one to assert cultural
distinction on the basis of those features. For Stalin, this approach is mis-
guided, for it prioritises ‘culture’ and isolates it from the crucial factors of eco-
nomics, history and, above all, the dialectical force of class.
Although Stalin’s work on the national question spans more than three
decades (from 19041), I focus on a number of his earlier pieces, especially
‘Marxism and the National Question’, which contains the most sustained criti-
cism of culturist approaches.2 The reason he criticises such culturism is that it
was common among a number of social democratic organisations at the turn of
the twentieth century: the Austrian Marxists, the Caucasian movements, the
Southern Slavs, and above all the Bund (The General Jewish Workers’ Union of
Lithuania, Poland, and Russia).3 Two factors are important in his criticism. The
first is to define ‘nation’4 in order to sideline the culturist position, although his
own definition is not without problems. The second tackles the question of the
structure of the socialist state: does one begin with ‘national culture’ or with
class? In contrast to the Austrian Marxists, the more nationally minded among
the Bund and the Caucasian Marxists, Stalin proposes that class is the determin-
ing factor, which then enables a very different approach to ‘national culture’.

1 I. V. Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View on the National Question,” in Works, vol. 1 (Moscow:
Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1904 [1954]); I. V. Stalin, “Kak ponimaet sotsial-
demokratiia natsionalʹnyĭ vopros?” in Sochineniia, vol. 1 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1904 [1946]).
2 It was originally published as ‘The National Question and Social-Democracy’ (Natsional’nyi
vopros i sotsialdemokratiia) in the Bolshevik journal Prosveshchenie. Other dimensions of
Stalin’s thought on the national question that are beyond detailed analysis in this study
include the affirmative action project of the ussr, the logical connection with anti-colonial
struggles, the later redefinition of ‘nation’ and a ‘pentecostal’ approach to language.
3 For further arguments against the Caucasian position, see Stalin, “The Social-Democratic
View on the National Question,” 36–40; Stalin, “Kak ponimaet sotsial-demokratiia
natsionalʹnyĭ vopros?” 37–41; I. V. Stalin, “On the Road to Nationalism (A Letter From the
Caucasus),” in Works, 2 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1913 [1953]), 295–96;
I. V. Stalin, “Na puti k natsionalizmu (Pisʹmo s Kavkaza),” in Sochineniia, 2 (Moscow:
Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1913 [1946]), 285–86.
4 We need to be careful not to read back into these debates the assumptions of a nation-state
as an ‘imagined community’ (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, rev. ed. (London:
Verso, 1991)). Thus, a ‘nation’ was not the political entity of a state, but rather the ‘nationali-
ties’ within a state. These are now often called ‘ethnic minorities’, but this term is potentially
misleading, since ethnicity was not necessarily a basic feature and the debates focused on
majority and minority nationalities.

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Against Culturism 249

The unexpected result is that the unity provided by a focus on the workers and
peasants produces both new levels of cultural diversity and enables a stronger
approach to ensuring such diversity. As will become clear, my approach focuses
on Stalin’s theoretical and philosophical arguments. I deal with his written
texts, seeking to draw out their insights, tensions and problems. This approach
is surprisingly rare, with critics either dismissing Stalin as a theorist, or gliding
over his texts, or being unaware of the dialectical Marxist tradition, or eschew-
ing theoretical work on his texts for the sake of archives and policies.5 By con-
trast, I find the approach of detailed attention to Stalin’s texts useful, not merely
for the sake of understanding Stalin’s own thought, but also because culturist
approaches to national difference persist in our own day.

Defining ‘Nation’

The first item in the struggle between the Austrian Marxists, the Bund, the
Caucasian movement and Stalin’s Bolshevik position concerns definition.

5 As a sample, see Robert Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations (Harmondsworth: Penguin,

1992); Stephen Blank, The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities, 1917–
1924 (Westport: Greenwood, 1994), 68–81; Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union:
Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997 [1964]);
Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917–1923 (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1999); Jeremy Smith, “Stalin as Commissar for Nationality Affairs, 1918–1922,” in Stalin: A New
History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005);
Yuri Slezkine, “The Soviet Union as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State
Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (London:
Routledge, 2000); Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the
Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Terry Martin and Ronald
Grigor Suny (eds.), A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and
Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); David Crouch, “The Seeds of National
Liberation,” International Socialism: A Quarterly Journal of Socialist Theory 94, (2002); Serhy
Yekelchyk, “Stalinist Patriotism as Imperial Discourse: Reconciling the Ukrainian and Russian
‘Heroic Pasts’, 1939–45,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 3, no. 1 (2002):
51–80; Jörg Baberowski, Der Feind ist überall: Stalinismus im Kaukasus (Munich: Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt, 2003); Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the
Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). Despite the promise of
van Ree’s engagement with Stalin’s texts, he glides over the deeper theoretical matters and
prefers to search for possible external sources for his thought: Erik van Ree, The Political
Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-Century Revolutionary Patriotism (London:
Routledge Curzon, 2002), 64–69; Erik Van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question,”
Revolutionary Russia 7, no. 2 (2003).

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250 Boer

If one is seeking to develop a viable socialist position on the national question,

then one needs a definition of ‘nation’. I begin with the definitions of the
Austrian Marxists, the Bund and the Caucasian Social-Democrats, before turn-
ing to Stalin’s anti-culturist response.
For Otto Bauer, the leading theorist among the Austrians, ‘a nation is the total-
ity of human beings bound together by a community of fate [Schicksalsge­
meinschaft] into a community of character [Charaktergemeinschaft]’.6 By
community of ‘character’ he seeks to designate what makes one people distinct
from another – the ‘national character’ that marks the Germans from the English,
the Russians from the Ruthenians, and so on. But this character is neither causal
in terms of individual behaviour nor a given. Thus, one cannot attribute certain
individual characteristics (Germans are ordered, French are temperamental,
Jews given to abstract thought) to national character. Instead, the identification
of a national character is the beginning of analysis. Now community of ‘fate’ or
‘destiny’ comes into play: by this term Bauer means the long and complex his-
torical process by which a community of character comes into being. He stresses
that such a community is always relative, subject to change in light of historical
developments.7 So he investigates how changes in this national character take
place, particularly in terms of the interactions between historical and contem-
porary forces. Instead of an unchanging national spirit, each generation inherits
a certain cultural framework that may be modified in light of experience and
events.8 Thus ‘national character’ is not the explanation, but the reality that
needs to be explained in historical terms.
Bauer clearly remains wedded to a very European notion of ‘national char-
acter’, according to which one may identify distinct differences in ways of
thinking, behaviour and assumptions between one small state and another.9

6 Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy, trans., Joseph O’Donnell
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000 [1907]), 117. On Bauer within the context
of wider debates over the national question in Austro-Marxism, see Gábor Egry, “Social
Democracy and the Nationalities Question,” in Regimes and Transformations: Hungary in the
Twentieth Century, ed. Istvan Feitl and Balázs Sipos (Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó, 2005). Less
useful is Michael Löwy, “Marxists and the National Question,” New Left Review I/96, (1976).
7 Bauer, 22.
8 These historical modifications produce both ‘historical nations’ and ‘non-historical nations’,
determined by the presence of a ruling elite and high national culture: nations may pass from
one to the other in light of changing conditions. ‘Non-historical nations’ (geschichtslosen
Völker) is borrowed from Engels, concerning peoples that have never formed a state and
seemed to be disappearing. Friedrich Engels, “The Magyar Struggle,” in Marx and Engels
Collected Works, 8 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1849 [1975]). See further Egry, 98–99.
9 See especially Bauer, 119–25.

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Against Culturism 251

He does give this assumption a unique twist, arguing that it is not a cause of
behaviour but a reality that needs to be historicised in a way that renders it
contingent and changing. This is also the case with the different socialist move-
ments, which are determined in the way they express socialism by their cul-
tural and national traditions. Tellingly, he uses a religious analogy to make his
point, deploying the common content-form distinction: in the same way that
Roman Catholicism, even with its centralised leadership and doctrinal form,
acquires national specificity in the different nations, so also ‘in each nation
inherited national characteristics are giving international socialist ideology a
particular national form’.10
Alongside this analogy, Bauer (like Stalin) focuses a good deal on the Jews.
Not only does he constantly use the Jews as examples for the various moments
in his argument, but he also argues that the Jews are gradually ceasing to have
the national status that they had during the middle ages. With the advent of
capitalism, especially in Western Europe, they have become increasingly
assimilated to the cultural communities of the nations in question, passing
from historical nation to ‘non-historical’ nation to full assimilation. The persis-
tence of national identity among Jews in Eastern Europe may be attributed to
the fact that capitalism has not yet become as pervasive as in Western Europe.
But Bauer argues that assimilation will happen there too, although it will be a
gradual process.11 As we will see, in 1913 Stalin agreed with Bauer, although for
different reasons (the Jews do not meet all of the requirements of his defini-
tion of a nation). In this light, the Bund’s endorsement and appropriation of
the Austro-Marxist proposals concerning ‘national character’ and ‘national-
cultural autonomy’ may initially seem curious. But they did so by dispensing
with Bauer’s argument concerning Jewish assimilation and disappearance as a
‘nation’.
Perhaps more than any other social-democratic party, the Bund found itself
constantly struggling over the national question.12 Yet, there was surprisingly

10 Ibid., 18.
11 Ibid., 291–308, 343.
12 For detail on the following, see (with qualification) Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and
Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), 171–257; Roni Gechtman, “National-Cultural Autonomy and
‘Neutralism’: Vladimir Medem’s Marxist Analysis of the National Question, 1903–1920,”
Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes, Spring, (2007); Gertrud Pickan, “Kossovsky, Portnoy
and Others: The Role of the Bund’s Founding Generation in the Interwar Polish Bund,” in
Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100, ed. Jack Jacobs (Houndmills: Palgrave,
2001). See also Vladimir Kossovskii, “Vladimir Medem un di natsionale frage,” in Vladimir
Medem: Tsum tsvantsikstn yortsayt (New York: Der Amerikaner Reprezentants fun

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252 Boer

little theoretical effort to move beyond the Austrian definition of the nation.
On the one side were the internationalists, such as Leon Goldman and Dovid
Kats, who argued strongly that the focus should be the international working
class and not ‘national cultural’ interests, which they saw as a species of national-
ism and thereby divisive and diversionary. On the other side were those – like
John Mill, Yekutiel Portnoi and Vladimir Kossovskii (Nokhem Mendl Levinson) –
who argued equally strongly for Jewish identity as a nation. These nationalists
obviously needed a definition of nation, which they saw in terms of culture
and language. Somewhere in the middle were the proposals of the some of
the more creative theorists, such as Vladimir Medem. For Medem, ‘national
­character’ – a term borrowed from the Austrian Marxists – was nothing more
than a cultural content common to all human beings, which took distinct
forms due to historical reasons and the conjunctions of particular social forces.
In that light, he argued that citizenship of what he called a ‘state of nationali-
ties’ should be neutral in terms of national identification. Everyone was to
be  included, without identifying one’s ethnicity. While Medem’s approach
may be seen as an effort to negate the divisive force of the national question in
the Bund, it did not solve those struggles. Those in favour of a distinct focus
on the Bund as the representative of Jewish workers were able to get the fourth
congress (1901) to adopt the following resolution: ‘The congress recognizes that
the term “nationality” is applicable also to the Jews’.13 This principle – albeit
without stipulating concrete guidelines as to how it would work in practice –
was located within the context of continued oppression of not only one class
by another, but also of one nationality by another. The sixth congress (1905)
was even clearer, speaking of ‘national-cultural autonomy’, ‘free cultural devel-
opment’ and the need for self-government to be transferred to the ‘nation’.14
Yet, the internationalist forces within the Bund resisted being overwhelmed by
such resolutions, ensuring that the statements of principle had no concrete
program to ensure enactment. Indeed, the internationalists were able to per-
suade the majority to overcome the 1903 split with the Russian Social-
Democratic Labour Party and re-join that party in 1906.
The Caucasian Social-Democrats, or at least the dominant Menshevik sec-
tion, had adopted the ‘cultural-national autonomy’ position already outlined

Algemeynem Yidishn Arbeter-Bund (‘Bund’) in Poyln, 1943 [1923]); Vladimir Medem, “Di
sotsial-demokratie un di natsionale frage,” in Vladimir Medem: Tsum tsvantsikstn yortsayt
(New York: Der Amerikaner Reprezentants fun Algemeynem Yidishn Arbeter-Bund
(‘Bund’) in Poyln, 1943 [1904]).
13 Frankel, 220.
14 Ibid., 195, 247.

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Against Culturism 253

in detail by Renner and Bauer, which then became part of the lively debates in
the Bund. So little theoretical elaboration is to be found, except for one point.
The Caucasian movement developed perhaps the most extreme culturist posi-
tion. In light of the complex history of the Caucasus and the dispersal of
peoples,15 especially the Armenians, they argued for the predominance of cul-
tural factors over history and economics. Such factors were signalled by a com-
mon language and religion. Georgians may be united wherever they might be
by language and culture, while for the Armenians identification with the
church was paramount for national-cultural identity.16
In response, Stalin’s definition is more comprehensive, seeking to restore
categories that had been excised by the Austrians, the more nationally minded
among the Bund and the Caucasians. He writes: ‘A nation is a historically con-
stituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common lan-
guage, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a
common culture’.17 Of these items, only history and ‘psychological make-up’, or
better, ‘psychological storehouse’, featured in the position of Bauer and the
Bund. Indeed, they ultimately favoured the final category in what may be
called a revised culturist position.18 Given its importance for the debates, let
me begin by focusing on ‘national culture’. Van Ree argues that its inclusion
marks a distinct shift from Stalin’s earlier criticisms of the very idea of a
‘national spirit’ (natsionalʹnyĭ dukh),19 so much so that Stalin ends up with an
‘organicist’ position.20 It is indeed a shift, with Stalin coming closer to Bauer in
the conjunction of the apparent intangibility of such a culture and its tempo-
ral contingency: the ‘peculiarities of national culture’ change both over time

15 See especially Suny’s excellent overview of the complexity of the Caucasian situation.
Ronald Grigor Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of
the Soviet Union (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 38–43, 58–64, 72–76. For a
focus on political and military matters, see also Alex Marshall, The Caucasus Under Soviet
Rule (London: Routledge, 2010), 10–50.
16 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 361–62; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 348.
17 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 307; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 296.
18 Bauer had already sought to refute most of the items listed in Stalin’s definition: Bauer,
113–16. For Stalin’s response, see Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 308–13;
Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 297–303.
19 Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View on the National Question,” 52; Stalin, “Kak ponimaet
sotsial-demokratiia natsionalʹnyĭ vopros?” 53.
20 Van Ree, “Stalin and the National Question,” 218, 222–23; Political Thought, 62.

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254 Boer

and due to the specific conditions of existence.21 Yet, van Ree is mistaken in
assuming that ‘national culture’ becomes the core of Stalin’s position, for the
following reasons. First, it is one of a number of items required for defining a
nation. Thus, the Austro-Marxist and Bundist focus on ‘national character’ at
the expense of all but history is inadequate for defining a nation. Second, Stalin
places the item last on his list, thereby indicating its relative unimportance. In
this respect he continues in the anti-culturist direction of his earlier work.22
Third, Stalin makes it clear that he understands the idea of ‘national culture’
differently from Bauer and the Bund. His choice of terminology is significant,
describing this culture as ‘psychological storehouse’ (psikhicheskogo sklada) in
the summary definition (quoted above) and elsewhere as a ‘specific spiritual
complexion’ (osobennosti dukhovnogo oblika), which indicates the religio-­
cultural dimensions of this category. But his use of this phrase is in this case a
two-edged sword: on the one hand, spiritual or indeed religious factors are
important; on the other, they cannot be isolated as the key. In both respects, he
sought a way to counter the arguments of the Austrians and the Bund.
Stalin knew full well that such a focus would be met by efforts of the
Austrians and the Bund to distance themselves from religious considerations.
Bauer, for one, had attacked an approach to the nation in terms of what he
called ‘national spiritualism’: the attribution of distinct national characteris-
tics to ‘a mysterious “spirit of the people” [Volksgeist] or “soul of the people”
[Volksseele]’.23 Such an approach sees ‘national character’ as a transcendent
and eternal reality, as a ‘metaphysical presence’ if not a ‘ghost’.24 Bauer’s
response to this ‘mystical’ approach was to locate ‘national character’ in his-
torical terms. Yet Stalin’s criticism is that Bauer was still too close to such a
mystical and indeed spiritualist approach, precisely because of his adherence
to ‘national character’, no matter how historicised. Such a nation, determined
by a ‘national spirit’, is an ‘invisible, self-contained force’, something ‘intangible
and supernatural’.25 This is precisely what happens when one isolates ‘national

21 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 306–7; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 296.
22 These theoretical tensions may be seen as manifestations of a personal struggle with
deeply ingrained culturist assumptions. On his ambivalent personal opinions, see (with
qualification) Erik Van Ree, “Heroes and Merchants: Stalin’s Understanding of National
Character,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8, no. 1 (2007).
23 Bauer, 23.
24 Ibid., 24.
25 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 311–12; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 301. Earlier he had spoken of the ‘fog’ and ‘mystery’ that envelops ideas on the

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Against Culturism 255

culture’ as the determining feature of the nation. Instead, argues Stalin, it finds
its proper place only with the other features.
A similar criticism applies to the Bund. They were keen to argue that their
sense of ‘national culture’ was not explicitly religious.26 As non-believers, they
distinguished between Jewish religion and ‘Jewish culture’, seeking to foster
the latter among the workers of the Bund, so much so that the Jewish commu-
nity might become secular. Yet the distinction is somewhat artificial, for the
line between culture and religion – as Stalin is quick to point out – is difficult
to define and highly porous. Stalin’s criticisms are directed at the more nation-
ally minded among the Bund, who had been able to steer through the resolu-
tions at the fourth and sixth congresses and then increasingly assert its
position in the seventh through to ninth congresses. His response may be seen
as an attack on such a group and an implicit appeal to the internationalists.27
So he argues that the Jews may have a national character or a spiritual com-
plexion; they may have taken a stand for Yiddish (the language of Jewish work-
ers) as a recognised language; they may have argued for education and the
promotion of Jewish national culture and arts; and they may even have pro-
posed recognition of the Sabbath as a rest day and Jewish hospitals;28 but
Stalin argues both that this risks preserving what is reactionary and objection-
able and that it is still insufficient for the status of ‘nation’, for they have no
common territory, language or economic structure.29 ‘If there is anything
common to them left’, he writes, ‘it is their religion, their common origin and
certain relics of the national character’. But this is hardly enough: ‘petrified
religious rites and fading psychological relics’30 fostered by pockets of the
‘clerical-reactionary Jewish community’31 have little hope in resisting the

national question. Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View on the National Question,” 41;
Stalin, “Kak ponimaet sotsial-demokratiia natsionalʹnyĭ vopros?” 42.
26 Indeed, a worker joining a socialist party such as the Bund found that it entailed a rupture
with religious commitment and practice. See Frankel, 179; Semën Ivanovich Kanatchikov, A
Radical Worker in Tsarist Russia: The Autobiography of Semën Ivanovich Kanatchikov, trans.,
Reginald E. Zelnik (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986 [1932]), 27–36, 147–48, 172–73.
27 See Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 355; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 343.
28 *Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 302, 352–53; Stalin, “Marksizm i
natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 292, 340–41. See also Frankel, 202.
29 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 352, 354; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 340, 342.
30 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 310; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 300.
31 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 374–75; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 361.

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social, economic and cultural forces of the nations amongst whom they live.
By itself, this is simply not enough.
How do the other items in Stalin’s definition fare, which he sought to enlist
against what he saw as a culturist position? On closer analysis, his argument
contains not a few problems. In respect to stable community, Stalin stresses
the need for long historical development, concomitant with a distinct territory
and language. This emphasis on a lengthy history will soon clash with his argu-
ment concerning the development of nations only under capitalism.32 With
the question of territory the ever present religio-cultural dimension of the
topic is once again at the forefront. Here, one of the arguments of the Austrian
Marxists, the Bund and the Caucasian Social-Democrats is his target, for they
argued – as we saw above – that an ethnic group should be regarded as a nation
no matter how dispersed it might be. For Bauer, a nation is ‘a community of
individuals without ensuring it exclusive control within a particular region’.33
The Bund and the Caucasians agreed. Obviously, the situation of the dispersed
multi-ethnicity of Austria, the reality of the Jewish Diaspora and the spread
of Armenians – without a territory from which they had been dispersed –
­provided the reality to which they sought to respond.
Against this argument of the Bund, Stalin makes two points. First, he agrees
with the Austrian social-democrats that the Jews do not have a common terri-
tory, which has forced them to take a ‘cultural-national autonomy’ position.
Second, they have little connection with the soil, which would provide a sta-
ble basis to unite them as a nation, enabling a framework for social and eco-
nomic life.34 Instead, Jews – like the five to six million Russian Jews – tend to
engage in trade, industry and ‘liberal’ professions, being largely town dwellers
who adapt themselves to the prevailing social, economic and linguistic condi-
tions. This suggestion is clearly Eurasian-centric, assuming that the specific
conditions under which socio-economic life operates in Eurasia is universal –
tilling the soil and thereby claiming territory as one’s ‘own’ on that basis. This
assumption had already played havoc with peoples subjugated by European
colonialism, where the colonisers assumed that anyone who did not till the

32 It also returns in a rather different context more than three decades later in his essay on
linguistics. I. V. Stalin, “Marxism and the Problems of Linguistics,” in Works, 16 (London:
Red Star Press, 1950 [1986]); I. V. Stalin, “Marksizm i voprosy iazykoznaniia,” in Sochineniia,
16 (Moscow: Izdatelʹstvo “Pisatelʹ”, 1950 [1997]).
33 Bauer, 222. Similarly, Renner speaks of a ‘community of individuals’ without any connec-
tion to ‘a particular territory’. Karl Renner, “State and Nation,” in National Cultural Autonomy
and its Contemporary Critics, ed. Ephraim Nimri (London: Routledge, 2005 [1899]), 21.
34 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 345–46; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 333–35.

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Against Culturism 257

soil had no claim to the land being appropriated – the doctrine of ‘terra
­nullius’ in the colonisation of Australia is perhaps the most telling example.35
At this point in his argument, Stalin risks assuming a common position at the
time (shared, for example, with Bauer whom he quotes): the situation be
describes can lead to nothing less than the assimilation of the Jews. Indeed, he
goes so far as to observe that the future of the Jews as a distinct people is
uncertain and that its existence is still to be proved.36 Later, he will realise that
the Jews do exist as a nation with a distinct future, but for that we will need to
wait a little.
Language is the final item that is supposed to show the age-old character of
a nation.37 Here Stalin encounters the most significant difficulty thus far. As
for the Bund, he is in two minds: at times, he criticises the Bund’s position that
Yiddish should be the clearly recognised language of Jews workers;38 at others,
he questions whether they have a single language at all, for they inhabit ‘differ-
ent territories, speak different languages’.39 This inability to decide on the
­singularity or multiplicity of language among the Jews is but a microcosm of
the problems with his position on the connections between language and
nation. His problems begin with a curious distinction that he soon under-
mines: a nation cannot be the same as a state. Why? A nation has a common
language, while a state has multiple languages. Thus, Germany, the United
Kingdom and the United States are nations, for they have a common language,
but Austria or Russia (or, I would add, Canada or Switzerland or Belgium or
many other multilingual states) are designated ‘state communities’. To be sure,
the latter are stable communities, but not ‘national communities’. But what
does he mean by multiplicity of languages? ‘We are referring, of course, to the

35 The connection between tilling and private property in land was also crucial for the
development of the early myths of capitalism, especially in the work of Hugo Grotius and
John Locke. See further, Roland Boer and Christina Petterson, Idols of Nations: Biblical
Myth at the Origins of Capitalism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014).
36 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 345–46, 352; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 334, 340. He acknowledges that this was a common position at the time: Stalin,
“Marxism and the National Question,” 344–45; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 333.
37 Michael Smith suggest that language is the key to Stalin’s definition (like Kautsky), but
misses its role in relation to the other items. Michael Smith, Language and Power in the
Creation of the ussr, 1917–1953 (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 1998), 3–4.
38 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 352–53; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 340–41.
39 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 307, 309–10, 312; Stalin, “Marksizm i
natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 297, 299, 301.

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258 Boer

spoken languages of the people and not to the official governmental

­languages’.40 He has Russia in mind, with its official Russian of the tsarist
autocracy and the multitude of languages spoken in its many regions. The
problem is that the same applies to his examples of ‘nations’ with one com-
mon language: in Germany too, as in the United Kingdom and United States
and indeed Australia, many languages were and are spoken on a daily basis.
It seems as though ‘nations’ are few and far between, while ‘state communities’
are the norm. It may well be argued that ‘nations’ according to Stalin’s defini-
tion barely exist at all, for it is difficult indeed to find a people where only one
language is spoken.
Stalin’s difficulties are not at an end, for a deeper tension runs through his
argument, between a longer history that focuses on historically constituted
stable communities (discussed above) and an account that attributes the rise
of nations to the more recent spread of capitalism.41 Indeed, the category ‘eco-
nomic life’ in his definition signals the second narrative. Initially, he suggests
that a common territory is the basis for identifiable and stable economic life.
Yet, ‘economic life’ gains a whole new sense in the second narrative concerning
the growth of nations: now capitalism looms large, challenging the idea of a
historically constituted stable community.42 Instead of a community that has
arisen over a long and slow process, the rise and spread of capitalism becomes
the trigger for nationalism, if not ‘nations’ themselves: ‘The process of elimina-
tion of feudalism and development of capitalism is at the same time a process

40 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 304; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 293.
41 Martin sees the tension, but mistakenly identifies the second as the core of Stalin’s posi-
tion in the article and the first as typical of turn in the mid-1930s to ‘Great-Russian’ nation-
alism. Terry Martin, “Modernization or Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and
Soviet Primordialism,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick(London:
Routledge, 2000), 348–49.
42 The historical production (or construction) of nations and nationalism is common to all
of the positions in the debate (with modification), foreshadowing the later proposals of
Deutsch, Gellner, Anderson and Suny. As Brudny puts it, a nation is a ‘modern political
form of group solidarity based on jointly held beliefs that the group’s origins, territory,
language, history, culture, and political or religious creed make it distinct from any other
social group. These beliefs are not immutable. They change over time and often are sub-
ject to manipulation’. Yitzhak Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Russian Nationalism and the
Soviet State 1953–1991 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 5. See also Karl W.
Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, 2d ed. (Cambridge: mit 1966); Ernest
Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Anderson,
Imagined Communities; Suny, 1–19.

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Against Culturism 259

of the constitution of people into nations’.43 This narrative is at least dialecti-

cally nuanced, for capitalism has both centripetal and centrifugal tendencies.
Thus, the divisions generated under capitalism – in terms of labour and then
classes – actually serve to knit people together within an economic system. Yet,
in its ‘higher stages’ capitalism actually disperses people, through the exacer-
bation of class struggle, the shifting needs of labour and imperialist colonial-
ism.44 Further, this focus on capitalism also undermines his earlier narrative in
terms of the distinction between nations and states. There, Stalin argued prob-
lematically that a nation has one common language, while a ‘state community’
has multiple languages. But now he argues that ‘national states’ are indeed
possible, especially in Western Europe where capitalism established itself
earlier.45
Thus far, Stalin has not really proposed a convincing definition of ‘nation’.
He may have sought to challenge the culturist definitions – with their amor-
phous ‘national culture’ – of the Austrians and the Bund, but his own proposal
has too many problems to be viable. On each of the points in relation to ‘stable
community’ he is in trouble: history, territory and language. Only when comes
to economic conditions, with the contrasting focus on nations in relation to
the development of capitalism, does he begin to gain some traction.

Class and/or Nation

Stalin is on a better footing when he moves from the question of definition to

the question of class and nation. On this matter, the extended and often
polemical debate over the national question was not undertaken merely for
the sake of theory, for it had an urgent practical dimension. All of the partici-
pants sought a socialist solution to the same problem: how to provide space
and protection for the many nationalities living in the same state. However,
their disagreements turned on two contrasts. The first was class and nation:
does one begin with ‘national culture’ as the basis of the national question, or

43 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 313; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,”
303.
44 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 339; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 327. See also I. V. Stalin, “National Factors in Party and State Affairs: Thesis for the
Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Approved by the Central
Committee of the Party,” in Works, 5 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1923
[1953]), 184–86.
45 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 314; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 303–4.

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260 Boer

is class coterminous with nation, as some of the Caucasian socialists argued, or

is class the determining factor? If one begins with the fist position, as the
Austrians, Bund and some of the Caucasians did, then one develops culturist
federalism, seeking to develop a federated state that accounts for such differ-
ences. If one melds the categories of class and nationalism, as others in the
Caucasus did, then national struggles are also class struggles. By contrast, for
Stalin the core category is class, from which one then deals with the issue of
national culture. The second and related issue concerned diversity and unity:
if one begins with ‘national cultural diversity’ or even with the melding of class
and nation, then one struggles to find unity within a federated state; but if one
begins with class, then unity follows. However, this emphasis on unity through
class produces a somewhat unexpected dialectical outcome. Unity through
class resulted not in assimilation under a uniform culture, but in a diversity
that fostered national differences. In this light, Stalin sought both explicit rec-
ognition of territorial claims of nationalities and stiff protections for minori-
ties without territory.
In unpacking this brief statement of the main issues, I begin with the posi-
tion of the Bund, especially Vladimir Medem’s argument for federation. The
key here is that the starting point is diversity, with individual national groups,
and attempts to locate them within a ‘state of nationalities’, in which minori-
ties would be protected through limited jurisdiction over cultural matters.46
Like the Austro-Marxists, he used the terminology of ‘national-cultural auton-
omy’ but understood it in terms of governing bodies with jurisdiction over cul-
tural matters – and thereby not political, economic or territorial autonomy. So
also, the Bund argued for federation, for both the party structure, in which the
Bund represented Jewish workers, and in the proposals for a federalist state.
Thus, the resolutions at the fourth congress (1901) stated that in Russia, with its
‘many different nationalities’, a socialist state ‘must in the future develop into a
federation of nationalities in which every nationality enjoys full national
autonomy, regardless of the territory which it occupies’.47 And the sixth con-
gress (1905) explicitly used the term ‘national-cultural autonomy’, understood
in terms of ‘governmental-juridical institutions which would permit each
nation its free cultural development’. The focus was clearly culturist, in which
‘cultural questions’, such as public education, should be removed from the
state and be ‘transferred to the nation’.48 The underlying assumption was that

46 He saw his proposal as avoiding the ‘bourgeois’ extremes of nationalism (ending up with
Zionism) and assimilation (which he saw as the policy of the Russian social-democrats).
47 Frankel, 220.
48 Ibid., 241.

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Against Culturism 261

true working class internationalism should seek ways to reconcile the aspira-
tions of the various nationalities.
As for Otto Bauer, not only was religion a constant point of reference in his
effort to trace the development of distinct ‘national cultures’,49 but he also uses
a religious analogy, borrowed from Karl Renner, in his proposal for a multina-
tional state: in the same way that religious groups may live within a city or a
state, so also may national groups do so in a state, having their own institutions
and organisations but without claiming territorial sovereignty.50 Both Bauer
and Renner agreed that ethnic communities should exist as autonomous units
without claiming territory in multi-national states. However, both argued that
affiliation to religious groups is no longer as strong as the hold of the national
cultural communities, so the latter require widespread democratisation and
autonomous self-administration as the guarantee of their distinctness.
Stalin’s attack on this culturist federalism uses a number of arguments, such
as the danger of applying a position developed in Austria (or even the United
States) to the very different situation in Russia, or the point that the Bund’s
position would work very well within a bourgeois democracy such as France or
Switzerland, or indeed that it is a subtle form of nationalism.51 However, the
key to Stalin’s argument concerns class as the basis for dealing with the national
question,52 an emphasis that leads him to argue for the priority of unity over
diversity. Whence comes this connection between class and unity? Theoretically
it comes from Marxist analysis, in which class is the core category that unites
workers across varying nationalities. Practically it derives from his direct expe-
riences in the Caucasus where the Bolsheviks were a distinct minority in com-
parison with the Mensheviks. As Suny deftly shows, the complex political and
national history of the Caucasus had produced a situation where national aspi-
rations were often seen as one with class. He writes of a ‘unique ethnoclass
structure’,53 in which Georgians were largely a peasant people with a nobility
both hankering after the glories of the Georgian past and now integrated with
the tsarist Russian administration, the dispersed Armenians formed the bulk
of the new bourgeoisie in control of commerce and Baku oil, and the

49 Bauer, 65–69, 167–74.

50 Renner, 17–18, 25, 30; Bauer, 281–89.
51 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 325–31, 347–50; Stalin, “Marksizm i
natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 314–20, 335–39.
52 Characteristically for one not attentive to Marxist categories, Martin misses the core issue
of class in the opposition to federalism. Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The
Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” 75.
53 Suny, Revenge of the Past, 38–43, 58–64, 72–76.

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Azerbaijani (and immigrant Persian) Muslims made up the lower workers,

with less wages and skills, in the oil fields. The results were distinct forms of
class and nationalist formations: the Georgian nobles came to espouse a
‘­feudal-monarchist’ nationalism tied in closely with their Orthodox faith; the
dispersed Armenians pursued a ‘bourgeois’ non-territorial nationalism in
competition with the large Russian and European bourgeoisies; the younger
and more radical Georgian intelligentsia, among whom Stalin found himself,
managed to develop a mass political movement that welded together Georgian
peasants and both Georgian and not a few Azerbaijani workers. For them, the
enemies were the tsarist autocracy (and therefore Georgian nobles) and the
bourgeoisie (largely Armenian). In this way, class and nation were interwoven,
although the problem for Stalin was that such an interweaving led to disunity
rather than unity.
In this light, we can understand Stalin’s criticisms, in the early ‘The Social-
Democratic View on the National Question’, of ‘feudal-monarchist nationalism’
with a ‘clerical form’ and bourgeois nationalism.54 As for the former, he uses the
example of the old Georgian nobles, who, aided by significant parts of the
church, sought independence from Russia (after Georgia came under Russian
control in 1801). For Stalin, their agenda was obvious: they sought to dominate
their subjects unmolested by powerful neighbours. By contrast, the bourgeois
nationalists, in a situation of rising nationalist movements engendered by the
spread of capitalism, sought to harness such movements for the sake of maxi-
mising profits. The forms of such nationalism may differ, emphasising variously
agrarian issues, language, civil equality, religious freedom or self-government.
But underlying such forms is the same struggle: the bourgeoisie of the oppressed
‘nation’ struggles with the bourgeoisie of the dominant (in this case Russian)
state. In reply, the dominant nation bourgeoisie represses the local bourgeoisie
in both economic and political forms – restriction of movement, franchise, lan-
guage, education and religion. In their turn, the relatively weak local bourgeoi-
sie actively courts proletarians and peasants. They claim that their own
nationalism is actually in the interests of all, rallying common people around
the banners of ‘fatherland’, ‘national pride’ and the ‘native folk’. All need to band
together in a common front for the greater good – national independence.55

54 Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View on the National Question;” Stalin, “Kak ponimaet
sotsial-demokratiia natsionalʹnyĭ vopros?”
55 However, in ‘Abolition of National Disabilities’ (“Ob otmene natsionalʹnykh ogranicheniĭ”),
he argues for a limited value in the bourgeois drive to emancipation and equal rights –
including religion – for minorities. It is, of course, inadequate and needs to be completed
with a socialist revolution.

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Against Culturism 263

In reply, Stalin initially undertakes some conventional Marxist ground-

clearing, arguing that the national question from the perspective of the prole-
tariat requires the demolition of the barriers between workers of different
nationalities. His next step is far more interesting. He could have argued that
the proletariat and peasants offer the only true leadership of the nationalist
movement – assuming a position where class and nation are coterminous. Or
rather, he does argue such a position, but not in the way that might have been
expected. In light of the Caucasian situation, the expectation would have been
that true national independence can be achieved through none other than the
socialist movement. Instead, Stalin takes a different line, for such a focus would
lead to disunity rather than unity. Yes, the proletariat should lead the national-
ist movement, but in a way that redefines how such nationalism should be
understood. That is, only through a focus on class as an international category
can national aspirations be reconfigured. Already in this article we find the
initial contours of the argument that class unity fosters national diversity.
These contours appear in his defence of some of the positions of the Russian
Social-Democratic platform: civil equality, freedom of language and self-­
government.56 He may argue explicitly that a Marxist focus on class offers a far
better response to the national question, but implicit here is the dialectical
point that class unity fosters national diversity.
The implicitness of that point appears in his attack on federalism, which
already appears in this early piece. Here his opponents are the Armenian
Social-Democrats, who had a distinct interest in a federalist national-cultural
approach due to the dispersed nature of Armenians in the Caucasus. Since the
more sustained criticism of federalism appears in ‘Marxism and the National
Question’, I focus on this criticism here. However, a close examination of
Stalin’s argument reveals an intriguing twist: he may have begun by sharply
opposing the position of the Austrians, some Caucasian Social-Democrats and
especially the Bund, but he then draws nearer to them in some respects, nearer
than he might have anticipated.57 Initially, Stalin argues for a stark difference

56 Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View on the National Question,” 42–46; Stalin, “Kak poni-
maet sotsial-demokratiia natsionalʹnyĭ vopros?” 43–47. See Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party, “The Programme of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party,” in
Marxism in Russia: Key Documents 1879–1906, ed. Neil Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1903 [1983]), 288–93.
57 The following is a careful exegesis, seeking to draw out the philosophical implications, of the
final pages of Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 374–81; Stalin, “Marksizm i
natsionalʹnyĭ vopros,” 360–67. See also I. V. Stalin, “The Seventh (April) Conference of the
R. S. D. L. P. (Bolsheviks), April 24–29, 1917,” in Works, 3 (Moscow: Foreign Languages
Publishing House, 1917 [1953]), 56–57; I. V. Stalin, “Vystupleniia na vii (aprelʹskoĭ) konferentsii

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264 Boer

between the Bolshevik position and that his opponents. The latter sought, as
we have seen, a primary recognition of cultural-national difference in both
party structures and the future socialist state. Thus, the starting point was mul-
tiplicity, which would then form a federation. For Stalin, they began at the
wrong point, with cultural-national autonomy rather than international class
solidarity. A federalist approach ‘substitutes for the socialist principle of the
class struggle the bourgeois “principle of nationality.”’58 Typically, Stalin seeks
to sharpen the opposition in terms of a clear either-or: the first principle is
either the unity of class or the multiplicity of autonomy. One’s starting point
determines a very different path, leading to distinct outcomes. Thus, the Bund’s
approach leads to separatism, while the Bolshevik approach produces unity.
The Bund may have sought unity through federalism, but since it began with
multiplicity, its search for unity would always be of a superficial form, masking
a persistent multiplicity that would eventually lead to separatism.59 For Stalin,
this was analogous to bourgeois movements of national autonomy, albeit ‘skil-
fully masked by socialist phrases’.60
However, if we consider this argument more closely, the difference is not so
sharp. Stalin argues that the path followed by the Bund begins with autonomy,
moves to federalism, which can lead only to separatism and splits among the
workers rather than union. By contrast, Stalin proposes class unity first, which
may then lead to a different type of autonomy and a federalism that avoids
separatism. In short, we may formulate their disagreement as autonomy-­
federalism-separatism versus class-autonomy-federalism-unity. When put in
this way, the difference is less one of stark opposition and more of degree, or
correction. Thus, the Bund’s approach is incomplete without class as the pri-
mary, unifying category. To be sure, for Stalin the reinsertion of class, thereby
correcting the Bund’s argument, has significant consequences. As the first step
on the path, class has a unifying function which affects the remainder of the
sequence. Thus, when we move through autonomy and federalism, we arrive
not at separatism, but at unity. But this is clearly a correction of the Bund’s

rsdrp (bolʹshevikov), 24–29 aprelia 1917 g,” in Sochineniia, 3 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe

izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1917 [1946]), 53–54.
58 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 342; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 330–31. Note pp. 379/365–66.
59 Elsewhere, Stalin uses the analogy of the anatomist, who must have knowledge of the
whole body in order to understand its parts. Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View on the
National Question,” 46–47; Stalin, “Kak ponimaet sotsial-demokratiia natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros?” 47–48.
60 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 342; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 331.

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argument, via the reinsertion of class, rather than two utterly different
arguments.
This partial rapprochement with the Bund at a theoretical level sets the
scene for the argument of a piece from four years later (1917) called ‘Against
Federalism’.61 The initial impression of this article is that Stalin blatantly contra-
dicts himself. He still attacks federalism, but he does so from a very different
and historical perspective. Federalism, he argues, may be appropriate in parts
of the world that sought unity from multiplicity. The United States, Switzerland
and Canada are his examples, where distinct colonies or states entered into fed-
eral relations.62 However, federalism is but a transitional stage, applicable in
some situations, as a mechanism for unity.63 The contrast with his earlier argu-
ment against the Bund should already be clear, for now he recognises that unity
may result from federalism. Aware that he may have endorsed the Bund’s posi-
tion in this article from 1917, he now uses a very different argument against fed-
eralism: in the Russian situation, such an approach is useless. The reason is that
Russia is already a unity (even if it is an imperial unity), so one cannot deploy a
federalist approach unless one breaks Russia into multiple states and then
begins a process of passing to federalism on the way to unity. In making this
historical argument, he tries to hold onto a primary unity, but it is reduced to a
historical argument relating to Russian conditions. Yet, even this effort fades
away in a fascinating endnote to the article, written after the October Revolution.
In this endnote, Stalin acknowledges that changing conditions after the revolu-
tion have led the Bolsheviks to adopt a federalist approach.64 The reason given
is that Russia had actually disintegrated and fragmented during the period of
the revolution and the ‘civil’ war, so much so that it had become a country of
multiple states, which had seceded and become isolated from one another. In
these conditions, federalism was needed to generate unity.65 Once again, class

61 Stalin, “Against Federalism.;” Stalin, “Protiv federalizma.”

62 See also I. V. Stalin, “Organisation of a Russian Federal Republic: Pravda Interview,” in
Works, 4 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1918 [1953]), 68–70; I. V. Stalin,
“Organizatsiia Rossiĭskoĭ Federativnoĭ Respubliki: Beseda s sotrudnikom gazety “Pravda”,”
in Sochineniia, 4 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1918
[1947]), 66–68.
63 See also Stalin, “Organisation of a Russian Federal Republic: Pravda Interview,” 74–75;
Stalin, “Organizatsiia Rossiĭskoĭ Federativnoĭ Respubliki: Beseda s sotrudnikom gazety
“Pravda”,” 72–73.
64 A temporary federalist approach was adopted by the Central Committee in 1918 and at the
eighth congress of 1919. Stalin, “Against Federalism,” 32; Stalin, “Protiv federalizma,” 30.
65 One of the achievements of the Bolsheviks was to re-establish a strong state, albeit quite
different from the tsarist autocracy, and thereby prevent Russia from becoming a

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266 Boer

is crucial, for federalism is designed to bring together the various national work-
ing class groups, who found themselves isolated and out of contact with one
another.
Has Stalin backtracked completely, adopting a federalist approach that was
similar to that of the Bund, the Austrian Marxists and the Armenian Social-
Democrats? Initially, this may seem to be the case, especially with his argu-
ment in ‘Against Federalism’. However, we need to see this argument within his
overall position. First, the overriding emphasis remains on unity. Initially, his
insertion of class as the primary category sought a final unity from autonomy
and federalism. Later, in the context of a fragmented Russia after the October
Revolution, the adoption of a temporary federalism was predicated on the
desire for class unity. One may argue that the Bund, Austrians and Armenians
also sought some form of unity in a federated state, but now the second reason
comes into play: Stalin resolutely insisted on class as the primary category
rather than ‘national-cultural autonomy’. Any form of federation should be
understood from this perspective, and it is the strongest argument against the
culturist position. Third, one may wonder what has happened to diversity,
especially the national-cultural diversity so dear to the Bund and the Austrians.
Has it been thoroughly assimilated under the unitary category of class? Now
we come Stalin’s unwitting dialectical discovery, already implicit in his earliest
reflections: a totalising unity produces hitherto unexpected levels of d­ iversity.66
Let me give a couple of examples: the plethora of languages produced by the
new Soviet state after the revolution and what has been called the ‘affirmative
action’ program of that state.
On the matter of language, Stalin observed in 1925: ‘Until now what has hap-
pened has been that the socialist revolution has not diminished but rather
increased the number of languages; for, by stirring up the lowest sections of

collapsed state. Domenico Losurdo, Stalin: Storia e critica di una leggenda nera, trans.,
Marie-Ange Patrizio (Rome: Carocci editore, 2008).
66 Many simply miss the dialectical nature of this position. George C. Guins, Soviet Law and
Soviet Society (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), 213–25; Richard Pipes, The Formation of the
Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923; Benjamin Pinkus, The Jews of the Soviet
Union: a History of a National Minority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),
50–51;  Martin, “Modernization or Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet
Primordialism;” Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest
Form of Imperialism;” Van Ree, Political Thought, 64, 77–78; Theodore R. Weeks, “Stalinism
and Nationality,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 3 (2005): 567–68.
A notable exception, albeit focused on practical policy issues rather than Stalin’s thought, is
Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “The Dialectics of Nationalism in the ussr,” Problems of
Communism 23, no. 3 (1974).

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Against Culturism 267

humanity and pushing them on to the political arena, it awakens to new life a
number of hitherto unknown or little-known nationalities’. Indeed, the
October Revolution has brought ‘a number of forgotten peoples and nationali-
ties on to the scene’ and given them ‘new life and a new development’.67 Stalin
is not being fanciful here, for the massive project of ‘language construction’
(iazykovoe stroitel’stvo, interchangeably used with ‘language policy’, iazykovaia
politika), which may be understood as the deliberate intervention by society
into the process of language development, did indeed lead to new languages
where none existed before,68 so much so that the new Russian state had no
compulsory official language.69
The second example is really the framework for the previous discussion
of the languages policy, namely, the nature of the ‘affirmative action’ pro-
gram of the Soviet Union.70 This was quite explicitly a program in which
­territories of identifiable nationalities were established, with their own lan-
guages and forms of education, the fostering of literature and cultural expres-
sion, and local forms of governance. As for dispersed minorities, even within
such regions, they were provided with a stiff framework of protections,
including strong penalties for any form of racial denigration and abuse.
Already in 1913 he had prefigured such an approach, specifying among others
‘the Jews in Poland, the Letts in Lithuania, the Russians in the Caucasus, the
Poles in the Ukraine, and so on’.71 They too – in a program of indigenization

67 I. V. Stalin, “The Political Tasks of the University of the Peoples of the East: Speech
Delivered at a Meeting of Students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East,
May 18, 1925,” in Works, 7 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1925 [1954]), 141;
I. V. Stalin, “O politicheskikh zadachakh universiteta narodov Vostoka Rechʹ na sobranii
studentov kutv 18 maia 1925 g,” in Sochineniia, 7 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel´stvo
politicheskoi literatury, 1925 [1952]), 139.
68 Michael Smith, Language and Power, 4; Vladislava Reznik, “Soviet Language Reform:
Practical Polemics Against Idealist Linguistics,” Slovo 15, no. 1 (2003): 34; Yuri Slezkine,
“The Soviet Union as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic
Particularism,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (London: Routledge,
2000), 323–24; Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest
Form of Imperialism,” 67.
69 Stalin, “Organisation of a Russian Federal Republic: Pravda Interview,” 72; Stalin,
“Organizatsiia Rossiĭskoĭ Federativnoĭ Respubliki: Beseda s sotrudnikom gazety “Pravda”,” 70.
70 Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–
1939; Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of
Imperialism.”
71 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 375–76; Stalin, “Marksizm i natsionalʹnyĭ
vopros,” 362.

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268 Boer

(korenizatsiia)72 – should be able to use their own languages, operate their

own schools, law-courts and soviets, and have freedom of conscience in mat-
ters relating to religion. Indeed, by the mid-1930s the Jews too were identified
as a ‘nation’ with territory, having a ‘Soviet Zion, the Jewish Autonomous
Oblast in Birobidzhan, on the border of Heilongjiang Province of China.73
Across the Soviet Union, such programs cost millions and billions of roubles,
leading to the wholesale creation and recreation of cultures (as well as lead-
ing to a whole new range of problems not experienced thus far).74 However,
such a program could never have happened without a strong central state.75

Conclusion

The somewhat surprising conclusion is that Stalin’s theoretical position, in con-

trast to those of the Bund, Austrian and Caucasian Marxists, is – despite its
initial problems – the stronger. The Bundist (and Caucasian) proposal was the
weakest, for it offered a limited program focused on guarantees for cultural dif-
ferences, while Bauer and Renner sought a little more in terms of control over
institutions for the protection of minorities. But the strength of Stalin’s position

72 Korenizatsiia, a term coined by the Bolsheviks, is ‘derived directly not from the stem
koren- (“root”—with the meaning “rooting”) but from its adjectival form korennoi as used
in the phrase korennoi narod (indigenous people)’. The term was coined by the govern-
ment, although Stalin consistently used natsionalizatsiia. Martin, Affirmative Action
Empire, 11–12; “Affirmative Action Empire,” 74.
73 I. V. Stalin, “Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
With amendments adopted by the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Sessions
of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., Kremlin, Moscow, December 5, 1936,” in Works, 14
(London: Red Star Press, 1936 [1978]), article 22; I. V. Stalin, “Konstitutsiia (osnovnoĭ
zakon) soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik (utverzhdena postanovleniem
chrezvychaĭnogo viii s”ezda sovetov soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik ot 5
dekabria 1936 g.),” (Moscow: Garant, 1936 [2015]), stat’ia 22. This importance of this move
(part of Crimea had also been proposed) is rarely recognised, for it was the first move to
Jewish territory on the modern era. A small Jewish community exists today. For some
detail, see Pinkus, 71–76.
74 Slezkine, 322–23.
75 For a study of the immense scholarly effort entailed in the new project of defining and
determining such ‘nationalities’, see Francine Hirsch, “The Soviet Union as a Work-in-
Progress: Ethnographers and the Category Nationality in the 1926, 1937, and 1939
Censuses,” Slavic Review 56, no. 2 (1997); Empire of Nations. On the need for a strong state,
see van Ree, Political Thought, 136–54. Suny (Revenge of the Past, 97–98) notes this feature,
but attributes it to subsequent theorists and not to Stalin.

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Against Culturism 269

arises from his emphasis on class and unity in dealing with the national ques-
tion, leading to the production of regional autonomy and recognition of dis-
persed minorities. Thus, it was not so much a question of either class or nation,
as Stalin himself tended to frame the problem, but of class and nation. This was
not a compromise by a Marxist internationalist in light of the persistence of
nationalism, but a different way of dealing with the national question gener-
ated out of a Marxist approach and Stalin’s direct experience in the Caucasus.
But why surprising? Stalin’s initial definition of the nation did not provide
much hope of a stronger position, precisely because of its problems. However,
in his efforts to tackle the culturist position of the Austrians, Bund and
Caucasians, he developed his emphasis on class and unity, thereby leading to a
dialectic of which he was perhaps only half aware, a dialectic in which totalis-
ing unity produced an even greater diversity of ‘national cultures’.
Stalin’s unexpected dialectical breakthrough has a number of ramifica-
tions, on which I can only touch here. Dealing with nationalities via class
became the model for other socialist states in Eastern Europe, most notably
with the diverse peoples of Yugoslavia. And it is the basis of Chinese minori-
ties policies today, modified and developed in a different context for fostering
the more than fifty minorities. Further, Stalin’s theoretical argument chal-
lenges the persistence of culturist approaches in our time, in which the amor-
phous ‘culture’ becomes a catch-all category for characterising behaviour,
beliefs, temperament and indeed clashes (as with post-communist Eastern
Europe). The core of that challenge lies not so much in questions of territory
or language, but in the issue of economic history and above all in the dynam-
ics of class.

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