Stalin about nation and language. Stalin's definition of the term "nation" Stalin's definition of a nation - what happened then

Chapter 3. Stalin of the people and Stalin of the intelligentsia There is some kind of popular image of Stalin, very far from the image of both foreigners and the Russian intelligentsia. V. Sorokin Stalin’s coup cannot be understood without taking into account the fact that both in the revolution of 1917–1922 and later the Russian people

Chapter 5 Stalin and the war “Ignored” warnings Vorontsov’s report German defector Executed generals of the Red Army Stalin’s “Prostration” in the first days of the war Stalin is a “worthless” commander 1942: disaster near Kharkov

The period of counter-revolution in Russia brought not only “thunder and lightning,” but also disappointment in the movement and disbelief in the general forces. They believed in a “bright future” - and people fought together, regardless of nationality: common issues come first! Doubt crept into the soul, and people began to disperse to their national apartments: let everyone rely only on themselves! “National problem” first of all!

At the same time, a serious disruption of economic life was taking place in the country. The year 1905 was not in vain: the remnants of the serfdom in the village received another blow. A series of harvests after the famines and the industrial boom that followed propelled capitalism forward. Differentiation in the countryside and the growth of cities, the development of trade and communications took a major step forward. This is especially true in the suburbs. But this could not help but speed up the process of economic consolidation of the nationalities of Russia. The latter had to set in motion...

The “constitutional regime” established during this time acted in the same direction of awakening nationalities. The growth of newspapers and literature in general, some freedom of the press and cultural institutions, the growth of folk theaters, etc., no doubt contributed to the strengthening of “national feelings.” The Duma, with its election campaign and political groups, provided new opportunities for the revitalization of nations, a new broad arena for the mobilization of the latter.

And the wave of militant nationalism that rose from above, a whole series of repressions on the part of the “those in power” taking revenge on the outskirts for their “love of freedom”, caused a response wave of nationalism from below, sometimes turning into crude chauvinism. The strengthening of Zionism among Jews, growing chauvinism in Poland, pan-Islamism among Tatars, strengthening of nationalism among Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians, the general bias of the average person towards anti-Semitism - all these are well-known facts.

The wave of nationalism was advancing more and more, threatening to overwhelm the working masses. And the more the liberation movement declined, the more magnificent the flowers of nationalism bloomed.

At this difficult moment, Social Democracy had a high mission - to fight back against nationalism, to protect the masses from the general “craze”. For Social Democracy, and only it, could do this by contrasting nationalism with the proven weapon of internationalism, the unity and indivisibility of the class struggle. And the stronger the wave of nationalism approached, the louder the voice of Social Democracy should have been heard for the brotherhood and unity of the proletarians of all nationalities in Russia. At the same time, special resilience was required from the outlying Social Democrats who were directly confronted with the nationalist movement.

But not all Social Democrats were up to the task, and above all, the Social Democrats on the outskirts. The Bund, which had previously emphasized general objectives, now began to highlight its own special, purely nationalistic goals: it came to the point that it declared “celebration of the Sabbath” and “recognition of jargon” as the fighting point of its election campaign. The Bund was followed by the Caucasus: one part of the Caucasian Social Democrats, who previously, together with the rest of the Caucasian Social-Democrats, denied. “cultural-national autonomy”, now puts it forward as another demand. We are not even talking about the liquidators' conference, which diplomatically sanctioned nationalist vacillations.

But it follows from this that the views of Russian Social-Democracy on the national question are not yet for everyone the Social-Democrats. are clear.

A serious and comprehensive discussion of the national question is obviously necessary. We need the united and tireless work of consistent Social Democrats against the nationalist fog, no matter where it comes from.

What's happened nation?

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is neither racial nor tribal. The present Italian nation was formed from the Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was formed from the Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, etc. The same must be said about the English* Germans and others formed in the nation from people of different races and tribes.

So, a nation is not racial or tribal, but a historically established community of people.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that disintegrated and united depending on the successes or defeats of one or another conqueror.

So, a nation is not a random or ephemeral conglomerate, but a stable community of people.

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. How does a national community differ from a state community? Incidentally, the fact that a national community is unthinkable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence of a number of languages ​​within them. We are, of course, talking about vernacular languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - community of language

This does not mean, of course, that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages ​​for different nations! There is no nation that speaks different languages ​​at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The English and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the English and the Irish,

But why, for example, do the British and North Americans not form one nation, despite their common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long-term and regular communication, as a result of people living together from generation to generation. A long-term living together impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans formerly inhabited one territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved from England to a new territory, to America, and here, on the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. Community of territory in itself does not give rise to a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection that unites individual parts of the nation into one whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two different nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not interconnected into an economic whole thanks to the division of labor between them, the development of communications, etc.

Nations, diasporas, individuals, multinational culture - multinational society

Stalin's definition of the term “nation”

The definition that has become almost generally accepted in the science of the USSR and the post-Soviet Russian Federation nations as social phenomenon gave by I.V. Stalin in his work “Marxism and the National Question”. Let us present in full section I of the named work, entitled “Nation”, and not just the formulation of Stalin’s definition of this term, since the formulation represents the result - captured in the text-dialectical procedure of cognition: asking questions and finding answers to them in real life , and everyone needs to master dialectics in order to become free.

“What is a nation?

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is neither racial nor tribal. The current Italian nation was formed from Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was formed from Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, etc. The same must be said about the British, Germans and others, who formed into a nation from people of different races and tribes.

So, a nation is not racial or tribal, but historically established community of people.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that disintegrated and united depending on the successes or defeats of one or another conqueror.

So, a nation is not an accidental or ephemeral conglomerate, but stable community of people.

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. How does a national community differ from a state community? Incidentally, the fact that a national community is unthinkable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence of a number of languages ​​within them. We are, of course, talking about colloquial languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - community of language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

This does not mean, of course, that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages ​​for different nations! There is no nation that speaks different languages ​​at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The British and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the English and the Irish.

But why, for example, do the British and North Americans not form one nation, despite their common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long-term and regular communication, as a result of people living together from generation to generation. And long-term life together is impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans formerly inhabited one territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved from England to a new territory, to America, and here, on the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. Community of territory in itself does not give rise to a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection that unites individual parts of the nation into one whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two different nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not interconnected into an economic whole thanks to the division of labor between them, the development of communications, etc.

Take the Georgians, for example. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities separated from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they lived among themselves wars and ruined each other, pitting the Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and random unification of the principalities, which sometimes some lucky king managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking down due to the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not have been otherwise given the economic fragmentation of Georgia... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the country’s economic life, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established a division of labor between the regions of Georgia and completely undermined the economic isolation principalities and tied them into one.

The same must be said about other nations that went through the stage of feudalism and developed capitalism.

So, community of economic life, economic connectivity, as one of characteristic features nation.

But that's not all. In addition to all that has been said, one must also take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual appearance of the people united in a nation. Nations differ from each other not only in their living conditions, but also in their spiritual appearance, expressed in the characteristics of their national culture. If England, North America and Ireland, who speak the same language, nonetheless constitute three different nations, then no small role in this is played by the peculiar mental make-up that has developed in them from generation to generation as a result of unequal conditions of existence.

Of course, the mental makeup itself, or - as it is otherwise called - “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, common nation, - it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, “national character” does not represent something given once and for all, but changes along with living conditions, but since it exists in every this moment, - he puts his stamp on the face of the nation.

So, community of mentality, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.

The definition that has become almost generally accepted in the science of the USSR and the post-Soviet Russian Federation nation as a social phenomenon gave by I.V. Stalin in his work “Marxism and the National Question”. Let us present in full section I of the named work, entitled “Nation”, and not just the formulation of Stalin’s definition of this term, since the formulation represents the result - captured in the text—dialectical procedure of cognition: asking questions and finding answers to them in real life , and everyone needs to master dialectics in order to become free.

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is neither racial nor tribal. The current Italian nation was formed from Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was formed from Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, etc. The same must be said about the British, Germans and others, who formed into a nation from people of different races and tribes.

So, a nation is not racial or tribal, but historically established community of people .

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that disintegrated and united depending on the successes or defeats of one or another conqueror.

So, a nation is not an accidental or ephemeral conglomerate, but stable community of people .

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. How does a national community differ from a state community? Incidentally, the fact that a national community is unthinkable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence of a number of languages ​​within them. We are, of course, talking about colloquial languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - community of language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

This does not mean, of course, that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages ​​for different nations! There is no nation that speaks different languages ​​at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The British and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the English and the Irish.

But why, for example, do the British and North Americans not form one nation, despite their common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long-term and regular communication, as a result of people living together from generation to generation. And long-term life together is impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans formerly inhabited one territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved from England to a new territory, to America, and here, on the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. Community of territory in itself does not give rise to a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection that unites individual parts of the nation into one whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two different nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not interconnected into an economic whole thanks to the division of labor between them, the development of communications, etc.

Take the Georgians, for example. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities separated from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they lived among themselves wars and ruined each other, pitting the Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and random unification of the principalities, which sometimes some lucky king managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking down due to the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not have been otherwise given the economic fragmentation of Georgia... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the country’s economic life, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established a division of labor between the regions of Georgia and completely undermined the economic isolation principalities and tied them into one.

The same must be said about other nations that went through the stage of feudalism and developed their own.

So, community of economic life, economic connectivity, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that's not all. In addition to all that has been said, one must also take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual appearance of the people united in a nation. Nations differ from each other not only in their living conditions, but also in their spiritual appearance, expressed in the characteristics of their national culture. If England, North America and Ireland, who speak the same language, nonetheless constitute three different nations, then no small role in this is played by the peculiar mental make-up that has developed in them from generation to generation as a result of unequal conditions of existence.

Of course, the mental makeup itself, or - as it is otherwise called - “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of the culture, the common nation, it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, “national character” is not something given once and for all, but changes along with the conditions of life, but since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.

So, community of mentality, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.

A nation is a historically established stable community of people that arose on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and mental makeup, manifested in a common culture.

At the same time, it is self-evident that a nation, like any historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its own history, beginning and end.

It must be emphasized that none of these characteristics, taken separately, is sufficient to define a nation. Moreover: the absence of at least one of these signs is enough for a nation to cease to be a nation.

It is possible to imagine people with a common “national character” and yet it cannot be said that they constitute one nation if they are economically separated, live in different territories, speak different languages, etc. These are, for example, Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and mountain Jews, not constituting, in our opinion, a single nation.

One can imagine people with a common territory and economic life, and yet they will not form one nation without a common language and “national character.” Such are, for example, the Germans and Latvians in the Baltic region.

Finally, Norwegians and Danes speak the same language, but they do not constitute one nation due to the absence of other characteristics.

Only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation.

It may seem that “national character” is not one of the characteristics, but only an essential feature of a nation, and all other features constitute, in fact, conditions development of the nation, and not its signs. This point of view is held, for example, by the well-known Social-Democrats in Austria. theorists of the national question R. Springer and, especially, O. Bauer

Let us consider their theory of the nation.

According to Springer, “a nation is a union of people who think alike and speak alike.” This is “the cultural community of a group of modern people, not connected with the “earth” ( italics ours ).

So - a “union” of people who think and speak the same way, no matter how separated they are from each other, no matter where they live.

“What is a nation? he asks. — Is it a common language that unites people into a nation? But the English and the Irish... speak the same language, but do not represent a single people; Jews do not have a common language at all and nevertheless constitute a nation.” .

So what is a nation?

“A nation is a relative community of character” .

But what is character, in this case, national character?

National character is “the sum of characteristics that distinguish people of one nationality from people of another nationality, a complex of physical and spiritual qualities that distinguishes one nation from another.” .

Bauer, of course, knows that national character does not fall from the sky, and therefore he adds:

“The character of people is determined by nothing other than their fate,” that ... “a nation is nothing more than a community of fate,” which in turn is determined by “the conditions under which people produce the means of their subsistence and distribute the products of their labor.” .

Thus, we have arrived at the most “complete,” as Bauer puts it, definition of a nation.

“A nation is the entire collection of people united in a community of character on the basis of a community of fate” .

So, a community of national character based on a community of fate, taken without any obligatory connection with the community of territory, language and economic life.

But what remains in this case of the nation? What kind of national community can we talk about among people who are economically separated from each other, living in different territories and speaking different languages ​​from generation to generation?

Bauer speaks of Jews as a nation, although “they do not have a common language at all,” but what kind of “common destiny” and national coherence can we talk about, for example, among Georgian, Dagestan, Russian and American Jews, completely divorced from each other? friends living in different territories and speaking different languages?

The Jews mentioned, no doubt, live a common economic and political life with the Georgians, Dagestanis, Russians and Americans, in a common cultural atmosphere; this cannot but leave its stamp on their national character; if they have anything left in common, it is their common origin and some remnants of national character. All this is certain. But how can one seriously say that ossified religious rituals and eroding psychological remains influence the “fate” of the mentioned Jews more than the living socio-economic and cultural environment surrounding them? But only with such an assumption can one speak of Jews in general as a single nation.

How then does Bauer’s nation differ from the mystical and self-sufficient “national spirit” of the spiritualists?

Bauer draws an impassable line between “ distinctive feature” of the nation (national character) and the “conditions” of their life, separating them from each other. But what is national character if not a reflection of living conditions, if not a bunch of impressions received from the environment? How can one limit oneself to national character alone, isolating and separating it from the soil that gave birth to it?

Then, how, in fact, did the English nation differ from the North American nation at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, when North America was still called “New England”? Certainly not a national character: for the North Americans were immigrants from England, they took with them to America, in addition to the English language, an English national character and, of course, could not lose it so quickly, although under the influence of new conditions they , must have developed its own special character. And yet, despite their greater or lesser commonality of character, they already constituted a nation separate from England!

Obviously, “New England” as a nation differed then from England as a nation not in its special national character, or not so much in its national character, but in its special environment and living conditions from England.

Thus, it is clear that in reality there is no single distinctive feature of a nation. There is only a sum of characteristics, of which, when comparing nations, one characteristic (national character), then another (language), then a third (territory, economic conditions) stands out more clearly. A nation represents a combination of all characteristics taken together.

Bauer's point of view, which identifies the nation with the national character, tears the nation away from the soil and turns it into some kind of invisible, self-sufficient force. The result is not a nation, alive and active, but something mystical, elusive and beyond the grave. For, I repeat, what kind of Jewish nation is this, for example, consisting of Georgian, Dagestan, Russian, American and other Jews, whose members do not understand each other (they speak different languages), live in different parts the globe, will never see each other, will never act together, neither in peace nor in war?!

No, it is not for such paper “nations” that Social Democracy draws up its national program. It can only take into account real nations, acting and moving, and therefore forcing themselves to be taken into account.

Bauer is obviously mixing nation, being a historical category, with tribe, which is an ethnographic category.

However, Bauer himself apparently senses the weakness of his position. Having decisively declared at the beginning of his book about the Jews as a nation, Bauer corrects himself at the end of the book, asserting that “capitalism generally does not allow them (the Jews) to survive as a nation,” assimilating them with other nations. The reason, it turns out, is that “the Jews do not have a closed colonization area,” while such an area exists, for example, among the Czechs, who, according to Bauer, must survive as a nation. In short: the reason is the lack of territory.

By reasoning this way, Bauer wanted to prove that national autonomy could not be a demand of the Jewish workers, but he thereby inadvertently overturned his own theory, which denies community of territory as one of the signs of a nation.

But Bauer goes further. At the beginning of his book he states emphatically that “the Jews have no general language and nevertheless constitute a nation.” But before he had time to reach page one hundred and thirty, he had already changed front, declaring just as decisively: “there is no doubt that no nation is possible without a common language”(emphasis added).

Bauer here wanted to prove that “language is the most important tool of human communication,” but at the same time he inadvertently proved something that he did not intend to prove, namely: the inconsistency of his own theory of the nation, which denies the importance of a common language.

This is how the theory stitched together with idealistic threads refutes itself” (I.V. Stalin. Works, vol. 2, Moscow, 1946, pp. 292 - 303).

In the full text of the given section of the article the definition of a nation given by J.V. Stalin appears as having a basis in the historical process, and not simply as a declarative definition of a term in which subjectivism is expressed, which can be contrasted with another subjectivism with claims to the ultimate truth. This is the advantage of I.V. Stalin’s definition, and this is what distinguishes it from other definitions of the term “nation”.

The Stalinist definition of a nation was an official scientific definition in the USSR and in post-Stalin times, although, when citing this definition or stylistically reworking it, the work of I.V. Stalin “Marxism and the National Question” after the XX Congress of the CPSU was in most cases not referred to (in addition it, like all other works of I.V. Stalin, was not reprinted and was withdrawn from public access in libraries). Actually, the same signs of a nation that J.V. Stalin gives in his definition are given in the modern school textbook of “social studies” edited by L.N. Bogolyubov (vol. 2, “Man and Society” - a textbook for 10 - 11 classes, M., “Enlightenment”, ed. 8, 2003), although they are not reduced to a strict definition of the term “nation”: the historical nature of the formation of nations (p. 316, paragraph 2), language ( ibid., p. 316, paragraph 3), common territory and economic connectivity (ibid., p. 316, paragraph 5), common culture (ibid., pp. 316, 317), in which national character is expressed and thanks to which national character is reproduced in the continuity of generations (although the textbook leaves the question of national character and national psychology in silence).

But in the work of I.V. Stalin “Marxism and the National Question”, due to various objective and subjective reasons, topics are not considered, an adequate understanding of which is necessary for the harmonization of national relations in multinational societies:

The lack of adequate coverage of the above-mentioned problems by the sociological science of the USSR is one of the reasons why the process of formation of a new historical community, called the “Soviet people,” was interrupted, and national conflicts played a significant role in the deliberate destruction of the USSR by foreign policy forces. And this is one of the threats to the territorial integrity of post-Soviet Russia and the well-being of its peoples.

A few months later, the Prime Minister of Great Britain also joined the opinion of the German Chancellor. “British Prime Minister David Cameron was accused of indulging far-right organizations - British anti-fascists, Muslims and oppositionists criticized the politician for the Munich speech. The day before, from the podium of a security conference, he announced the failure of the multicultural policy. Within a few hours, a massive anti-Islamic demonstration took place in the city of Luton, reports Echo of Moscow "(Cameron announced that the multicultural policy had failed. We need to show our muscles": http://www.newsru.com/world/06feb2011/kemeron.html ).

Then French President Nicolas Sarkozy joined them:

“We worried too much about the identity of the people coming into our country, but not enough about the identity of our own country that received them,” he said last Thursday<10.02.2010>in a television interview and directly called the policy of multiculturalism unsuccessful.

“Of course we should all respect differences, but we do not want... a society consisting of separate communities existing side by side. If you come to live in France, you must agree to dissolve, as in a melting pot, in a single society, namely in national society, and if you don’t want to accept this, you won’t be able to be a welcome guest in France” (...)

Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel and former prime ministers Australia and Spain John Howard and Jose Maria Aznar" (http://www.newsru.com/world/11feb2011/sarkozy.html).

The Dutch went the furthest. “The Dutch government has said it intends to abandon the old model of multiculturalism, which encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society in the Netherlands.

The new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, states: “The government shares public dissatisfaction with the multicultural model of society and plans to shift towards preserving the values ​​of the Dutch people.

With the new system integration, the values ​​of Dutch society will play a central role. In connection with this change, the government is abandoning the model of a multicultural society” (“Hudson New York”, USA - June 23, 2011; “The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism”; http://perevodika.ru/articles/18983.html) .

In Norway, politicians did not make official statements regarding the collapse of multiculturalism, but on July 22, 2011, a member of the Masonic lodge of St. Olaf Anders Behring Breivik (holder of the 7th degree of initiation - “Knight of the East”, was a member of the supreme chapter of the lodge; after the terrorist attack, “bros” announced the expulsion of Breivik from the box) staged an explosion in the government quarter of Oslo and opened fire at the youth camp of the ruling workers' party on the island of Utøya. The attacks killed 77 people.

But a lot says that Breivik is not a crazy loner, but has taken sole legal responsibility for a certain “brigade” and acts as its mouthpiece. This is supported by the fact that, according to what was shown in the first television reports from the scene of the tragedy on the island of Utøya, the bodies of many of the dead lay on the shore in places that were poorly visible from the heights of the island because of bushes, etc. This gave the impression that they, having run away from Breivik, who was shooting on the island, tried to leave the island by swimming, but already on the way to the water’s edge they were killed by shots fired from a boat or from the other shore. In addition, in 2011, there were reports on the Internet that Breivik was supervised by the British MI5 and the CIA. And in August 2012, the results of an official investigation into the activities of government agencies were announced, according to which the police did not take timely measures to neutralize Breivik and demands were made to release Breivik and threats were made against Norwegian officials on behalf of the “Templar Order.”

In his speech at the trial on April 17, 2012, Breivik stated: “I stand here as a representative of the Norwegian, European, anti-communist and anti-Islamic opposition movement: the Norwegian-European Resistance Movement. And also as a representative of the Templars. I speak on behalf of many Norwegians, Scandinavians, Europeans who do not want to be deprived of their rights as an indigenous ethnic group, do not want to be deprived of cultural and territorial rights. (...) we have the right to ask two very important questions to politicians, journalists, scientists and public figures. First question: Do you think it is undemocratic that the Norwegian people never had the opportunity to hold a referendum on turning the country into a multi-ethnic and multicultural state? Is it undemocratic to turn to your own citizens for advice? Second question: Is it democratic to never ask the citizens of one’s own country whether they are willing to welcome African and Asian refugees into their homes, and indeed, to turn native citizens into a minority in one’s own country?” (http://pavel-slob.livejournal.com/515445.html ; http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/971021?PARENT_RUBR=wc_social&PARENT_ORDER=-WRITTEN%2C-PUBLISHED)

From this it can be understood that multiculturalism, if it has not failed in Norway, is opposed to it, as elsewhere in Europe, by a fair share of the indigenous population; and there are reasons for this in the statistically massive behavior of aliens from different cultures and their descendants.

“Theory of the Nation” by I. Stalin and its influence

on domestic ethnology [*]

The text presented to the reader’s attention is actually a continuation of the article devoted to the “Leninist contribution” to the creation of the so-called “Marxist theory of the nation.” In this case, we will talk about the development of this theory in the works of I. Stalin. We have already written that in a certain sense we can talk about the “undivided co-authorship” of the leaders of the world proletariat in creating the definition of “nation” and formulating a number of ideologies that had such a detrimental effect on the formation and development of national science. It was also said that, despite a significant number of Lenin’s articles, to one degree or another touching on “national” issues, in Russian historiography the opinion was firmly established that “a holistic theory of the nation was first presented in I. Stalin’s article “The National Question and Social democracy"". (The article was included in the collected works of I. Stalin under the title “Marxism and the National Question”). It was thanks to the propaganda efforts of V. Lenin that this work was canonized and very quickly “received the status of a classic work that substantiated the theory and program guidelines of Bolshevism on the national issue.” Subsequently, J. Stalin himself zealously ensured that no one doubted his priority in the development of the “theory of the nation.” It is known that in 1933 he gave E. Yaroslavsky written instructions to reflect in the notorious “Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” the significance of his own theoretical research in a special section “Stalin and the National Question”.

On the contrary, V. Lenin in no way claimed to create his own “theory of the nation” and willingly resorted to the authority of K. Kautsky in his articles. It was him (for the time being!) that he considered the most competent author among Marxist publicists who wrote on the topic that interests us, and he did not quite justifiably contrast his views on the nature of the nation with the views of O. Bauer and R. Springer (the latter two authors were not liked by V. Lenin, due to the political situation, and were perceived by him as opponents of K. Kautsky.) It was due to the latter circumstance that the erroneous point of view took hold in Soviet historiography, according to which “O. Bauer and K. Kautsky proposed two mutually exclusive definitions of this concept.”

We consider it useful to recall this, since the ideas of the named “Austro-Marxists” about the nation and their definition of this concept formed the basis of the Stalinist “theory of the nation” and, above all, the basis of the Stalinist definition generally accepted in Soviet historiography.

The fact of plagiarism, as well as the eclecticism of Stalin’s definition, was repeatedly noted by both Russian and foreign researchers. Y. Semenov emphasizes that in the first two sections of his article, I. Stalin “even stylistically “used” the works of K. Kautsky...” Semenov was the first to substantiate the conclusion about the compilative nature of Stalin’s definition: “K. Kautsky... as the most important feature of a nation, pointed out, first of all, a common language, then a common territory, emphasizing that the basis for the emergence of a nation is the development of capitalism... In the same exact order, the features of a nation are presented in the work... The three indicated features of a nation are supplemented by a fourth , this time borrowed from the work of O. Bauer, - a community of national character, which he calls mental makeup.” Stalin's borrowings from K. Kautsky were noted in their works by R. Medvedev, M. Kryukov, R. Tucker. The fact that I. Stalin in his article “summarized some of the ideas of the Austro-Marxists” was stated by S. Sokolovsky.

How did I. Stalin enrich scientific ideas about the nation?

First of all, let us turn to Stalin’s definition of the social phenomenon that interests us. More precisely, to two Stalinist definitions, proposed at different times and very different in nature.

The first definition was given in the article “The National Question and Social Democracy,” first published in the journal Prosveshcheniye in 1913 (it was subsequently reproduced in a number of reprints of this work). According to this definition, “a nation is a historically established stable community of language, territory, economic life and mental makeup, manifested in a community of culture.”

So, a nation is a kind of community. "Community" in metaphysical sense there is a category of joint existence or interaction, in sociological sense- a group of people. We will try to interpret the Stalinist understanding of the nation in one and the other context. Can we imagine being together, the interaction of language, territory, economy and mental makeup? Whose mental make-up or language? Of people? But in the metaphysical understanding of the word “community” they are completely absent. (Yu. Semenov rightly noted back in 1966 that in this Stalinist “formulation there is not even an indication that a nation is nothing more than a certain community of people”). How can language (a means of communication, a sign system) and territory (the soil delineated by a border) interact? What is the commonality of their existence? On the contrary, in the sociological understanding of this lexical unit people (a group of people) are present, but the grammatical construction of the Stalinist definition of a nation excludes such an interpretation of the word “community”. Otherwise, we will get: “...a stable group of people of language, territory, economic life and mental makeup...” and the phrase will generally lose all meaning.

Probably, the clumsiness of the wording was noticed by the IML staff who were preparing the publication of the second volume of the leader’s works. Perhaps I. Stalin himself suddenly realized the inconsistency of his own definition, but the fact is that in the text of the article “Marxism and the National Question”, published in the collected works, we have a different edition of it.

Now a “nation” appears as “a historically established stable community of people that arose on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and mental makeup, manifested in a common culture.” Paradoxically, the changes made did not improve the style of the definition or make it clearer.

Yes, now we know that a nation is still people, a human multitude. But when we try to understand “on the basis” of what this community of people was formed, we again return to the absurdity of the original edition of Stalin’s definition. From the definition it follows that a certain community of people coexists with some other community of phenomena, which by their nature simply cannot constitute a community.

This circumstance has long been pointed out by Yu. Semenov: “In this formulation... attention is drawn to the fact that the community of people is placed on a par with the community of language, the community of territory, the community of economic life, the community of mental makeup... It is unusually clear that all these characteristics were understood not as certain communities of people (linguistic, territorial...) and not as a moment of community of people, but as phenomena that, although they do not exist without people... but, nevertheless, represent something independent.” And then, quite rightly, he notes that “essentially in this case we are dealing not with a different formulation of the same definition of a nation, but with a new definition of it... that the community of language, territory, etc. does not form the nation itself, but how this followed from the first option, but only the basis on which a nation arises as a kind of superstructure, that they are not its components, elements. The question is, what arose on the basis of a common language, territory, etc., what is... a nation as a specific social phenomenon? We do not find an answer to this question.”

True, already on the next page I. Stalin gives the following commentary on the definition of a nation. “It must be emphasized that none of the above signs taken alone is not sufficient to define a nation. Moreover, the absence of at least one of these signs is enough for a nation to cease to be a nation... Only the presence of all signs, taken together gives us a nation." (We note in parentheses that V. Lenin, apparently, did not share the Stalinist idea that the absence of at least one of the listed features deprives a nation of its social self. Agreeing with K. Kautsky that territory is an essential feature of a nation , he, however, wrote about “nations with territory” and “nations without territory.” M. Kryukov notes this fact in his article.

So, language, territory, economy, mental makeup and culture are, according to I. Stalin, acting signs nation. The construction of these features in his canonized work became a stumbling block for Russian ethnology. In fact, by extrapolating the Stalinist definition of nation to the definition of “ethnos,” Soviet ethnographers allowed themselves to be drawn into a methodological dead end. Theoretical thought wandered in search of confirmation of the legitimacy of isolating these signs or finding new ones (which in itself was already audacity!). It was a disaster for Russian science, which turned into epistemological sterility.

The fact is that each of the named characteristics (except for the psychological make-up) in itself, “taken separately” serves as an immanent sign of actually distinguishable communities - local, linguistic, cultural, economic. Taken together, they continue to characterize individual communities, but do not allow us to clearly identify a new, essentially special one. Among the identified features, one is missing - one that would allow us to differentiate a nation as a special type of social community. Yu. Semenov wrote about this: “We know what a linguistic, territorial, economic, cultural community of people, taken individually, is. What do they represent taken together? When linguistic, territorial, economic communities of people overlap each other, do they together form something single, does a qualitatively new phenomenon arise that cannot be reduced to the sum of its components? If the answer is negative, it makes no sense to talk about the emergence of a new community of people - a national one; in the case of a positive one, the question again arises: what is the essence of this phenomenon, what type of phenomena does it belong to, what is its place among social phenomena?.... The general lack of them (definitions similar to Stalin’s. – V.F.) is that they are all eclectic. Without expressing the essence of nations, they do not make it possible to separate this phenomenon from the rest, to draw a qualitative line between this and all the others.”

A. Elez, arguing with A. Kuznetsov regarding the signs of an ethnic community (recall that all of the listed signs were a priori interpreted by Soviet ethnographers as ethnic, and the nation as a stage of development of an ethnic community; the legitimacy of such an interpretation is discussed below), writes the following. “Does A. Kuznetsov know... the defining feature of an ethnic community? If yes, why is it not listed? If not, then in this case not a single one proposed kit signs (even if there are only two of them) cannot be considered justified: where is the logical proof of the scientific expediency of exactly such combinations of features to isolate a certain number of objects? Let's say, does it make sense... to isolate a group of objects if the rigid set of identification criteria includes hair color, profession, gender, and, in addition, the burial place of the great-grandmother. And where is the guarantee that humanity can be more or less exhaustively divided into such absurd groups? If a combination of three characteristics is not proposed according to logic, not on the basis of some information available to the author concepts about the subject, and on the basis empirical presence something like an ethnic community, then this is generally a methodological absurdity...” Everything that has been said can be fully attributed to the methodological expediency of isolating the characteristics of a group on the basis of the empirical presence of something like the Stalinist “nation” (although A. Elez himself does not agree with the legitimacy of such an attribution).

Now, about “the commonality of mental makeup, which is reflected in the commonality of culture, as one of the characteristic features of a nation.” How does the author of the definition we are interested in understand this attribute of the nation? He believes that “nations differ from each other not only in living conditions, but also in spiritual appearance, expressed in the peculiarities of national culture... no small role is played... by the peculiar mental makeup... or as it is also called differently - national character", which "is to the observer something elusive, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, common nation (!? – V.F.), - it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.”

So, this is a sign of a nation for the observer elusive, however, it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture. How does he do this, what exactly does he do? perceptible, I. Stalin does not tell us.

We build a synonymous series designed to determine the essence of a given attribute of a “nation”: spiritual appearance - mental makeup - national character - something elusive. We are ready to agree immediately and unconditionally that this is “something elusive”. Everything else is puzzling. Let us immediately discard the “spiritual appearance” as a kind of figure of speech more suitable for a Sunday sermon than for conceptualizing complex social phenomena. We only know that the spiritual is immaterial, but we cannot imagine what the immaterial appearance, or the appearance of the spirit, is. “National character” will also clarify little for us, since here we are dealing with a logical circle in the definition. To understand what national character is, you need to know what a nation is, and in order to understand what a nation is, you need to know what national character is. (In the future, we will encounter this vicious circle in numerous definitions of “ethnic group,” among the attributes of which the presence of “ethnic self-awareness” is certainly indicated.)

Rejecting O. Bauer’s ideas about “national character,” I. Stalin concretizes his own vision of this social phenomenon. “But what is national character if not a reflection of living conditions, if not a bunch of impressions, derived from the environment? How can one limit oneself to national character alone, isolating and separating it from the soil that gave birth to it? This specification makes the definition of national character even less clear. Do we have any reason to believe that individuals with different “national” identities, living dispersedly in the same “environment”, on the same “soil”, experience different “impressions” from the perception of the environment? How does “soil” give rise to any kind of “character”, even if not “national”? What do “impressions” have to do with character?

Character is nothing more than a set of stable individual characteristics of a person; There are and cannot be any supra-individual, extra-personal characters. No individual - no character. If this is so, then by national character, apparently, one should understand the character inherent in all individuals who make up a nation and thus differ from individuals belonging to another nation. No matter how we understand this social phenomenon, it is difficult to accept the last statement.

The Stalinist myth of “national character” later became a breeding ground for the cultivation of pseudo-scientific reasoning that “the character of an ethnic group is not the sum of the characters of its individual representatives, but a fixation of the typical traits that are present.” to varying degrees and in different combinations in a significant number individuals." But how can a criterion (distinctive) feature of a community be a feature that breaks down into various features, which, in turn, to “different degrees”, “in different combinations” are not manifested in everyone, but only in a “significant part” of individuals? , belonging to this community!?

Having finished with the signs, I. Stalin informs the reader that “a nation is not racial or tribal, but a historically established community of people.” The use of the adversative conjunction “a” seems inappropriate here. What does “historically established” mean? It is likely that the community develops over a certain historical period, in other words, over some more or less long time. (Stalin explains it this way: “Every historical phenomenon is subject to the law of change, has its own history, beginning and end”). The conjunction "a" can only mean that the race or tribe is denied this. I. Stalin reproaches O. Bauer for “confusing the nation, which is historical category, with the tribe being the category ethnographic" In the context of ideas about “historical phenomena,” it seems strange that there is no desire to consider “tribe” a historical category. Perhaps I. Stalin differentiated categories according to their disciplinary affiliation? But in this case, it should be borne in mind that scientific categories of a high degree of abstraction reveal the essence of phenomena and are interpreted uniformly in all social sciences, regardless of the subject area in which of them this category is in demand. May be, we're talking about that the tribe, as a primitive community, does not participate in the historical process, cannot be the subject of attention of historians, and is doomed to be of only ethnographic interest?

It can be assumed that, speaking about a historically formed nation, I. Stalin had in mind a civil nation formed during the period of bourgeois revolutions? Nothing like this. Strictly speaking, there is no need to specifically prove this. I. Stalin himself very unequivocally speaks out in favor of the fact that the national community is different from the state. He asks a rhetorical question: “What is different community national from the community state?”, and gives an unexpected answer: “ By the way, by the fact that a national community is unthinkable without a common language, while a common language is not obligatory for a state.” At the same time, he hastens to clarify that “we are, of course, talking about popularly-colloquial languages, and not about official clerical ones.” Thus, a distinction is made between the state (official clerical) and “folklore” (popular spoken) languages. Let us pay attention to the word “national”, which we should apparently read as a synonym for the word “national” in the Stalinist understanding (or misunderstanding) of this word (from the context it is clear that we are not talking about the people as the population of a given territory, or as civil nation, or as about common people).

So, language, “by the way”... This means that there are other, other differences between the Stalinist interpretation of the “nation” and the understanding of it as co-citizenship. He himself is silent about these differences, but for us it is important to note that in the works of I. Stalin we are not talking about a political, civil nation, a nation-state. A. Elez claims that I. Stalin “generally gave a definition not an ethnic community" But if we are talking about neither a political nor an ethnic interpretation of the nation, then which one?! How to typologize these communities identified by I. Stalin? In what typological series should they be included?

Sometimes, however, I. Stalin forgets about his postulate, according to which “ national community is different from community state" He proclaims that " nation is not just a historical category, but a historical category of a certain era, an era of rising capitalism”and, in accordance with this, comes up with a strange a priori scheme. According to this scheme, “the British, French, Germans and others formed into a nation during the victorious march of ... capitalism. But education nations meant there (in Western Europe. – V.F.) at the same time the transformation their into independent states. English, French and others nation are at the same time English and other states... Things are a little different in Eastern Europe. While in the West nations developed into states, in the East international states, states consisting of several nationalities, emerged“, since “in the conditions of poorly developed capitalism... the nationalities that have faded into the background have not yet had time to consolidate economically into integral nations.” (Strictly speaking, “nations” do not turn into “states” anywhere and never. Nations are people, citizens of states, and not states themselves; nationality is co-citizenship.)

But why do things “happen differently” in the East than in the West? Probably the reader should think that the English nation-state is the result of the evolution of a single English “nationality”, the French nation-state is the result of the evolution of a single French “nationality”, and so on. We are not talking about the fact that the French nation, the citizens of the French state, were formed from Bretons, Alsatians, Corsicans, Basques, etc., preserving, to one degree or another, linguistic and cultural originality, as well as a special identity, right up to the present day. I. Stalin, probably, just like V. Lenin, simply did not know that the French were never a homogeneous cultural or linguistic community, were not what in the “Soviet theory of ethnos” was called an ethnic community. He simply did not know that in Western Europe, nation-states also developed as “international states consisting of several nationalities” (if, of course, we consider the Bretons, Corsicans, Basques, etc. in the paradigm of “ethnicity”).

Read on. “But capitalism is beginning to develop in the eastern countries... Nations are economically consolidated... But the displaced nations that have awakened to independent life no longer form into independent states: they encounter on their way the strongest opposition from the leadership layers of the commanding nations... This is how they develop into nation Czechs, Poles, etc. in Austria; Croats, etc. in Hungary; Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, etc. in Russia". Now it becomes completely clear that I. Stalin did not know the nation-state. For such he takes states in which, as it seems to him, one large “nationality” lives, which has become a “nation” under capitalism. In the multicultural states of the era of capitalism, according to this doctrine, there is a “commanding nation” and “repressed nations”, “emerging” ones, as well as “nationalities” that have not had time to form into nations. All this gave grounds for further interpretation of the Stalinist “nation” as a large “ethnic group” that had reached a certain level of development. Apparently, both the “commanding nation” and the “repressed nations” do not cease to be “nationalities”. Here is an unequivocal confirmation of this in the text of the source. “The policy of repression does not stop there. It often moves from a “system” of oppression to a “system” of incitement nations... And insofar as such a policy succeeds, it represents the greatest evil for the proletariat... all nationalities states."

So, to designate what in the “Soviet theory of ethnos” was usually called “ethnos” (“ethnic community”) I. Stalin used the terms “nation”, “nationality” and “people” in different contexts. (This can only be judged by the meaning of a number of statements; I. Stalin does not give definitions of terms - that is, in fact, the concepts of “nationality” and “people”.) However, in one of the now little-known articles we find something similar to definition: “The oppressed nationality are usually oppressed not only as peasants and urban working people, but also as nationality, that is, as workers of a certain statehood, language, culture, way of life, morals, customs.” In this case, it would seem that I. Stalin is close to understanding the notorious “nationality” as a kind of culturally distinctive community. If it were not for one “but”: out of nowhere, statehood also intrudes into the definition, which immediately makes this attempt to give a definition absolutely untenable.

“Nationality” certainly appears in Stalin’s texts and as a synonym for the word “people”: “The struggle for the liberation of the oppressed nationalities could not help but turn into a struggle... for the liberation of colonial and disenfranchised peoples from the oppression of capital." Or earlier national question was usually confined to a tight circle of issues relating to... “cultural” nationalities. Irish, Hungarians, Poles, Finns, Serbs and some others nationality Europe - such is the circle of incomplete peoples, whose fate the heroes of the Second International were interested in. Tens and hundreds of millions of Asian and African peoples those who endured national oppression in the crudest and harshest form usually remained out of sight.”

Both “nationality” and “people” are depicted in the imagination of I. Stalin as a kind of ontologized community with immanent characteristics, certain membership, with conscious common values, rights and responsibilities, with a special collective destiny.

Here are examples of this kind of doctrinaire. “The mentioned point of the program ... speaks of freedom nationalities, about law nationalities to develop freely, about the party’s duty to fight against all violence against them... the right nationalities within the meaning of this clause should not be limited; it can reach either autonomy and federation, or separation.” Or: " Nationality decides your destiny, but does this mean that the party should not influence the will of the nationality in the spirit of a decision that best suits the interests of the proletariat?” In the above fragments of Stalin’s texts, the main concept of the future primordialism clearly and clearly reveals itself; in Soviet ethnography, “ethnos”, “people”, “nationality” as a special type of social community is endowed with stable characteristics and the ability to express a single will - in other words, it has legal personality. This sad misconception still dominates the minds of many Russian scientists and politicians).

At the same time, his own ideas about “nation” and “nationality” most often do not allow I. Stalin to interpret the observed social processes and phenomena in any consistent manner. He can write without hesitation about the party as “a single organization uniting Georgian, Russian, Armenian and Muslim workers...” A typological series built on one logical basis includes an element belonging to another basis: among the named “national” communities (“ nationalities") turns out to be a religious community. What is this? Accident? Negligence? In another work we encounter the following passage: “And the wave of militant nationalism...caused a response wave nationalism from below... Strengthening Zionism among Jews, growing chauvinism in Poland, Pan-Islamism among Tatars, strengthening of nationalism among Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians... all these are well-known facts.” Most likely, we are dealing with an author who is not only careless, but also incapable of distinguishing between the “national” and religious communities he invented. Pan-Islamism is classified as a manifestation of nationalism. (Let us note that community of religion is by no means an immanent “sign” of a nation for I. Stalin.)

In accordance with this understanding of “nation” and “nationality”, I. Stalin uses the adjective “national” exclusively as something specific to a particular “nation” or “people”. Accordingly, the “national situation” is nothing more than an ethno-contact situation in the language of modern ethnologists and politicians. Here are examples of such word usage. “If they think to continue to practice the policy of stratification from above; if they think that Russian samples can be transplanted into a specific national situation, regardless of life and specific conditions; if they think that while fighting nationalism, they must at the same time throw everything overboard national; in a word, if the “left” communists on the outskirts think to remain incorrigible, then I must say that of the two dangers, the “left” danger may turn out to be the most dangerous danger" The stable phraseological units “national cadres”, “national elements”, characteristic of I. Stalin, carry a completely definite semantic load; they should be understood as “belonging to nationalities, to nations”, that is, to the notorious “ethnic groups” (in the terminological continuum of Soviet ethnography)

It is difficult to understand what kind of social community I. Stalin considers a “nation”, based on the definition he proposed and on the basis of the characteristics he identifies. Perhaps the situation will be clarified by the examples he gives as an illustration of the social phenomenon he identifies?

From these examples we learn, in particular, the following. " British and Americans formerly inhabited one territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part English moved from England to a new territory, to America, and here, on the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation.” Thus, Americans “earlier” (than what!?), probably before the discovery of America, inhabited England. Then some of the English moved to America and formed the North American nation. The Americans, presumably, remained to live in England, since only the British “evicted” to the new territory. It was they who formed the North American nation, while immigrants from France, Germany, Northern Ireland, Russia, Mexico, etc. they have not formed any nation and are languishing in the United States, deprived of any national identity.

Read on. “Take the Georgians, for example. Georgians pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation... Georgia as a nation appeared only in the second half of the 19th century...” Not Georgians, but Georgia! Accidental slip of the tongue? No. On another page we find: “New England, as a nation, was then different from England, as a nation...” Either terminological carelessness, or a complete misunderstanding of the subject of one’s own theoretical research.

So, the main achievement of I. Stalin, apologists of the “Marxist theory of the nation” revered and revered the definition of this concept and the isolation of a set of characteristics that supposedly make it possible to isolate it from a number of other social communities. However, in Stalin's articles devoted to the subject of interest to us, there is another concept that is firmly rooted in Soviet social science in general and in ethnology in particular. We are talking about an attempt to substantiate the legitimacy of the statement about the universal stadiality of “national” (in the Stalinist understanding of the word) or “ethnic” (in the interpretation of Soviet ethnographers) communities. Part of the “mandatory program” for Soviet ethnographers was “the Isthmth concept, which grew out of the previously popular among Soviet linguists... ideas of N. Marr about the stages in the development of languages” and the ideas of I. Stalin, formulated “no longer in special linguistic, but in social scientific terms - “tribe”, “nationality”, “nation”... On this methodological basis “a whole stage concept was built, and if I. Stalin was talking specifically about languages... then very soon this Stalinist position, without the participation of the author, grew into a whole theory historical change of types of ethnic community."

However, different points of view were expressed on this matter.

According to the first (it is shared by most researchers), “both of these points - the complex of its main features contained in I. Stalin’s approach to the problem of the nation and the position about the nation as the “highest type of ethnic group”, which directly followed from Stalin’s ideas about language - were included in the theoretical and methodological arsenal Soviet philosophers, historians and ethnographers and practically unchanged have been conveyed to the present day” (S. Rybakov).

According to another, “the Stalinist concept of the nation was “enriched” (by the efforts of ethnologists, philosophers, sociologists, historians) with a special theoretical construct, which in recent decades has received the name “triad”: tribe - nationality - nation; in this construction, the nationality was transformed from a nation of the period of formation into something independently existing, into an object adjacent to the tribe and the nation (which, even in relation to each other, are by no means single-order phenomena)” (A. Elez). I. Stalin allegedly had nothing to do with the creation of the “triad” concept. (Yes, of course, a tribe and a nation are not at all phenomena of the same order. One cannot but agree with this. But did I. Stalin even guess about this?)

Let us note that the mentioned points of view do not appear to be antagonistic. Indeed, I. Stalin wrote about the stadial nature of “national” communities in connection with the stadial development of languages, and he himself did not formulate a more or less coherent concept of the evolution of the community he invented from tribe to nation in connection with the change of socio-economic formations. Simply because, probably, he was not able to create any coherent theory at all. However, when discussing languages, our author actually writes quite unequivocally that “there are... processes when a single language a nationality that has not yet become a nation due to the lack of economic conditions for development, this nation collapses due to the state collapse, and local dialects, which have not yet had time to grind into a single language, come to life and give rise to the formation of separate independent languages" In the above quote there is clearly the idea that there is a certain social community - a “nationality”, different from a “nation” due to the fact that the first did not manage to become the second. And at the same time, obviously, there is another thought implicitly present: that both are genetically related and the first, under certain conditions, will become the second. Thus, to be consistent, we must admit that there is a special type of social community, which in its development goes through a number of stages, and at each stage of its development represents a completely independent, special community of people with qualitative certainty. Moreover, I. Stalin in other cases tries to link one or another stage of development of the social phenomenon that interests us to one or another socio-economic formation. Here is an example of such sociologization: “ Primitive communal clan system did not know classes, therefore, there could not be a class language there... As for further development from tribal languages ​​to tribal languages, from tribal languages ​​to national languages ​​and from national languages ​​to national languages, then everywhere, at all stages of development, the language... was common and uniform for the whole society.” If we follow the logic of A. Elez, then both clan and tribe, as well as nationality, should be recognized as only different stages of the formation of a nation.

However, I. Stalin himself does not strictly adhere to the concept of the “triad”. And in a number of cases, it simply confuses the reader with the contradictory meanings attached to this or that term. He, in particular, believes that “languages... tribes and nationalities were not class, but national, common to tribes and nationalities... Later, with the advent of capitalism, with the elimination of feudal fragmentation and the formation of a national market, nationalities have developed into nations, and the languages ​​of nationalities - into national languages. History says that national languages ​​are not class languages, but nationwide languages ​​common to the members of nations and common to the nation.” But in order for the language of a “tribe” or “nationality” to be “national”, it is necessary that the “tribe” and “nationality” be identical to the “people”!

In the article “Marxism and the National Question” I. Stalin contrasted the nation as a “historical category” and the tribe as an “ethnographic category”; in another work (“Response to comrades D. Belkin and S. Furer”) he writes that “ ethnography doesn't know anyone backward people, be it the same or even more primitive than, say, the Australians or the Fuegians of the last century, who would not have had their own sound language.” It is obvious that the term “people” (it marks precisely the primitive tribes of Australians and Fuegians) in this case invades the subject area of ​​ethnography and thus becomes an “ethnographic category”. Let us remember that “nation”, “nationality”, “people” - these words are synonymous for I. Stalin. All this bears very little resemblance to a coherent theory. A. Elez is absolutely right when he writes that “the nation was transformed by ethnology into one of the types of “ethnic communities”..., and “the category of ethnos (ethnic community, people, nationality) nominally remained a sociological category, but covered essentially biological groups social beings (tribes), and essentially social groups of social beings (nationalities and nations).” But all these categorical metamorphoses took place not in spite of, but thanks to the theorizing of I. Stalin. As Y. Semenov quite rightly noted, both the original clan and tribe fully fit the Stalinist definition of a nation, since “all members of the clan commune spoke the same language, lived in the same place, formed one close economic community, and undoubtedly had a common mental warehouse and general culture."

This is essentially all that we find in Stalin’s works “on the national question,” if we do not take into account politically opportunistic slogans and internal party polemics about the tactics of the Bolsheviks during the First World War and the turmoil that followed it. Upon closer examination, the entire Stalinist “theory of nation” comes down to an unsuccessful attempt to define this concept by identifying its features, as well as to unconvincing maxims according to which the languages ​​of a tribe, nationality and nation are somehow linked to socio-economic formations. If we take into account the fact that the very definition of a nation in I. Stalin’s articles was an eclectic paraphrase on the theme of the writings of Austro-Marxists, then the entire ambitious “theory” would not even deserve a mention of it in the historiography of Russian ethnology. Would not have deserved... if, by the evil irony of history, it had not been proclaimed the theoretical and methodological basis of the “Soviet theory of ethnos” and on long years did not become “classical” and the only one possible in any attempt to conceptualize supposedly “ethnic” (“national”) social phenomena and processes.

During the years of the first “thaw,” Yu. Semenov sadly stated: “The theory of the nation was thus reduced to the definition of the nation. Researchers who have addressed this issue find themselves in an extremely difficult situation. They could only comment and illustrate the above definition.” Unfortunately, ideological pressure prompted famous scientists, scientists whose names were associated with the idea of ​​​​the theoretical achievements of domestic (“Soviet”) ethnology/ethnography, not only to irrepressible apologetics of Stalinist definitions and concepts, but also to their feasible modernization and interpretation in terms "high" science.

The diffusion of Stalinism into Russian ethnology began in the mid-30s - early 40s.

P. Kushner suddenly came to the conclusion that “the move historical process over the past 40-50 years, the events that took place before our eyes or in our memory have confirmed the correctness of the Stalinist teaching about the nation and national culture,” and therefore “for an ethnographer, this teaching still has a special meaning (so for the author! - V.F.), that it reveals the essence of complex phenomena occurring in the forms of changes in language, culture, and everyday life individual peoples" Such judgments about the significance of Stalin’s postulates for ethnographers meant in practice the determination of the status of a scientific discipline, classifying it as an auxiliary historical discipline, and ultimately, the transformation of ethnography into the science of bast shoes. However, there was some curiosity here. P. Kushner, having conscientiously quoted Stalin’s definition of a nation, made a completely unexpected conclusion: “Thus, a nation is one of the latest types of human community, one of the most developed types of ethnic community, If By “ethnicity” we mean the specifics of life, language and culture that distinguish peoples from each other" In other words, ethnicity in this author’s interpretation appeared not as a group, but as a property! Ethnicity was interpreted as the properties of peoples, allowing them to be differentiated. But then, fortunately for the author, this curiosity was not noticed. And he himself, it seems, did not understand that he wrote not what he wanted to write.

S. Tolstov wrote enthusiastically in 1951 that “in the years. the publication of remarkable party documents on issues of historical science, the appearance of “Notes” of comrades Stalin, Kirov and Zhdanov on the notes of textbooks on the history of the USSR and world history played a colossal role in the development of archeology and ethnography along the Marxist-Leninist path.” And, supposedly, it was precisely thanks to the methodological revelations of the party leaders that “ethnographers, as well as archaeologists, became clear that in the previous period, between 1929 and 1934, the development of their science went largely along the wrong path, that instead of studying the historical past specific peoples of our country and foreign countries, naked ones made in the spirit of Pokrovsky and Marr were developed, irresponsible sociological schemes, very far from Marxism.”

Let us note an interesting historiographical fact. V. Kharuzin in 1941 writes about the need to study the origin and development of all “peoples” of the world from “tribal societies” to “developed nations.” This idea was based, apparently, both on the evolutionist ideas that dominated Russian ethnology, supported by the authority of F. Engels, and on the views of V. Klyuchevsky; probably not without the influence of the biosocial “theory of ethnos” by S. Shirokogorov. Implicit in this idea is the dominant Stalinist doctrine of the nation at that time. Thus, V. Kharuzin, as it were, anticipates the Stalinist “triad”, and, perhaps, has a certain influence, if not on I. Stalin himself, then on his scientific consultants from the IML.

However, an avalanche-like invasion of Stalinist ideas into Russian theoretical ethnography/ethnology occurred at the very beginning of the 50s, immediately after the publication of the article “Marxism and Issues of Linguistics.” The popularization of the leader's ideas took on the character of a noisy propaganda campaign. In academic institutes, including, of course, the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences, general meetings were held, special regulations. At the “Meeting on the methodology of ethnogenetic research in the light of Stalin’s doctrine of nation and language,” a resolution was unanimously adopted, which read: “The brilliant work “Marxism and Issues of Linguistics” not only laid solid foundations to create a truly Marxist science of language, not only enriched the treasury of Marxist philosophy with new provisions, but also opened up completely new ways for the development of other scientific disciplines, for the development of the most important problems of historical science, including the problem of ethnogenesis.” Soviet ethnographers were given the task of “outlining new paths in the development... of the problems of ethnogenesis, paths that would correspond to the brilliant teaching of Comrade Stalin about nation and language.”

Soon, the luminaries of science in special articles concretized this position, giving it the appearance of theoretical generalizations. S. Tokarev and N. Cheboksarov came to the conclusion that “for the methodology of ethnogenetic research, the place in the work ... where we are talking about the development “from tribal languages ​​to tribal languages, from tribal languages ​​to national languages ​​and from national languages to national languages." And since “language “is born and develops with the birth and development of society,” then, undoubtedly, “the listed stages in the development of a language must correspond to similar stages in the development of those groups that create this language.” And if all these groups are genetically connected, then “in the broadest sense of the word they can be called ethnic.” It remains to take one step and, in strict accordance with Marxist sociology, link the stages of development of “ethnic collectives” to the stages of development of society. Thus, the Stalinist “triad” was incorporated into the theoretical and methodological arsenal of ethnology. The most authoritative ethnologists have come to the conclusion that “it is possible to outline different types of ethnic communities corresponding to different socio-economic formations.” And, as it turned out, “clans and tribes are characteristic of the primitive communal system, nationalities – for early class socio-economic formations: slave and feudal, bourgeois nations – for capitalism, socialist nations – for socialism.” P. Kushner, inspired by Stalin’s article, enriched Marxist sociology with a new interpretation of the doctrine of the change of socio-economic formations, according to which the latter differ from each other not only in the originality of their inherent “economic and political system”, but also “various forms of ethnic community of people, that is, those connections that depend either on a common origin and language, or on a long cohabitation people in the same territory, and who create the unity of life.”

In the light of I. Stalin’s teachings on the nation and “based on the stated provisions on the historical change in the types of ethnic communities outlined in the works,” Soviet ethnographers had to henceforth “solve such an important question for the methodology of ethnogenetic research as the question of the essence of the so-called “ethnic group” - the main object of study of ethnography as a science.” It was announced that “for the Marxist historian concept of "ethnicity" may have... meaning only as general designation for all types of ethnic communities from the most ancient to the modern. Outside these socio-territorial collectives - clans, tribes, nationalities and nations“There are, of course, no special “ethnic groups” as permanent and unchanging categories so dear to bourgeois science, supposedly retaining their abstract “specificity” throughout the history of mankind.”

And, since all these ethnic groups are characterized by “a known area of ​​settlement, a common language and specific cultural features,” the study of them was proclaimed “the main content of ethnographic science.”

Extrapolations of Stalinist methodology to the subject area of ​​physical anthropology (“ethnic anthropology”) look absolutely like a farce, like a mockery of common sense, however, they also took place in the history of Russian ethnology. M. Levin wrote that “for anthropologists who use data on the anthropological composition of the modern population for a retrospective analysis of the most ancient anthropological components included in a particular people, the provision that “elements nation– language, territory, cultural community, etc. – did not fall from the sky, but were created gradually, even in the pre-capitalist period.” This provision about the known linguistic, territorial and cultural continuity of modern and preceding peoples is fundamental for any research in ethnic anthropology" Stalin's doctrine of the nation did not even become a methodology for cultural anthropology - no, it became a theoretical basis for physical anthropology!!!

Domestic ethnology capitulated under the pressure of official ideology. It was during these years that the notorious “Soviet theory of ethnos” was born. With a kind of voluptuous doom, S. Tolstov summarized what was happening: “A year has passed since the publication of the brilliant work of the greatest luminary of science of our era, “Marxism and Questions of Linguistics.” This year, not only in linguistics, but in all of our science, especially social science, is a year of powerful creative upsurge, decisive restructuring of work, powerful movement forward." How this mighty creative upsurge ended, where this powerful forward movement led, has now become quite obvious to all more or less unbiased Russian ethnologists.

[*] The work was carried out with the support of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation. Project No. a.

NOTES:

The theory of the nation and Russian social democracy: to the history of the issue // Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century: entry into the era of historical transformations. VII Plekhanov readings. Conference materials. St. Petersburg, 2005. P. 87.

The national question: deformations of the past. Scientists and publicists about the nature of Stalinism // Harsh drama of the people. M., 1989. P. 258.

Cm.: Reading Lenin (an ethnographer’s reflections on the problems of the theory of the nation) // Soviet ethnography, 1989. No. 4. S.6.

Right there. P.7.

Theoretical development of the national question // Peoples of Asia and Africa, 1966. No. 4. P.119-121.

Right there. P.121.

Medvedev R. A. Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. N.Y., 1971. P.509.

Decree. op. P.7.

Stalin. The path to power. . History and personality. M., 1990. P.148.

Prospects for the development of the concept of ethnonational policy in the Russian Federation. M., 2004. P.14.

Marxism and the national question // . Marxism and the national-colonial question. Collection of selected speeches and articles. M., 1935. P.6.

Theoretical development of the national question // Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1966. No. 4. P.122.

Marxism and the national question // Op. T.2. M., 1946. P.296.

Decree. op. P.122.

Marxism and the national question. P. 297.

Cm.: Plans for an essay on the national issue // Complete. collection op. T. 23. P.448.

Decree. op. P.9.

Sign- a property by which an object is cognized or recognized, definitions that distinguish one concept from another. See: Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. Ed. , . M., 1998. P. 362.

Decree. op. P. 122.

Criticism of ethnology. M., 2001. P. 262.

Marxism and the national question. P. 296.

Right there. P. 300.

, Ethnopedagogy and ethnopsychology. Rostov-on-Don, 2000. P. 135.

Marxism and the national question. P. 293.

Right there. P. 297.

Right there. P. 301.

Right there. P. 293.

Criticism of ethnology. P. 245.

Marxism and the national question. P. 303.

Right there. pp. 303-304.

Right there. P. 305.

Right there. pp. 309-310.

Term– concept; a word expressing a concept. See: Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. P. 452.

Concept– a logically formulated thought about a class of objects and phenomena. Cm.: , Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. M., 1999. P. 561.

The October Revolution and the question of the middle strata // . Marxism and the national-colonial question. P. 140.

Right there. P. 142.

National question // . Marxism and the national-colonial question. P. 144.

On the way to nationalism // Op. T.2. M., 1946. P.286. See also: Marxism and the national question. pp. 310-311.

On the way to nationalism. P. 286. See also: Marxism and the national question. P. 310.

See more about this: Criticism of ethnic federalism. M., 2003. P. 55-92.

On the way to nationalism // Op. T.2. M., 1946. P. 287.

Marxism and the national question. P. 291.

Speeches at the fourth meeting of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) // I. Stalin. Marxism and the national-colonial question. P. 136.

Right there. P. 294.

Right there. P. 295.

Right there. P. 301.

Philosophy of ethnicity. M., 2001. P. 29-30.

Right there. P. 30.

Reply to comrades. To Comrade Sanzheev // Op. T. 16. M., 1997. P. 130.

Marxism and issues of linguistics // Op. T.16. M., 1997. P. 109.

Right there. P. 109.

Reply to comrades. Belkin and S. Furer // Op. T. 16. M., 1997. P.131.

The theory of the nation and Russian social democracy: to the history of the issue. P. 95.

Decree. op. P. 123.

Right there. P. 122.

Stalin’s teaching on the nation and national culture and its significance for ethnography // Soviet ethnography, 1949. No. 4. S. 3.

Right there. S.6.

Results of the restructuring of the work of the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences in the light of the work “Marxism and Issues of Linguistics” // Soviet Ethnography, 1951. No. 3. P. 6.

Cm.: Introduction to ethnography. Description and classification of the peoples of the world. M., 1941.

Cm.: Russian history course. Part 1. Op. T. 1. M., 1987. P. 42.

Cm.: Ethnicity: Study of the basic principles of change in ethnic and ethnographic phenomena. Shanghai. 1923.

Meeting on the methodology of ethnogenetic research in the light of Stalin’s doctrine of nation and language // Soviet ethnography, 1951. No. 9. P. 3.

Decree. op. P. 9.

, Methodology of ethnogenetic research based on ethnographic materials in the light of works on linguistics // Soviet ethnography, 1951. No. 9. P.7.

, Decree. op. P.8.

Stalin’s teaching on the nation and national culture and its significance for ethnography // Soviet ethnography. 1949. No. 4. C.4.

, Decree. op. P.12.

Right there. P. 7.

The development of Soviet anthropology in the light of the work “Marxism and questions of linguistics” // Soviet ethnography, 1951. No. 3. P.20.

Decree. op. C.3.