The motives of Lenin and Stalin were less indulgent than they seemed. Both felt that the Finnish Marxists would stand an excellent chance of achieving dominance in an independent Finland. This would enable the Bolsheviks and their comrades in Finland to resume close operational ties and, eventually, to re-include Finland in the multinational state governed from Petrograd. There was a further aspect to Sovnarkom’s policy. This was the calculation that a single act of secession from the former Russian Empire would constitute wonderful propaganda in favour of socialist revolution elsewhere, especially in eastern and east-central Europe.
Lenin and Stalin also began to modify their ideas so as to increase the party’s appeal to regions inhabited mainly by peoples who were not Russian. Dropping old Bolshevik arguments, they came to espouse the federalist cause. They held back from explaining what they meant by federalism. Their enemies pointed out that the new policy sat uneasily alongside Bolshevism’s permanent commitment to centralism and dictatorship; but neither Lenin nor Stalin was troubled by the criticism: they had come to the conclusion that if the Bolsheviks were to expand their authority into the borderlands of the former Russian Empire, they had to espouse federalism. Stalin’s old Gori friend Davrishevi, the Social-Federalist, had always wanted to turn the Russian Empire into a socialist federation. In fact Lenin and Stalin had not been converted to federalist principles. They had no intention of turning Ukraine, Georgia and other countries into equal members of a federal union. But they wished their propaganda to make an impact and were willing to change their terminology. Central control over the ‘borderlands’ remained an imperative. Essentially Lenin and Stalin hoped to charm them and bring them back under rule from the Russian capital. They stole slogans; but their own basic ideas and purposes remained intact.
As the area under Soviet control expanded, at least in the towns, the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs acquired additional importance. Stalin chaired the meetings when his other duties in government and party did not distract him, and he empowered Stanislaw Pestkowski and Ivan Tovstukha to handle business in his absence. Dozens of departments were founded in the People’s Commissariat to take care of specific nationalities. Stalin’s energetic leadership surmounted the teething problems and the provinces began to experience the results in the early months of 1918. He sent out funds for national and ethnic groups to set up presses in their languages. Schools were established on the same lines. This trend had begun under the Provisional Government; the Bolsheviks vigorously reinforced it and put it at the core of their propaganda. A central newspaper, Zhizn natsionalnostei (“Nationalities’ Life”), was created to spread the message to the parts of the country where the Bolshevik presence was weak. A plan was developed for local self-administration to be granted to nations which constituted a majority in any particular region, and Stalin hoped to found a Tatar–Bashkir Republic by the River Volga. He was going out of his way, on behalf of the Central Committee, to show that an authentically internationalist state was being constructed.9
Other Bolsheviks were introduced to represent the interests of the nations to which they belonged.10 But membership was fluid and sessions were chaotic, and often the appointees were newcomers to the party. Departments often failed to co-operate with each other. It was soon recognised too that functionaries might use the People’s Commissariat to push the case for their nations more assertively than Sovnarkom had envisaged.11
The danger existed that things might get out of hand. Stalin discovered this early on. A bright young Tatar called Sultan-Galiev joined the party in November 1917. A fluent writer and speaker, he was an obvious man to recruit to the People’s Commissariat. Sultan-Galiev was eager to raise the banner of Revolution among Moslems in general. Unfortunately he proved difficult to regulate. As Commissar of Moslems’ Affairs in Inner Russia he quickly annoyed other members of the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities’ Affairs by his initiatives, and his loyalty to Bolshevism was questioned.12 Indeed his campaign to spread socialism among Moslem believers eventually led him to propose a pan-Turkic republic separate from Sovnarkom’s control. (He was arrested in 1923 and executed in the Great Terror.) Although Sultan-Galiev was a notorious source of trouble for the Bolsheviks, he was not the only recruit to the party who was thought excessively tolerant of nationalism and religion. Stalin and Lenin had taken a risk in insisting on trying to attract the non-Russians to Bolshevism through various concessions. In 1917 they had earned criticism at the April Party Conference; and in 1918–19 the difficulties of realising the policy were already manifest. Work in the People’s Commissariat was a bed of nails.
Stalin did not flinch. At the Third Congress of Soviets in January 1918 he took pride in the government’s proclamation of ‘the right of all peoples to self-determination through to complete secession from Russia’. He compared Sovnarkom favourably on the national question with the Provisional Government and its ‘repressive measures’. According to Stalin, such conflicts as had broken out since the October Revolution arose from clashes about class and power rather than about nationhood.13 Nevertheless his attitude was castigated by the Socialist-Revolutionaries for being ‘infused with a centralist power’. He gave no ground: he said the country faced a simple choice between ‘nationalist counter-revolution on one side and Soviet power on the other’.14
His capacity to stand up to leaders of other parties as well as his editorial experience and expertise on the national question made Stalin an obvious choice — along with Sverdlov — to chair sessions of the commission drafting the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic (or RSFSR). There had been no thought about the details before the October Revolution. Even general principles had been left unclear: Lenin and Stalin had advocated federalism while skirting round what this would involve. Out of the hearing of the zealots in his People’s Commissariat for Nationalities’ Affairs, Stalin admitted that many non-Russian groups were making no demands at all for autonomy: Russia was not tormented by nationalist strife. Stalin admitted that even the Tatars and Bashkirs, to whom he wanted to grant an autonomous republic, were displaying ‘complete indifference’. He therefore wished to avoid specifying the national aspects of the Constitution while this situation persisted.15 But something of substance had to be inserted if the non-Russians were to be won over, and Sverdlov and Stalin insisted on this in the teeth of opposition from the Bolshevik left.16 Bolsheviks had to be pragmatic in spreading the power and ideology of the Revolution. The national question offered an opportunity to win converts to socialism.
This did not save Stalin from personal attack. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had representatives on the commission, and they did not hold back from criticising him. A. Shreider objected that he had no principled commitment to national rights and used federalist rhetoric to disguise an imperialist purpose. Official Bolshevik policy was allegedly little different from the measures of Nicholas II:17
Stalin’s structures are a typical imperialist construction; he’s a typical kulak [rich peasant] who without embarrassment declares he’s not a kulak. Comrade Stalin has got so used to such a position that he’s even assimilated imperialist jargon to perfection: ‘They beg from us and we grant to them.’ And of course — according to Stalin — if they don’t make the request, then we don’t give them anything!