Nationality in the Soviet Union

Richard Pipes is right when he says that for a long time the Soviet Union unjustifiably claimed it had solved all nationality problems (“For the Last Empire, the Clock Is Ticking,” Op-Ed Page, March 15). That was the reflection of the recent practice which we today call a period of stagnation. The policies of perestroika and glasnost are changing that practice. It was decided that one of the forthcoming plenums of the Communist Party’s Central Committee will be dedicated specifically to the nationality question. The plenum will give an assessment to the shortcomings of the nationality policy.

I strongly disagree with Pipes, however, when he claims that the Soviet state is “colonial” by its very nature. The October Revolution freed the people and ethnic minorities, making them equal among equals. Most of today’s constituent republics and regions obtained national statehood soon after the revolution and during and after the civil war. Many acquired their own written languages only after the revolution.

The Russian people did everything possible to help former ethnic hinterlands, such as Central Asia for instance, develop economically and culturally by supplying them with industrial equipment and skilled workers. No colonial nation has ever done such a thing.

It’s simply wishful thinking to allege, as Pipes does, that the Soviet Union can disintegrate. This did not happen in the years of World War II, when the Nazis occupied Byelorussia, the Ukraine and other Soviet republics, including a large territory in the Russian federation. It’s absurd to suppose this can happen now that the Soviet Union has entered a period of positive changes in its economic and social development. As a matter of fact, not once during the current nationality conflicts has anyone demanded secession from the Soviet Union.

Pipes writes that even the Seychelles is a sovereign republic, while the Soviet constituent republics are not. Well, Grenada is a sovereign republic, too, isn’t it?

VALERI NEYEV

Novosti Observer

Moscow