National delimitation in the Soviet Union

The Russian-language term for this Soviet state policy was razmezhevanie (from Russian: национально-территориальное размежевание, natsionalno-territorialnoye razmezhevaniye), which is variously translated in English-language literature as "national-territorial delimitation" (NTD), "demarcation", or "partition". National delimitation formed part of a broader process of changes in administrative-territorial division, which also changed the boundaries of territorial units, but was not necessarily linked to national or ethnic considerations.

National delimitation in the USSR was distinct from nation-building (Russian: национальное строительство), which typically referred to the policies and actions implemented by the government of a national territorial unit (a nation state) after delimitation. In most cases national delimitation in the USSR was followed by korenizatsiya (indigenization).

Policies of national delimitation in the Soviet Union

Pre-1917 Russia was a multiethnic empire, not a nation state. In the 1905 Duma elections the nationalist parties received only 9 percent of all votes. Many non-Russian indigenous ethnic groups in the Russian Empire were classified as inorodtsy (literally meaning "of different, i.e., non-Russian descent"). After the February Revolution, attitudes in regards to this topic began to change. In early 1917, a Socialist Revolutionary publication called Dyelo Naroda, No. 5 called for Russia to be transformed into a federal state along the lines of the United States. Specifically, separate constituent units inside of this federal state would be created for the various regions and ethnic groups of Russia (such as Little Russia, Georgia, Siberia, and Turkestan).

The Soviet Russia that took over from the Russian Empire in 1917 was not a nation-state, nor was the Soviet leadership committed to turning their country into such a state. In the early Soviet period, even voluntary assimilation was actively discouraged, and the promotion of the national self-consciousness of the non-Russian populations was attempted. Each officially recognized ethnic minority, however small, was granted its own national territory where it enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy, national schools, and national elites. A written national language (if it had been lacking), national language planning, native-language press, and books written in the native language came with the national territory, along with cultural institutions such as theaters. The attitudes towards many ethnic minorities changed dramatically in the 1930s–1940s under the leadership of Joseph Stalin (despite his own Georgian ethnic roots) with the advent of a repressive policy featuring abolition of the national institutions, ethnic deportations, national terror, and Russification (mostly towards those with cross-border ethnic ties to foreign nation-states in the 1930s or compromised in the view of Stalin during the Great Patriotic War in the 1940s), although nation-building often continued simultaneously for others. After the establishment of the Soviet Union within the boundaries of the former Russian Empire, the Bolshevik government began the process of national delimitation and nation building, which lasted through the 1920s and most of the 1930s. The project attempted to build nations out of the numerous ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. Defining a nation or politically conscious ethnic group was in itself a politically charged issue in the Soviet Union. In 1913, Stalin, in his work Marxism and the National Question, which subsequently became the cornerstone of the Soviet policy towards nationalities, defined a nation as "a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture". Many of the subject nationalities or communities in the Russian Empire did not fully meet these criteria. Not only did cultural, linguistic, religious and tribal diversities make the process difficult, but also the lack of a political consciousness of ethnicity among the people was a major obstacle. The process relied on the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, adopted by the Bolshevik government on 15 November 1917, immediately after the October Revolution, which recognized equality and sovereignty of all the peoples of Russia; their right for free self-determination, up to and including secession and creation of an independent state; freedom of religion; and free development of national minorities and ethnic groups on the territory of Russia.

The Soviet Union (or more formally USSR – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was established in 1922 as a federation of nationalities, which eventually came to encompass 15 major national territories, each organized as a Union-level republic (Soviet Socialist Republic or SSR). All 15 national republics, created between 1917 and 1940, had constitutionally equal rights and equal standing in the formal structure of state power. The largest of the 15 republics – Russia – was ethnically the most diverse and from the very beginning it was constituted as the RSFSR – the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, a federation within a federation. The Russian SFSR was divided in the early 1920s into some 30 autonomous ethnic territories (Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics – ASSR and autonomous oblasts – AO), many of which exist to this day as ethnic republics within the Russian Federation. There was also a very large number of lower-level ethnic territories, such as national districts and national village soviets. The exact number of ASSR and AO varied over the years as new entities were created while old entities switched from one form to another, transformed into Union-level republics (e.g., Kazakh and Kyrgyz SSR created in 1936, Moldovan SSR created in 1940), or were absorbed into larger territories (e.g., Crimean ASSR absorbed into the RSFSR in 1945 and Volga German ASSR absorbed into RSFSR in 1941).

The first population census of the USSR in 1926 listed 176 distinct nationalities. Eliminating excessive detail (e.g., four ethnic groups for Jews and five ethnic groups for Georgians) and omitting very small ethnic groups, the list was condensed into 69 nationalities. These 69 nationalities lived in 45 nationally delimited territories, including 16 Union-level republics (SSR) for the major nationalities, 23 autonomous regions (18 ASSR and 5 autonomous oblasts) for other nationalities within the Russian SFSR, and 6 autonomous regions within other Union-level republics (one in Uzbek SSR, one in Azerbaijan SSR, one in Tajik SSR, and three in Georgian SSR).

Higher-level autonomous national territories in the Soviet Union

Despite the general policy of granting national territories to all ethnic groups, several nationalities remained without their own territories in the 1920s and the 1930s. In many cases these groups were either widely dispersed, or these minorities were concentrated in areas already designated as the national republic for a different group. For example, Poles and Jews (who were considered a nationality) represented up to a third of the population in some areas of the Ukrainian or Byelorussian SSRs or nearly half of the population in some cities and towns, yet apart from national raions, 24 of which were established in the Ukrainian SSR, no particular territorial entity was created (though a Jewish Autonomous Oblast was established in the Russian Far East in 1934). For the largely Yiddish-speaking Jews in these areas, policies were implemented such as the designation of Yiddish as an official language of Byelorussian SSR and a corresponding national public education system in Yiddish, along with the promotion of Yiddish literature and theatre in these areas as well as in the larger Russian cities. Other minorities included Bulgarians, Greeks, Hungarians, Romani, Uigurs, Koreans, and Gagauz (today the Gagauz live in a compact area known as Gagauzia in the south of Moldova, where they enjoy a measure of autonomy). The Volga Germans lost their national territory with the outbreak of World War II in 1941. The peoples of the North had neither autonomous republics nor autonomous oblasts, but since the 1930s they have been organized in 10 national autonomous okrugs for the Chukotka, Koryak, Nenets, Dolgano-Nenets, Yamalo-Nenets, Khanty-Mansi, Agin-Buryat, Ust-Orda Buryat, Evenk, Komi-Permyak titular nations.

Besides national republics, oblasts, and okrugs, several hundred national districts (with populations between 10,000 and 50,000) and several thousand national townships (population 500 to 5,000) were established. In some cases this policy required voluntary or forced resettlement in both directions to create a compact population. The immigration of cross-border ethnic groups and the return of non-Russian émigrés to the Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy, albeit perceived as an easy cover for espionage, were not discouraged and proceeded quite actively, contributing to nation-building.

Soviet fear of foreign influence gained momentum from sporadic ethnic guerilla uprisings along the entire Soviet frontier throughout the 1920s. The Soviet government was particularly concerned about the loyalty of the Finnish, Polish, and German populations. However, in July 1925 the Soviet authorities felt secure enough and in order to project Soviet influence outwards, exploiting cross-border ethnic ties, granted national minorities in the border regions more privileges and national rights than those in the central regions. This policy was implemented especially successfully in the Ukrainian SSR, which at first indeed succeeded in attracting the population of Polish Kresy. However, some Ukrainian communists claimed neighboring regions even from the Russian SFSR.