Creating Pandora’s Box. The Soviet Search for National Borders

Project duration

01.2017–12.2023

Project management

Dr. Stephan Rindlisbacher

Description

Following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has attempted to revise state borders that date back to the early days of the Soviet state. Borders and statehood in the post-Soviet space are more uncertain than ever. The Russian President sees the Bolshevik nationality policies as a “historical mistake.” This research project, however, shows why Lenin and his comrades had few alternatives to embracing the nationality question and structuring their state accordingly. It tracks the rationales for creating these borders and nations back to the 1920s: considerations of ethnicity defined the large scale, whereas economic and administrative aspects dominated the process of territorial fine tuning.

During the 1920s, the Bolshevik government created the basic territorial-administrative structure for the Soviet state. Despite their materialist ideology, the Bolsheviks and their experts apparently prioritised national over economic or ideological considerations. However, defining territories by nationality presented challenges when two or more potential national entities could lay claim to a certain area. In practice, the state and party leadership developed three approaches to deal with such issues. First, they could side with one nationality and discriminate against the other(s). Second, if ethnographic, cultural, and economic boundaries between certain communities apparently overlapped, they could use them as starting point for a national delimitation. Finally, they could refrain from making any decision, leaving the problem unsolved. This research project illustrates these three approaches with examples from the Russo-Ukrainian borderland, the Fergana Valley in Central Asia, and the borderland between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus; three pillar regions of Soviet federalism.

Although politicians and experts involved never designed them as borders between “real” independent states, these borders functioned as such rather well in the post-Soviet context. The lines dividing the republics often followed local economical rationales and thus eased the somewhat peaceful break-up in 1991. This is in stark contrast to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the territorial conflicts that hung over interwar Europe. In this respect, the countries that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union had much in common with the states of Africa. There, the post-colonial political elites recognised the states and borders as staked out by the imperial European powers. As soon as someone puts this functional territorial heritage in jeopardy, the structure as such is at stake as all 15 successor republics have certain reasonable claim to alter the existing order at the expense of their neighbours. Thus, with its attack on Ukraine, Russia has opened this Pandora’s Box with unpredictable effects on the post-Soviet order. If Ukraine’s borders are negotiable then so are Kazakhstan’s, but so are the internal borders of the Russian Federation such as Chechnya’s or Kalmykia’s.

Press

Interview with Alun Thomas at Peripheral Histories on “Creating a Pandora’s Box: The Soviet Search for National Borders”.

Published articles on this topic

• El territorio de Ucrania y su historia, in: Olena Palko and Manuel Férez Gil (eds.), Descubriendo Ucrania. Su pueblo, su historia y su cultura, Buenos Aires 2022, pp. 42-47.
• The Territorial Challenge in the Early Soviet State, in: Sabine von Löwis/Beate Eschment (Hg.), Post-Soviet Borders. A Kaleidoscope of Shifting Lives and Lands, New York 2023, S. 51-66.
• Contested Lines. The Russo-Ukrainian Border, 1917-1929, in: Olena Palko/Constantin Ardeleanu (Hg.), Making Ukraine. Negotiating, Contesting and Drawing the Borders in the Twentieth Century, Montreal 2022, S. 189-209.
• The Reorganisation of Local Administration in Soviet Ukraine. The Example of Karl-Liebknecht Raion, 1924–1929, in: Frank Grelka und Stephan Rindlisbacher (Hg.), ‘Our Work with the Masses Is Not Worth a Kopeck...’ A Document Collection on German and Polish Rural Soviets in Ukraine during the NEP, 1923-1929, Wiesbaden 2021, S. 47-64.
• Das Territorium der Ukraine, in: Stephan Rindlisbacher/Dimitri Tolkatsch (Hg.), Die heutige Ukraine und ihre sowjetischen Wurzeln, Marburg 2021, S. 9-27.
• From Space to Territory. Negotiating the Russo-Ukrainian Border, 1919-1928, in: Revolutionary Russia, 31 (2018) 1, S. 86-106.
• Grenzziehungen als Stabilisierungsfaktor der jungen Sowjetmacht. Die Grenzregulierung zwischen der Russischen Föderativen und Ukrainischen Sowjetrepublik in den 1920er Jahren, in: Frank Grelka/Tim Buchen (Hg.), Akteure der Neuordnung. Ostmitteleuropa und das Erbe der Imperien, 1917 – 1924, Frankfurt (Oder) 2017, S. 27-46. = Wytyczanie granic jako czynnik stabilizujący młodą władzę radziecką. Regulacja granicy między Rosyjską Federacyjną Republiką Radziecką a Ukraińską Republiką Radziecką w latach 20. XX wieku, in: Frank Grelka/Tim Buchen (Hg.), W poszukiwaniu nowego ładu. Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia wobec upadku imperiów, 1917 – 1924, Frankfurt (Oder) 2017, S. 175-191.

Financing

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (2017–2019)