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this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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I'm pretty sure Lenin's reasoning for creating independent Soviet republics wasn't exclusively for the sake of the public image of the USSR.
It is tempting to say, with hindsight, that the existence of the Baltic states and Ukraine was a mistake, but it's not a straight line from 1918 to 2022, and deciding "Lenin was wrong and I'm right" is quite the claim
Eliminating nationalism isn't a bad thing but moving from A immediately to B wouldn't work today and it wouldn't work then either. Building the larger identity then having the smaller identity shrink over time is the correct approach. We only need to look at things historically to see how this has functioned, half the counties in each country were once identities that people cared about that have now shrunk so much that they're barely remembered.
China is doing this path right now, and I think Lenin definitely saw that sort of path as correct. And it's working in China pretty well from what I can tell.
It should be mentioned that such local identities werent (and have never, to my knowledge) been abandoned without force either directly, like France's eradication of local languages and dialects; liberal educations' destruction of the lower class cultures or indirectly like by threatening people with the "natural" processes of eviction and/or starvation if they refuse to leave their home areas; by forcing kids into education, often away from home developed by global north thinktanks only applicable to (very limited) specialist jobs in the cities
Right I agree and don't dismiss that. But I do think those smaller identities appear as a result of material conditions. Community for safety and competition with other groups being a couple of them.
If you eliminate the conditions of needing safety and needing to compete (among others), you eliminate a large part of the need for small area identities. This then reorganises into the larger scale identities of nationality. And this too can (and will) reorganise into international identity when the material conditions that create nationalism are removed.
I am simplifying the process of course but you get what I mean. These structures occur for a reason and removing those reasons can give way to the new structures through a less violent and forceful process.
I think Stalin at the time was the People's Commissar on Nationalities? Woke fuck, allowing people to keep their culture and traditions... /s
Stalin actually opposed Lenin's proposition and end result was a compromise between Lenin's and Stalin's positions with unified state but with highly autonomous SSRs inside it.
This is the kind of centrist bipartisanship I can get behind
History proved Stalin right here, as is often the case. The regional governments fucked over the USSR MASSIVELY throughout its existence largely out of individual self interest and corruption
Obviously Trotsky was right, the revolution must be global.
except he's still not lol
nah socialism can work on a continental scale
In the end, they'll accuse you of this anyway, so do whatever
Back in the earlty 20th century people were seriously thinking about whether small nations could function on a state level and which country they should dissolve into if they couldnt. In stark contrast to the late 20th and early 21st century with its fractal balkanization.