September 11, 2025

Today is my socialism class. Before the lecture my professor went over potential paper topics we could write about. While she did not list any research questions specifically, she gave us a bunch of sources underneath topics like “gender” and “economics.” When mentioning protests she brought up Pussy Riot, which was interesting. She also emphasized the importance of primary sources.

We went over the last quote covered in the previous class:

The socialist character of Soviet, i.e., proletarian, democracy, as concretely applied today, lies first in the fact that the electors are the working and exploited people; the bourgeoisie is excluded.

Secondly, it lies in the fact that all bureaucratic formalities and restrictions of elections are abolished; the people themselves determine the order and time of elections, and are completely free to recall any elected person.

Thirdly, it lies in the creation of the best mass organisation of the vanguard of the working people, i.e., the proletariat engaged in large-scale industry, which enables it to lead the vast mass of the exploited, to draw them into independent political life, to educate them politically by their own experience; therefore for the first time a start is made by the entire population in learning the art of administration, and in beginning to administer.

Here were the comments made about this quote:

Lenin makes Russia jump over a stage as there is no capitalism.

Proletariat are a minority and uneducated, not ready.

Was Lenin right to lead the party to revolution? No one answered this question.

Some people, in general not in class, think Lenin was wrong as Marx said a country needed to be industrialized to have a revolution. But didn’t Marx change his mind? She confirmed this immediately right as I had that thought.

what Lenin is doing is Socialism, not Marxism. It is Leninism, she says.

The Revolution was actually a coup. Lenin was a genius and could change tactics quickly.

Now we can move on to the main deal of the lecture: the national question. Only Lenin and Stalin really cared while others were internationalists. Marx said ALL proletariat of the world was to unite. So because of that there was lots of debate.

She then gave us three definitions of “nation” asking us which one was the best:

1. A nation is a stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, history, ethnicity, or psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.

2. A nation is what individuals feel in their heart is a nation.

3. A nation is a daily plebiscite.

The students that answered her question on which one was the best said the first one was. She then revealed that the first definition was from Stalin, so therefore we have a bunch of stalinists in here.

Next we learned about how the Soviet Union was considered the “Affirmative Action Empire,” a title taken from the Terry Martin book. Affirmative action is for the people who were disadvantaged to get opportunities they were unable to get before. It is to restore justice. The USSR was violent, invasive, and centralized, but it took care of minority cultures and downplayed Russian.

How to structure this new state was debated between two camps: the nation builders (Lenin and Stalin) vs. The internationals (Bukharin). During the civil war the Soviets lost Poland and also had to figure out how to ensure ethnic minorities would not be suspicious of Russian “domination.” Bukharin disagreed as he believed this method was dangerous, it might encourage different groups to want to separate on the basis of them being different nations. In November 1917 the “Appeal to all Muslim Toilers of Russia and the East” was made to encourage Muslim groups to be part of this new state, they will be equal and be able to develop they culture. This was a message to the central Asian states.

They also had a policy promoting national languages and training for national elites (1923-1933). Languages in Central Asia were not written, only spoken. The policy of indigenization developed schools of national languages. Censuses were taken and the soviets had to convince many people, the example given were Byelorussians (Belarusians), not to call themselves Russian. I thought this was kind of funny and old love to see how those conversations went with Soviets telling Belarusians to stop calling themselves Russian and acknowledge that they are Belarusian. Also from 1932-9-1933 and 1937-9-1938 there were arrests of “bourgeoisie nationalists.”

A student then asked about who ruled during the 20s as Lenin had died around that time. My professor then talked about how Stalin essentially “took care” of Lenin after his stroke, so much so that he would even lie about what was written in the papers as he didn’t want to make Lenin sad. Lenin’s testament was brought up, he warned about Stalin’s rudeness (Stalin was mean to Krupskaya about something), but others were also criticized in this testament so it wasn’t just a hate filled letter about Stalin. Because everyone caught trays they were wary of each other and collectively ruled, hiding the testament away.

Stalin makes an alliance with the others to exile Trotsky, it was bad enough that Trotsky wasn’t even around for Lenin’s funeral. Stalin was also a master at playing people against each other, securing his leadership. The business major piped up mentioning Stalin being the first user of photoshop as he would delete people constantly and make himself look closer to Lenin than he actually was, he would cover up his smallpox scars as well and with that she called him really weird. Another student randomly said that Stalin hated Ukraine. My professor responded that he didn’t hate Ukrainians, he had issues with peasants and Ukraine just happened to have the richest ones, the Kulaks. Before 1932, Ukrainian nationalism was promoted, unlike in Poland where there were many restrictions for Ukrainians.

When the Soviet Union was first made it only had 4 republics. All four signed the treaty in 1922: the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Ukrainian Society Socialist Republic, and Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. New national border were created. In Central Asia new national borders were created in 1924, although this was difficult for Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan specifically as it was hard to revive high culture due to the mountains.

The idea of a national sate was incredibly unfamiliar in Central Asia as there were so many rivalries between tribes despite shared language. Turkmenistan had these exact issues. The language was the same between its tribes but they all had their own versions of national history. The Soviets, within ten years, developed dictionaries. Some say that the Bolsheviks were imperialists for drawing artificial borders, but an empire does not have this nationalism that the West is commonly familiar with. As in subjects of an empire consider themselves “ciitizens” while inhabitants of an imperialized colony feel differently. I guess the argument here is that the Russian empire was very different compared to western imperialist empires.

So what was the difference between Tajiks. And Uzbeks? The people of both nations are/were bilingual in each other’s languages, when government officials asked the people what their nationality was they did not want to say with certainty. Uzbek is a Turkic language while Tajik is Persian. Turkmenistan was an easier reject while Uzbekistan and Tajikistan took longer to pacify. So why did the Bolsheviks even bother? A student said that the Bolsheviks wanted support from the people there so thats why they put in the effort.

This is where the lecture ended and I went straight home. I was a bit surprised that no one mentioned Charlie Kirk but I was also incredibly relieved. I did NOT want to hear what miss Business major had to say about him.

Also: I do not know why I cannot make lists like “1.(words), 2.(words),etc.”