Sign up to access the complete lesson and track your progress!
Unlock This CourseThe USSR was not one nation. It held more than 100 national groups, including Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Georgians, Poles, Germans, Koreans and Jews. Russians made up only just over half of the population. By 1936 the country was divided into eleven republics, each named after its main people.
In the 1920s the Communists tried to win these peoples over. From 1923 a policy called korenizatsiya encouraged each group to use its own language in schools, newspapers and offices, and gave party jobs to local people. Stalin, a Georgian himself, had helped to run this policy. In the 1930s he turned against it.
Key terms:
Opposition to collectivisation was fiercest in non-Russian areas such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Stalin did not blame his own policy. He blamed 'nationalists' who, he claimed, wanted to break their republics away from the USSR.
Japan threatened in the east and Hitler's Germany in the west. Stalin distrusted peoples who had a homeland across the border, such as Poles, Germans and Koreans. He believed they would spy for the enemy or help an invader.
The Five-Year Plans were run from Moscow, and the army and factories needed one shared language. Stalin wanted a single, loyal Soviet people, with no local leaders or cultures strong enough to compete with the party.
These reasons fed each other. A group that kept its own language, religion and leaders looked, to Stalin, like a group that might one day choose a different side.
From the early 1930s the support given to local cultures was cut back, and Russian language and culture were pushed forward.
National leaders were removed too. In Ukraine, the promotion of the Ukrainian language was ended in 1933. Mykola Skrypnyk, the Ukrainian Communist who had led it, was accused of nationalism and shot himself in July 1933. During the Great Terror the party leaders of most republics were purged. Fayzulla Khodzhayev, head of the Uzbek government, was a defendant in the Moscow show trial of March 1938 and was shot.
During the Great Terror the NKVD ran special campaigns against 'foreign' nationalities. The largest was the Polish operation, ordered in August 1937. Poles living in the USSR were accused of spying for Poland. About 140,000 people were arrested and about 111,000 of them were shot. Similar operations targeted Germans, Latvians, Greeks, Finns and others. In all, the national operations led to about 335,000 arrests and about 247,000 executions. People were chosen not for anything they had done, but for a surname or a birthplace.
Stalin also cleared 'unreliable' peoples away from the borders.
In 1936 tens of thousands of Poles and Germans living near Ukraine's western border were moved to Kazakhstan. In autumn 1937 about 172,000 Soviet Koreans were deported from the Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, thousands of kilometres away. Stalin feared they would spy for Japan. It was the first time an entire nationality had been deported.
The USSR took over eastern Poland in 1939 and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940. More than 300,000 people were deported from eastern Poland in 1940-41, and more than 40,000 from the three Baltic states in June 1941. After Germany invaded, a decree of August 1941 deported more than 400,000 Volga Germans, whose families had lived in Russia since the 1700s, to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Deportation followed a pattern. Families were given hours to pack, loaded into goods wagons and carried for weeks across the country with little food or water. They were left in special settlements, often on open steppe, and were forbidden to leave. Many died on the journey or in the first winter. Their homes, schools and newspapers were lost.
Don't say Stalin always persecuted minorities: in the 1920s the party supported local languages and leaders. Don't confuse the national operations (arrests and shootings by the NKVD) with deportations (moving a people elsewhere). And don't describe the persecution as only about race. Stalin's main worry was loyalty.
(c) 'The main reason for the persecution of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union in the years 1924-41 was Stalin's fear of war.'
How far do you agree? Explain your answer.
You may use the following in your answer:
You must also use information of your own. [16 marks]
Fear of war was a very important reason for the persecution of ethnic minorities, and I largely agree with the statement. However, it does not explain how the persecution began.
Fear of war explains the most violent persecution. By the mid-1930s Japan threatened the USSR in the east and Hitler's Germany in the west. Stalin distrusted peoples with a homeland across the border, believing they would spy or help an invader. So in autumn 1937 about 172,000 Soviet Koreans were deported from the Far East to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, because Stalin feared they would work for Japan. In the Polish operation of 1937-38 about 111,000 people were shot as supposed spies for Poland. When Germany did invade in 1941, more than 400,000 Volga Germans were deported. In each case the victims were chosen because of a link to a foreign enemy.
On the other hand, persecution started before the danger of war was at its height, and collectivisation was the cause. Resistance to collective farms was fiercest in non-Russian areas such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Stalin blamed 'nationalists' instead of his own policy. In 1933 the promotion of the Ukrainian language was ended and its leader, Skrypnyk, was driven to suicide. This had nothing to do with foreign armies. It was about crushing opposition to Stalin's economic plans.
A third reason was Stalin's wish for central control. He wanted one loyal Soviet people run from Moscow. This led to Russification: Russian became compulsory in all non-Russian schools in 1938, the Red Army's national units were abolished and most mosques in Central Asia were closed. Republic leaders such as Khodzhayev of Uzbekistan were purged. These measures hit peoples far from any dangerous border, so fear of war cannot fully explain them.
Overall, I agree to a large extent. The test I have used is which reason explains the most severe persecution. Collectivisation and the drive for control explain why minorities lost their leaders and languages. But the mass shootings and the deportation of whole peoples all struck border nationalities, and they grew worse as war came closer between 1937 and 1941. Fear of war was therefore the main reason, building on a distrust that collectivisation had already created.
What lifts this to the top level: it covers three reasons (one beyond the two bullets), argues for and against the statement with precise facts, and reaches a judgement using a stated test.
An answer that uses only the two bullets cannot reach the top level, so plan a third reason, such as Russification and central control, before you write. Use dates to drive your argument here: ask whether each act of persecution came before or after the threat of war grew.