Unbreakable Union

In this episode of Unbreakable Union, we explore the Soviet Union’s National Question during the 1930s: how could a socialist state reconcile the right of nations to self determination with the ultimate goal of internationalist unity? From the national delimitation of Central Asia and the promotion of indigenous languages and cultures to the growing emphasis on Soviet patriotism under Stalin, we trace the evolution of a revolutionary project caught between national autonomy and centralized power. How did the Soviet state seek to overcome nationalism while simultaneously creating, redefining, and institutionalizing national identities? And what became of the promise that socialism would unite the peoples of the former Russian Empire?

This is Union of Nations - Nation of Unions.

By 1928, the Soviet Union had survived revolution, civil war, foreign intervention, and diplomatic isolation. But survival had not made the Soviet state feel secure.

As Stalin and the Bolsheviks turned toward rapid industrialization at home, they also faced a world they believed remained fundamentally hostile to the revolution. Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Japan, and the United States all represented different kinds of danger. And behind them stood a deeper fear: that the capitalist powers might one day unite against the Soviet Union.

This shaped Soviet foreign policy throughout the 1930s.

The story, however, is not simply one of Soviet aggression or isolation. Moscow alternated between revolutionary internationalism and pragmatic diplomacy, between calls for world revolution and attempts to secure recognition, trade, alliances, and ultimately military security.

The Soviet Union supported revolutionary movements abroad, joined the League of Nations, pursued collective security against fascism, intervened in the Spanish Civil War, watched Japan expand across East Asia, and finally signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in 1939.

So how did a revolutionary state navigate a world it believed was determined to destroy it?

In this episode, we’re going to trace Soviet foreign policy from the Great Break of 1928 through the outbreak of the Second World War—and ask how the Soviet leadership understood the central problem of its existence: how could the revolution survive in a hostile world?

This is: Comintern and Country.

In part 2 of special episode "Life Has Become More Joyous" Jason and Matthew continue with a discussion on the Stalinist Cultural Revolution of the 1930s.

The Cultural Revolution signaled the "Great Break" that promised to generate a new Soviet society. The Communist Party set out to revolutionize Soviet culture. They attacked the old intelligentsia, smashed established hierarchies and sought to create a new socialist man. A few years later, the revolutionaries had built a bureaucracy, the workers and peasants had achieved social mobility, and Stalin was declaring that ‘life had become more joyous.’

Join us as we explore how the Soviet Union progressed from an experimental and unstable revolutionary state to establishing the foundations of a global superpower. 

This is Life Has Become More Joyous, the story of how cultural revolution became Stalinist civilization.

The 1930s transformed Soviet society. The state collectivized agriculture, built an enormous industrial economy, reshaped the cities, and established a political system that reached more deeply into everyday life than ever before.

But these transformations did not happen through economic policy and political decrees alone. They also changed by law.

In the 1920s, Soviet law had often been experimental. The Bolsheviks debated whether law itself would eventually disappear as class divisions disappeared. They experimented with revolutionary approaches to marriage, family, labor, property, and criminal justice.

By the 1930s, the Soviet state increasingly used law to protect socialist property, discipline labor, regulate movement, control the countryside, strengthen the family, and punish behavior that it considered threatening to the socialist order.

The internal passport system restricted migration. New laws imposed severe penalties for theft of collective and state property. Labor discipline became increasingly coercive. Family and social legislation reversed some of the radical reforms of the 1920s. And following the assassination of one of their own, Communist leaders demanded extraordinary judicial and extrajudicial procedures that expanded the state's ability to punish its enemies.

Join us as Jason explores this fascinating chapter in Soviet history. 

This is: Changes in Soviet Law: "Strengthening Socialist Legality."