Building Nationhood — Borders and State Structures

Abstract

However much care was taken with defining the constitutional powers of the Soviet republics, autonomous republics and autonomous regions, it was only through often bitter experience that the parameters of power were established. The nation-building process involved not just establishing these parameters, but also fixing the territorial borders which were viewed as essential to nationhood. The Bolsheviks would have liked to create, as far as was practicable, predominantly mono-ethnic territories in which the titular nationality would be able to flourish. This was an impossible task when the Russian population had already penetrated and achieved a privileged, dominant position, in most areas, and when even the long-established local nationalities were difficult to separate one from the other. The borders of the Tsarist administrative units were of little use as they ignored national boundaries. The Civil War had seen borders come and go as rival national armies, partisan groups or even villages seized neighbouring land. As the VTsIK was forced to declare in 1921 ‘in no case should borders be determined according to current land uses, which came about as the result of the invasion of the borders of the autonomous republics’.¹ Establishing borders which were fair to all parties involved, made economic sense and at the same time satisfied as far as possible the ‘ethnological principle’ was a long-drawn out, frequently contentious process.