MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

Revolution and Nationalities was the leading magazine dedicated to Soviet national politics from 1930 to 1937. It covered a wide range of topics, from international agreements to the everyday life, customs and culture of the Soviet republics. The culture of nationalities, which was developing in the USSR under the concept of “national in form and socialist in content”, was considered as the main weapon in the struggle against antagonism among the individual Soviet nations. The vagueness of the concept allowed the Soviet government to concurrently implement such policies as the Latinisation of Islam-based cultures, in parallel with campaigns against ‘Great-Russian chauvinism’ aimed to support minorities and promote local languages at work and in schools. In the arts, the policy took even more peculiar forms. For instance, editors and contributors to Revolution and Nationalities consistently emphasised the importance of comprehensive assimilation between the national literature in the different republics. In order to create a united Soviet culture, writers were urged to overcome “national narrow-mindedness”, which included any form of idealisation of their native land, nature and peasant life. Following the Great Purge, Soviet national politics had shifted dramatically by the end of the 1930s, and the policy of indigenisation was abandoned in favour of a reversal to Russification.