People's Commissariat for Nationalities

The People's Commissariat of Nationalities (abbreviation transliterated as Narkomnats), an organisation functioning from 1917 to 1924[1] in the early Soviet period of Russian and Soviet history, dealt with non-Russian nationalities. Its head, Joseph Stalin, as the People's Commissar of Nationalities (1917–23), served as a member of the Council of People's Commissars.

Origins

It was established even before the October Revolution on 11 June 1917[2] by the Petrograd Soviet as part of three measures to create state forms that would guarantee federal and autonomous solutions to national questions in the Russian Revolution:

• complete civil equality for all citizens
• the right to use the mother tongue in official business, on par with Russian
• the formation of a Soviet of nationality affairs – Narkomnats.

This decision was made in response to the crisis triggered by the Ukrainian Rada's demands for autonomy for national territories and a seat at any peace conference. These demands were rejected by Alexander Kerensky. Narkomnats was set up as an organ of the Soviets to prepare for the Constituent Assembly, particularly as regards how Ukrainian autonomy could be handled. It provided for the organisation of a congress of representatives from all of Ukraine, which in turn would set up a Ukrainian Constituent Assembly. At this time the Bolsheviks opposed any national autonomy; however, on 13 August, Joseph Stalin published a tract that floated the idea of the Party might set up an agency for nationality affairs.[3] This came at a time when Kerensky and Mensheviks like Nikolay Chkheidze were arguing for a unified state. Kerensky told Latvian representatives that they could only hope for the status of Zemstvo.[4]

Joseph Stalin as commissar presided over five or six of the first seven meetings of the Narkomnats Collegium, but failed to attend the next twenty one.[5]

Specific Commissariats related to Narkomnats

• Belnatskom was the Belorussian Commissariat established 31 January 1918[6]
• Evkom was the Jewish Commissariat.[7]
• Muskom was the Muslim Commissariat, chaired by Mullanur Waxitov

References

1. Hirsch, Francine (2007). "State and Evolution: Ethnographic Knowledge, Economic Expediency, and the Making of the USSR, 1917–1924". In Burbank, Jane; von Hagen, Mark; Remnev, Anatolyi (eds.). Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930. Indiana-Michigan series in Russian and East European studies. Indiana University Press. p. 161. ISBN 9780253219114. Retrieved 2015-07-23. The new Soviet constitution of 1924 dissolved Narkomnats [...].
2. Petrogradskii Sovet Rabochikh i Soldatskikh Deputatov: Protokoly Zasedanii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1935).
3. Revoliutsionnoe Dvizhenie v Rossii v Avgust' 1917 Goda: Protokoly (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSR, 1959) This text was omitted from the collected Works of Stalin)
4. Revoliutsionnoe Dvizhenie v Rossii v Mae-Iun' 1917 g., III (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSR, 1959).
5. 'Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities' by Jeremy Smith in Stalin: A New History by Sarah Davies (Editor), James Harris (Editor), 2005, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511614897.006
6. The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities 1917–1924 by Stephen Blank, Greenwood Press 1995, p. 20.
7. Zvi Y. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930 (1972)

Further reading

• James R. Millar, Encyclopedia of Russian History (2004) 3: 1000-1027, 1158-59.