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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (54522)	9/4/1999 12:51:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Answers to your questions, Blue. The easiest one first: the "cult of personality" is a phrase coined by Nikita Khrushchev, in his famous "secret speech" denouncing Stalin. Whenever the ideology and life of a state is centered on a deified leader, who has full control over everyone and everything (usually exercised through an overgrown secret police), you have a "cult of personality." Examples: Stalin in the Soviet Union; Hitler in Nazi Germany; Kim-il Sung in N. Korea; Saddam Hussein in Iraq. "Internationalism." This has meant different things at different times in Soviet History. In the document you are referring to, I would guess that the term "internationalism" is being used to describe Lenin's nationality policy. As a socialist, Lenin in principle had always been opposed to nationalism. But when the Russian Empire disintegrated, it disintegrated along national lines. It could not be put back together again unless the Bolsheviks could think of some way to tempt the different nationalities of the Empire back into what Lenin himself had called "the prison of nations." Leninist "nationality policy", in theory at least, allowed different nationalities the right of self-determination, even the right of secession (which, in the event, was applied only to the larger nationalities, the ones that had "full union republic status"). And indeed, in the early days of the Soviet Union, almost every small nationality had its own "autonomous" administrative unit; and the authorities did encourage the development of non-Russian native elites, languages, cultures, etc. Under Stalin, that changed. The move to "Great Russian chauvinism" (a mortal sin, in Lenin's eyes) began with the decimation of non-Russian native elites, imprisoned & executed for "bourgeois nationalism." The "high point," if it can be called that, was the total uprooting and deportation to Central Asia of entire nationalities/ethnic groups (including the Chechens) at the end of WW II. (Khrushchev condemned the deportations as one of the worst examples of the "cult of personality" run amok, and he was the one who allowed the Chechens & most of the others to return home.) However, the usual meaning of "internationalism," in the Soviet context, is quite different. It originated in the socialist idea of solidarity of the proletariat across national boundaries. Thus, it was the "internationalist duty" of Soviet soldiers to come to their aid of the "brother regime" in Afghanistan. Okay? Joan