5. The Latinization Campaign and the Symbolie Polities of National Identity

Abstract

The latinization campaign was about language, but it was more about what language symbolized. And language-not the public use of language, but its vocabulary, grammar, and script-symbolized national culture. National culture was the most ambiguous of the four central elements of korenizatsiia. The formation of national territories, support for the increased use of national languages, and the creation of national elites, the subject of Chapters 2 to 4, were clear, if often challenging, goals. But what exactly was national culture? Stalin, of course, famously defined Soviet national cultures as being "national in form, socialist in content." But this just begged the question as to what "national in form" meant, and Stalin purposefully chose not to clarify this concepto The very existence of national culture was controversial. The left oppositionist, Vaganian, spoke for many party members when he asserted that national culture was an inherently bourgeois and nationalist concept and that the Bolsheviks should do no more than build international or socialist culture in nationallanguages. Although he would never have admitted it, this is close to what Stalin had in mind. When he referred to tasks in building national culture, Stalin's first example was typically native-Ianguage schools.1 In lists of accomplishments in "national-cultural construction," authors would add nativelanguage literature, theater, and opera (which was considered especially cultured). Since the content of the schools and literary works was to be socialist, this all amounted to little more than Vaganian's socialist culture in national languages.