The Bolsheviks also saw Russian linguistic domination as a product of capitalism, and that under a neutral state it would come to overwhelm others. ‘More Ukrainian children learned to read their native language in the 1920s than in the whole of the nineteenth century.’
Technically, ‘The Soviet Union was the world’s first Affirmative Action Empire,’
‘The Soviet state financed the mass production of books, journals, newspapers, movies, operas, museums, folk music ensembles, and other cultural output in the non-Russian languages.’
The Bolsheviks believed that people misinterpreted class conflict as national conflict, but Lenin also believed there were fundamental differences between the Bad Nationalism of Russians and the Good Nationalism of oppressed people. ‘The nationalism of the oppressed, Lenin maintained, had a “democratic content” that must be supported, whereas the nationalism of the oppressor had no redeeming value.
Similarly expansive was an increase in Ukrainian language publishing and the overall flourishing of Ukrainian cultural life. As of 1931 out of 88 theatres in Ukraine, 66 were Ukrainian, 12 were Jewish (Yiddish) and 9 were Russian. The number of Ukrainian newspapers, which almost did not exist in 1922, had reached 373 out of 426, while only 3 all-republican large newspapers remained Russian. Of 118 magazines, 89 were Ukrainian. Ukrainization of book-publishing reached 83%.
Obviously, Stalin abruptly and quite barbarically reversed Ukrainization policies. His reasoning was that "Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism" was the primary problem in Ukraine. No one is saying the communists were sane.
