Marking a year of the fight for Ukrainian independence against Moscow’s invasion, the Books of the Month this week features Samizdat, Voices of the Soviet Opposition. It contains clandestine writings circulated in the Soviet Union challenging bureaucratic domination and repression. The excerpt is from a 1972 open letter, “Against Russification,” by 17 Latvian revolutionaries defending the proletarian internationalist course of the Bolshevik Revolution led by V.I. Lenin. They point to the oppressive rule Moscow imposed on Latvia and other nations under the Stalinist regime, as it had been in the czarist prison house of nations. Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to reimpose Russification on Ukraine today. Copyright © 1974 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
Dear comrades,
We are seventeen Latvian Communists, seeking your help. We are writing to you because we do not see any other way of affecting certain actions and events which cause great harm to the Communist movement, to Marxism-Leninism, and to our own and other small nations.
Many Communists have voiced in their party organizations the concerns we are expressing here, and some have appealed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Repressions have been the only results. …
With a clear conscience, we did everything in our power to carry out the teachings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. However, it became painfully clear to us that with each passing year their ideas became more distorted, that the teachings of Lenin are used here as a cover for Great Russian chauvinism, that deeds no longer agree with words, that we are complicating the work of Communists in other countries, that we are impeding this work instead of facilitating it.
Originally we believed that this was due simply to the errors of a few individual local officials who did not realize the harmful effects of their attitudes. With time, however, it became apparent to us that the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party had deliberately adopted a policy of Great Russian chauvinism and that the forcible assimilation of the small USSR nations had been set as one of the most immediate and important domestic policy goals. …
[T]he Russian czars always dreamed of capturing the ice-free ports of Ventspils, Liepaja, Riga, and Tallinn. Czar Peter I fulfilled this dream and our ancestors came under Russian domination. From time to time various areas of Latvia were also occupied by the Poles and the Swedes. All these conquerors tried to assimilate the local tribes, but without success. Later these tribes evolved as the nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, gaining their independence in 1918, after World War I. …
During World War II, approximately 40,000 people were evacuated to the interior of the Soviet Union. Two Latvian divisions fought in the ranks of the Red Army. The rest of the indigenous population remained in Latvia. Some of the people who had remained in Latvia were annihilated by the German fascists. Some died on the front in battle against the Red Army, and at the end of the war, some emigrated to Western countries (West Germany, Sweden, Australia, United States, etc.).
After World War II, the CPSU CC [Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee] established as its goal to develop a permanent power base in the territories of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and began the forceful colonization of these territories with Russians, Byelorussians, and Ukrainians. It also began the forceful assimilation of Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians, as well as other minority nationalities, disregarding the fact that such actions clearly speak against the principles of Marxism-Leninism. …
In achieving the first basic aim, the increase in the number of non-Latvians in the republic, steps are also being taken to achieve the second basic aim, which is to assimilate the Latvians and lead to the Russian way of life throughout Latvia. …
Those Lithuanians, Estonians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and other minorities (except Russians) residing in Latvian territory do not have their ethnic heritages at all respected. Until 1940 (until the establishment of Soviet rule) in Latvia these minorities had their own elementary and secondary schools where they studied in their own language. They issued their own language newspapers, magazines, books; they had their own clubs, theaters, and other cultural and educational institutions. Now, in disregard of pertinent Marxist-Leninist principles dealing with ethnic questions, and contrary to the statements of USSR leaders that ethnic problems in the Soviet Union have been solved and that each nationality has been guaranteed complete freedom and equality, nothing of that kind is evident. In every republic the Russians have everything, people native to their republics have something, but others nothing at all. The 3,500,000 Jews residing in the Soviet Union have only one magazine in their native language, and that only in their autonomous region. They are denied the right to have their own theaters, clubs, cultural and educational institutions, even in those cities where they number tens of thousands. …
[W]e gradually realized that much of the official written and spoken output of the government was for display purposes only — deliberate distortions and outright lies. All party conferences, meetings, and assemblies are carefully prearranged and executed shows. They are convened only to create an illusion of democracy within the party. In reality, these conferences, meetings, and assemblies merely have to approve everything that has been dictated from “above”; subsequently they expound the individual opinion of a single person — the head man in the government. Every attempt to object to these opinions is regarded as opposition to the ideals of the party and Leninism. Those who dare to object not only lose their positions but also their freedom, and often end up suffering subhuman conditions in prisons and concentration camps, are deported, or sometimes vanish without a trace. …
The present policies of the Communist Party leaders in the Soviet Union are destroying the world Communist movement.