Narkomnats

Narkomnats was the Soviet People's Commissariat of Nationalities.

Origins

It was established even before the October Revolution on 11 June 1917 ["Petrogradskii Sovet Rabochikh i Soldatskikh Deputatov:Protokoly Zasedanii" (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1935)] by the Petrograd Soviet as part of three measures to create state forms which 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 a 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 where they would claim Eastern Galicia, an area then part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire but populated predominately by Ukrainians. These demands were rejected by 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 gave provision 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, Stalin published a tract that floated the idea of the Party might set up an agency for nationality affairs ["Revoliutsionnoe Dvizhenie v Ruossii v Avgust' 1917 Goda: Protokoly" (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSR, 1959) This text was omitted from the collected Works of Stalin)] .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 ["Revoliutsionnoe Dvizhenie v Ruossii v Mae-Ilun' 1917g",III (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSR, 1959)]

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 ['Stalin as Commissar of Nnationalities' by Jeremy Smith in [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LXo-0FUpZccC&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=%22zhizn+natsional+nostei%22&source=web&ots=qkmJxnPg_M&sig=jx4RtqYTQ7ytN-hH1jAk_YeTcZo&hl=en "Stalin: A New History"] by Sarah Davies (Editor), James Harris (Editor), 2005, Cambridge University Press] .

pecific Commissariats related to Narkomnats

* Belnatskom was the Belorussian Commissariat established 31 January 1918 ["The Sorcerer as Apprentice:Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities 1917 - 1924" by Stephen Blank, Greenwood Press 1995 p 20]
*Evkom was the Jewish Commissariat
*Muskom was the Muslim Commissariat, chaired by Mullanur Waxitov

References