Assyrians in the USSR: demographic and language aspects of the soviet policy

Abstract

he historical Soviet legacy presents us with the positive achievements of state building. The issue of the vital activity of national communities in different chronological periods of the Soviet epoch occupied from a leading to secondary place in the state-party rhetorical programme activities. A striking example of this thesis was the policy of the Soviet government in the Assyrian national minority. When having a low educational and socio-economic level, demonstrating an internally consolidated structure and an indifferent attitude to the Soviet realities, the community was doomed to a tough regulatory policy on the part of the state. The purpose of our research is to study the level of mastery of the national language in the projection of the Soviet epoch on the territory of the USSR. This research context was chosen as a direct factor of assimilationist state policy and the artificial change of minority self-identification under the influence of state policy. Determining demographic indicators in a chronological perspective as an indicator of the effectiveness of the state’s national policy becomes an integral part of our research task. The methodological basis of the study is a statistical method that allows analyzing the dynamics of assimilation processes and drawing conclusions about the imperfection of the demographic accounting of the Assyrians in the territory of the USSR. The publishing of parallel statistical calculations made by representatives of the national minority and regional state bodies reveals the true intentions of the Soviet authorities towards the community. The Scientific Novelty. Involvement in the scientific circulation of statistical data of the censuses of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, their correlation with archival materials, contributes to the formation of research effectiveness. These aspects have not yet been the results of scientific research. The author using the statistical and source material draws the following conclusions: the Soviet authorities deliberately reduced the number of the Assyrians on the territory of the USSR, through deportation, ban on entry, dispersed resettlement; statistical indicators in the 1920s and 1930s of the actually available number do not reflect the real picture and are significantly underestimated; the Soviet censuses demonstrate the effectiveness of the assimilation policy in relation to the national minority, for almost 60 years more half of the Assyrians used Russian as their native language, in comparing with the pre-Soviet and early Soviet periods when their self-identification was based on 100% mastery of their native language