Jason Roeder

What ought to distinguish a nation-state from an empire is the people residing in the former’s ability to shape their own futures freely. Should the two be considered opposites? To answer this question, one must observe how empires utilize the vernacular of self-determination as a cover to amalgamate land for the metropole’s “long-term, all-union concerns.”  Prior to the Second World War, Japan and the Soviet Union claimed to separate themselves from European colonial practices while preserving the cultures and languages of the territories they controlled. Nonetheless, both countries created quasi-images of national identity to fulfill their assimilationist goals while reinforcing a pecking order system for their subjects.  

By 1940, as the Japanese Empire’s 2600^th anniversary loomed, its leaders prided themselves on being the first non-white, non-Christian country to challenge the status quo with their victory against Russia nearly four decades earlier.  But as Kenneth J. Ruoff covers in his book on the year’s celebrations, they also formed a localized version of an ethnic and cultural hierarchy over their sphere of influence in East Asia. Despite its quest for self-determination, the Japanese opted for policies on par with their European rivals, affirming their status as a nation-state with expansionist tendencies.  

There was nothing subtle about Japan’s position regarding the Korean peninsula. In retrospect, 1940 was a peak year in their efforts to absorb what was branded as a nation left behind by history into their modern society, culminating in a February decree ordering all Koreans to Japanize their family names. Simultaneously, the government attempted to uphold Korea’s cultural distinctions to maintain its role as an exotic destination within the Empire for Japanese tourists. Although they appeared irreconcilable, preserving these traces accomplished the twin aims of allowing visitors to voyeuristically glimpse a native society from a safe distance before sequestering themselves into a cocoon of Japanese-style amenities while validating their homeland’s role as a custodian for this once proud civilization. 

Such an industry that supported activities like bus rides around Keiji (modern-day Seoul), which afforded tourists the opportunity to observe Korean architecture, dress up in native outfits for a lighthearted commemorative photo, or indulge in sex with local prostitutes, is indicative of the disparity of power between the Japanese and their subjects. A sightseer could experience Korea down to the postcards they purchased and return home feeling entirely confident in their perception of the colony’s unique yet primitive culture, in contrast to the mother country’s modernizing influence. At the same time, policies geared toward Korea further embodied the uneven balance of authority inside a region that the Japanese believed was offering an enormous service by being consolidated into their Empire. 

While some Koreans enthusiastically participated in the 2600^th anniversary festivities, as demonstrated by numerous children determined to memorize the Imperial Subject Oath as proof of their loyalty, it did nothing to change their inability to achieve citizenship. Beginning in 1899, over a decade before the peninsula’s annexation, this relied on a certification process favoring a family’s male lineage with registers in Japan proper.  Regardless of how affiliated a Korean might be to Japan, the registration system acted as a barrier to the privileges of being a full citizen and affirmed the ranking system where the Japanese remained at the top. Ultimately, Japan’s stance on Korea conformed to what Getachew describes as diluting a vassal’s potential for self-determination via the disciplining mechanisms of empire. 

This concept also assumed a peculiar character in the Soviet Union following the Bolshevik Revolution. Unlike in Japan, the development of nationalities was actively encouraged through a process termed by Francine Hirsch as double assimilation where the Soviets organized ethnic groups through an elaborate system of taking census and delineating borders, and then consolidated them again as individual parts of the Union. But comparable to the Japanese, the communist regime molded these cultural identities, albeit through more bureaucratic means, to entrench them firmly under state control. 

Soviet administrators based their model, known as a policy of state-sponsored evolution, on Marx’s stages of human advancement, arguing that granting nationhood to various peoples would facilitate their progression towards socialism inside the Soviet whole. The three-pronged approach to carry this out arose from a compromise between the All Russia-Central Executive Committee (Gosplan) and the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities (Narkomnats) in which territories were divided along overlapping national-territorial and economic interests. Simultaneously, the new Central Executive Committee (TsIK) would utilize a managerial system that could negate these factors if they were at odds with the Union’s needs. 

Ironically, a hierarchical system resulted from this pursuit of nation-making from above, enabling dominant groups within a national republic to impose harsh measures on indigenous populations. This would create bizarre scenarios where an ethnic majority asserting its control in one region found itself targeted as a minority in another. Communities on the wrong side of a border could be forcibly registered as part of the majority while their cultural and linguistic freedoms were curtailed. Amid such treatment, their representatives became adept at using government jargon to call for more ethnically appropriate borders between republics. 

 Hirsch cites the plight of the Uzbeks as an example of this double standard. The Iskandersk province in Kirgizia consisted of nearly a dozen villages where Uzbeks endured increased marginalization by local authorities, leading to a request for a redrawing of the boundaries. Intentional or not, the petitioners used prose associated with the principle of state-sponsored evolution in their appeals, which came before the TsIK during the mid-1920s. Although the commission acknowledged the ethnic and economic benefits of including Iskandersk into Uzbekistan, such a step was ruled out due to concerns of isolating a section belonging to the Kazakh ASSR from that region and requiring its own incorporation into Uzbekistan as well. The rejection of Iskanderk’s petition exemplifies a conundrum where issues of national sovereignty could not supplant matters pertaining to the entire Union’s stability.

Similarly, the Tajiks residing in Uzbekistan issued overtures for their population to be free of what they saw as their own forced Uzbekization. Like the Uzbeks in Kirgizia, Tajik officials used the language of the Soviet state in their arguments of how a new territory comprising their ethnic communities would accelerate the pace of socialist development in their lands. After reviewing Tajik and Uzbek arguments, the TsIK endorsed Tajikistan’s position as a union republic in late 1929. It nevertheless rejected Tajikistan’s claim to two Tajik-majority provinces which included Uzbekistan’s most prominent cities on the grounds that creating ethnically precise borders were secondary to ensuring balance in Central Asia.  

Both cases highlight the perplexing criteria used by Soviet officials to resolve conflicts between local desires for suitable boundaries and the unionwide necessity for political cohesion. The friction stemming from these disputes notwithstanding, they fulfilled the participatory aspect of double assimilation by involving administrators in the socialist government and amongst the localities themselves in the decision-making process. Finally, they reflect how the Soviet Union’s experiment of forming mock-republics solidified its claim as an empire of multiple national identities. 

It can be surmised that perceiving empires and nation-states as opposites ignores an empire’s capability to bend ideas of national autonomy to its whims and a nation-state’s potential to apply such values to itself while denying it to outlying areas under their authority. Japan was a prime example as a standout amongst non-Western countries of the early 20^th century, keen on asserting its destiny but embracing a system where countries were labeled as civilized or uncivilized, thereby relegating lands such as Korea into curiosities and legitimizing their subservient place in the Empire. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union encouraged self-determination for its territories only on a superficial level to advance the long-term goal of creating a socialist utopia of denationalized peoples.  Treating the two entities as separate is thus dependent on how each defines self-determination; either as a notion to be manipulated or respected as their peoples’ sovereign right even if it leads to the cessation of the metropole’s imperialist aspirations.

Image: Liden & Denz, USSR Declares War On Japan, 2016

Jason Roeder is a second year MAGIC student focusing on Post-war West Germany through the depiction of World War II in films. Through his research he hopes to understand the dialogue these films generated and the views they reflected in regards to the new values of the German army. He grew up in southern California and graduated from Chapman University with a BA in Film Studies and a double minor in English and Holocaust History. An explorer at heart with a passion for traveling and learning foreign languages, his goal is to earn his PhD and become a historian for 20th/21st Century Central and Eastern Europe.