No More Learning

Several Soviet peoples of the mountainous Caucasus
and Transcaucasus are also Turco-Tatar in origin, pre-
eminent among them being the Azerbaidzhanians, over
3,000,000 in number, who form one of the sixteen consti-
tuent Union Republics of the U. S. S. R. The Azerbaid-
zhan Republic, bordering the Caspian Sea and Iran, has
traditionally been known as the "Land of Fire," because
of its easily combustible oil and gas deposits. (Azer
means fire. ) In the early nineteenth century fire-wor-
shippers of the cult of Zoroaster still carried out their
rites before the flames of their sacred temple in Baku.
This internationally famous city is the capital of Azer-
baidzhan and the greatest center of oil production in
Soviet Russia.
However, the heart of Turco-Tatar strength in the
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
U. S. S. R. lies east across the Caspian Sea in the warm, rich
domain of Soviet Central Asia. Here the Kazakhs, the
Kirgiz, the Turkmenians and the Uzbeks, all of Turco-
Tatar stock and possessing their own Union Republics,
dwell in what is historically one of the most interesting
and romantic parts of the Soviet Union. It was in this
land that there rose the famous and fabulously wealthy
cities of Holy Bukhara and Golden Samarkand, their
many mosques, minarets and other structures combining
to create an architectural splendor unsurpassed in the
Moslem world. Here met and merged the trade, the art,
the civilization of the ancient and medieval East, with
Persian, Turkish, Indian and Chinese influences all play-
ing their role.
The hot, arid climate of Soviet Central Asia has been
a major factor in bringing a large proportion of the land
under the sway of soil-destroying sands. For instance, in
the Turkmenian Republic 80 percent of the territory
consists of desert wastes. Since earliest times, the pros-
perity of Central Asia has depended primarily upon the
proper utilization of water and the efficient maintenance
of the irrigation system. And the Soviets, with their tire-
less energy and scientific techniques, have made enor-
mous strides in the battle to extend fertility to one of the
world's driest and most barren plains. *
The Uzbek S. S. R. , containing the cities of Bukhara,
Samarkand and Tashkent, its capital, is the most prosper-
ous and populous of the Central Asiatic Republics. It
is the great cotton state of the Soviet Union and also
excels in the growing of silk. But since 1917 it has also
become highly industrialized. In Tsarist times the Uz-
beks were called "Sarts" from the old Turkish for "wan-
? See pp. 204-207.
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? SOVIET ETHHIC DEMOCRACY
der. " Their country, comparable to the American south-
west, has an over-abundance of sunshine. "The men of
Uzbekistan wear white clothing open to the waist, expos-
ing their sunburned chests, and black skull caps embroid-
ered in white. The women are dressed in brightly
colored gowns of radiant pale yellows and reds. The
girls' black hair is braided in innumerable thin plaits;
old men in colored turbans ride along on donkeys. "3
East of Uzbekistan is the Kirgiz Republic, situated
in a high and mountainous region contiguous to China's
Sinkiang Province. There is a widely held belief that
the birthplace of the human race was in what is now
Kirgizia. The Kirgiz people were poverty-stricken nom-
ads under the Tsar, but have since developed a fairly
stable and prosperous agricultural life. To the north of
Uzbekistan lies the huge Kazakh Republic, in itself alone
one-third as large as the United States. In its climate,
expanse and great business of stock-breeding northern
Kazakhstan is much like Montana, Wyoming, Colorado
and Utah; while the southern portion of the Republic is
reminiscent of New Mexico and Arizona. In mineral
resources the Kazakh S. S. R. is even richer than America's
Rocky Mountain region.
The Kazakhs are generally of medium build, black
hair and/swarthy complexion. Until the Soviets took
over, this people were roving herdsmen wandering with
their big flocks and herds over the unending steppe and
desert, living the major part of their lives in the saddle,
and moving their tents and scanty possessions from place
to place on the backs of camels. They have shared in the
vast industrial and agricultural progress that has come
to Central Asia during the last third of a century; and
their nomadic life is now mainly a thing of the past.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Generalizing again about Soviet Central Asia, we can
say that in no section of Soviet Russia is the contrast of
old and new more marked. For this entire region has
leaped, in but a moment of history, from a stagnant semi-
feudalism, characterized by Asiatic tyranny of the most
barbarous type, to a progressive, modern, dynamic stage
of society in the form of Marxist socialism. This revolu-
tionary advance is apparent wherever one goes in Cen-
tral Asia, whether in the city districts where the old build-
ings and the new stand side by side, in the rural areas
where the native population in their traditional garb
operate tractors and combines, or in the remote valleys
and mountain ranges where isolated peoples have for the
first time been brought into contact with twentieth-
century civilization.
The third largest ethnic group in the U. S. S. R. con-
sists of the olive-skinned Japhetic peoples living for the
most part in the highlands and mountains of the Caucasus
and Transcaucasus. These are the picturesque Armeni-
ans, Adzharians, Abkhazians, Georgians, Kurds, Kabar-
dinians and others, numbering about 7,000,000 alto-
gether. These nationalities are rather mixed in their
religious faith, some being followers of Allah, others
regular Orthodox, and the Armenians adhering to their
own particular and independent brand of Christianity.
Armenia, on the crossroads between Europe and Asia,
has a long and turbulent history going back to the times
of ancient Greece and Rome. The freedom-loving Arme-
nians, often temporarily conquered but never ethnically
absorbed, today maintain one of the constituent Union
Republics of the U. S. S. R. and are noted for their energy
and enterprise. Predominantly agrarian under Tsarist
Russia, Armenia has undergone considerable manufac-
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? SOVIET ETHNIC DEMOCRACY
turing development under the Soviets and has put its
agriculture on a modernized basis, with cotton fields,
vineyards, orchards, tobacco plantations and cattle-rais-
ing all collectivized. It is successfully exploiting its high
mountain lakes and rivers in ambitious water-power and
irrigation projects. The best-known contemporary Ar-
menians are Aram I. Khachaturian, a first-rate symphonic
composer, and Anastas I. Mikoyan, a Deputy Chairman
of the Soviet Council of Ministers.
The gay, wine-drinking Georgians, their Union Re-
public adjoining Armenia, are an ancient Japhetic people
who were converted to Christianity in 345 A. D. , three
centuries before the Anglo-Saxons. It was to the Black
Sea shores of Georgia that Jason and his Argonauts, ac-
cording to Greek mythology, sailed in quest of the Gold-
en Fleece. Legend also tells us that Prometheus was
chained to a wild precipice of Georgia's Mt. Kazbek and
eternally devoured by vultures for having made known
to mankind the magic of fire. Georgia boasts of an
amazing diversity of agricultural and mineral wealth,
possessing some of the largest manganese deposits in the
world. The most famous of all Georgians is Premier and
Generalissimo Joseph Stalin, born in 1879 near the capi-
tal, Tbilisi. The Georgians were severely oppressed by
the Tsars; and the fact that Stalin has risen to the highest
positions of leadership in the U. S. S. R. fittingly symbol-
izes the genuineness of Soviet equalitarian policy towards
minorities.
Two closely related Japhetic peoples, the Adzharians
and the Abkhazians, minorities within a minority, have
their own Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics within
- Georgia. This sort of set-up is typical of the ethnic com-
plexity that we find in the U. S. S. R. Moreover, in the
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Abkhazian Republic and speaking the Abkhazian tongue,
is a minority within a minority within a minority, namely
several hundred of the Soviet Union's few indigenous
Negroes, chiefly descendants of African slaves originally
brought into this vicinity by native Turkish landowners.
Another striking ethnic group in the Georgian Republic
is the primitive tribe of Khevsurs, who, hemmed in and
isolated for centuries by the towering peaks of the Trans-
caucasus, are reputed to be descended from a wandering
band of Crusaders who became stranded in this region.
On occasion the Khevsurs still put on medieval helmets,
chain armor and white Frankish crosses which have been
handed down from generation to generation.
Another major ethnic stock in the U. S. S. R. is the
approximately 5,000,000 Finno-Ugrians, who are closely
related to the Hungarians, and who are concentrated in
the northwestern part of Soviet Russia. They consist of
the Finns and Karelians of the Karelo-Finnish Union
Republic; their Estonian cousins just south across the
Gulf of Finland in the Estonian Union Republic; and
a related patchwork of peoples like the Mari along the
middle Volga River and the Komi scattered as far east
as the northern Ural Mountains. The Finno-Ugrians are
in general Russian Orthodox in religion, except for the
Finns and Estonians, who are mainly Protestant.
A fifth pervasive ethnic strain is the Jewish^ totaling
around 5,000,000 in 1941, but reduced during World
War II to about 3,000,000 by the monstrous mass mur-
ders and genocide of the Nazi invaders in the occupied
territories. While most of the Jews in both Tsarist and
Soviet Russia have lived in the western parts of the coun-
try, Jews in considerable numbers are to be found in each
of the sixteen constituent Republics of the U. S. S. R.
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? SOVIET ETHNIC DEMOCRACY
In 1928 the Soviet Government established a special
district in the Far East where Jews from all over the
Soviet Union could go and settle if they so desired. This
region, almost three times as big as the state of Israel, is
situated along the Manchurian frontier and centers upon
the Amur River and two of its tributaries, the Bira and
Bidzhan. Hence the territory is usually known as Biro-
bidzhan, although since 1934 its official name has been
the Jewish Autonomous Region. This thriving Auto-
nomous Region has an estimated population (1949) of
185,000, of whom about 50 percent are Jewish. Like
other Autonomous Regions in Soviet Russia, it enjoys
self-government in regard to purely local affairs and
elects five deputies to the Soviet of Nationalities. The
official language of the Jewish A. R. is Yiddish.
Even more important, in my judgment, than the set-
ting up of this Jewish Autonomous Region is the fact
that the Soviets have virtually eliminated throughout the
U. S. S. R. the virulent and often violent anti-Semitic dis-
crimination and persecution that prevailed in Tsarist
days. The Soviet Government is sometimes accused of
hostility toward Jews because it opposes Judaism, their
religion, and Zionism, their characteristic national move-
ment of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But the
Soviet Government, controlled as it is by the Communist
Party, discourages all religions in the U. S. S. R. (while
protecting their freedom of functioning) and is against
Zionism as a bourgeois nationalist manifestation. The
truth remains that the Jews of the Soviet Union enjoy
a fully rounded racial democracy that no other nation on
earth except the newly founded Republic of Israel at
present makes possible for the Jewish people.
Scores of other racial and national minorities dwell
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
in the U. S. S. R. besides the ones which I have already
mentioned. For example, theCLatvians^nd the^Lithuani-
ans of the Baltic littoral are both organized into Union
Republics. The Moldavians, too, of the Black Sea region
in the southwest have their own Union Republic. In the
mountainous uplands of Soviet Central Asia the Tad-
zhiks, of old Iranian (Persian) stock, maintain one of the
Union Republics, bordering Afghanistan and near to
India. Tall, straight-nosed and blue-eyed, the (Tadzhiks\>
are probably more closely related to the so-called Aryans
than the Germans or any other alleged "Nordics" in the
West. ?
Then there is a minority of almost 1,500,000 Ger-
mans, many of whom are descendants of those who emi-
grated to Russia as skilled workers during the eighteenth
century. For eighteen years starting in 1923 a sizeable
group of these Germans had an Autonomous Soviet
Socialist Republic on the lower Volga about 150 miles
above Stalingrad. In the fall of 1941, when the Nazi
armies were rapidly advancing, the Soviet Government
abolished this Volga German Republic on the grounds
that a dangerous proportion of its citizens were fifth-
columnists for Adolf Hitler; and moved all of its German
inhabitants to a remote, though fertile, region in south
central Siberia.
Siberia in general, that place of exile and evil repute
under the Tsars, the Soviet regime has transformed into
a flourishing empire of industrial and agricultural pro-
ductivity. Many of the indigenous peoples of this largest
section of Soviet Asia are [Mongols^in origin and are
of the same ethnic stock as the Mongols to the south in
China. (The word Mongol is derived from mong, mean-
ing brave. ) Prominent among the Soviet Mongolian
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SOVIET ETHHIC DEMOCRACY
groups are the Buryat-Mongols who have their own
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in southeastern
Siberia. Nomadic for centuries past, the Buryats are
yellow-skinned and slant-eyed, with broad noses and high
cheek-bones.
They are one of the several Siberian peoples who re-
semble the American Indian in facial and physical char-
acteristics, in certain customs, songs and religious cere-
monies, and in basic living habits such as the use of tents
or wigwams constructed from a framework of poles
covered with skins or bark. All this is not surprising
when we consider that, according to the best scientific
opinion, distant ancestors of the Indians migrated from
Asia across Bering Strait, which is only fifty-six miles wide
and interspersed with islands, or across a vanished land
bridge in that vicinity. The noted anthropologist, the
late Professor Franz Boas of Columbia University, states:
"The physical relationship of the American native to the
east Asiatic is closer than that to any other race. Straight,
dark hair; wide, rather flat face; heavy nose; tendency to
a Mongoloid eye are common to both of them. Locally,
types are found that are so much alike that it would be
rather difficult to say whether an individual is an Asiatic
or an American. "4
Small Siberian tribes clearly akin to the American
Indiansjare the Evenkis and Nenets up north near the
Arctic Circle and the Far Eastern Luoravetlans of the
Bering Strait region. Each of these peoples is organized
into a National Area, the smallest nationalities subdivi-
sion mentioned in the Soviet Constitution. National
Areas are represented by one deputy apiece in the Soviet
of Nationalities. The few Soviet Eskimos are also ethni-
cally close to the American Indian and are racial brothers
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
of the North American and Greenland Eskimos. Eskimos
today live on both sides of Bering Strait and are nearly
identical in physique, customs and language.
The Soviet North and the Soviet Far East, both fasci-
nating subjects of study in themselves, contain a number
of other small peoples whom I shall not try to treat of
here. For further details of this kind I must refer the
reader to my earlier book, The Peoples of the Soviet
Union. Some of the smaller tribal groupings in the U. S.
S. R. number but a few thousands, like those of the
Dagestan Autonomous Republic in the Caucasus, or even
a few hundred, like the Aleuts living on the bleak Ko-
mandorskie Islands of the Pacific. \Of the 177 ethnic
groups that make up the Soviet population only ninety-
It is important to realize, too, that all of the main
ethnic territorial divisions have within their borders a
minority or minorities other than the predominant one.
Thus in the Ukrainian Republic there are some 3,000,000
Russians, and several hundred thousand each of Belorus-
sians, Bulgarians and Greeks. At the same time, several
million Ukrainians live outside the borders of the Ukrai-
nian S. S. R. in other Union Republics. Practically every
Union Republic, Autonomous Republic and Autonom-
ous Region includes substantial numbers of Russians.
The policy of the Soviet regime toward national and
racial minorities constitutes a direct antithesis to the
Tsarist attitude, which won for pre-revolutionary Russia
the label "prison of nations. " The old Russian Empire
contained practically all of the same peoples who live
today in the Soviet Union, although its minorities of
2. The Soviet Minorities Policy
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? SOVIET ETHNIC DEMOCRACY
Finns and Poles were much larger. |__The absolutistic
Russian monarchy functioned frankly under the twin
slogans of "One Tsar, one religion, one language" and
"Autocracy, orthodoxy, nationalism. " For the minority
groups in general this meant political oppression, eco-
nomic exploitation and enforced (if superficial) Russifi-
cation.
TheTsarist Government filled official positions in the
minority territories almost exclusively with Russians and
made every effort to suppress and destroy the indigenous
cultures and languages of non-Russian peoples. Through-
out the Empire the Russian language became the sole
medium of the courts, the government schools and official
business, the use of other tongues being severely discour-
aged or forbidden. For example, "A Kalmyk boy caught
speaking his own dialect in class or school had to wear
round his neck the sign, 'It is forbidden to speak Kal-
myk,' and go without dinner. "
The ruling class of Russians viewed with open con-
tempt the subject peoples, who hated them bitterly in
return. The relation existing between the imperial
government and the Kazakhs was quite typical. As one
Tsarist official put it, "There is no other way to manage
the Kazakhs except through massacres. " The Kazakhs, on
the other hand, had a well-known proverb, "If a Russian
travel with you, hold an ax in readiness. " The Tsars
followed the well-established imperialist policy of "divide
and rule," stirring up inter-racial animosities whenever
and wherever possible: Poles against Ukrainians, Ar-
menians against Georgians, everyone against the Jews.
Indicative of the Minorities policy of the Tsars was
their ferocious anti-Semitism,^ which became a scandal
throughout the civilized world. I have already called
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
attention to the horrible pogroms, promoted and pro-
tected by both the government and the official Orthodox
Church. The Jews were compelled to live in the so-
called Pale of Settlement and were therefore barred,
except under special regulations, from many cities and
districts of imperial Russia. They were also excluded,
unless they adopted Christianity, from all public adminis-
trative posts and from most professions. Numerous
restrictions limited their attending educational institu-
tions and engaging in agriculture.
But beyond all this the Jews under the Tsarist regime
were subject to organized raids and massacres in which
thousands upon thousands -- men, women and children
-- were brutally slain or driven from their plundered
homes. These appalling slaughters of the innocent (pre-
views of what the more efficient Nazis would later do)
were called pogroms in Russian; and this word of awful
import has been taken over intact into English and other
languages. The official anti-Semitism of the Tsarist
regime, which included refusal of passports to American
Jewish citizens, aroused intense indignation in the United
States during the first two decades of the twentieth cen-
tury and led the American Government in 1913 to let
lapse a commercial treaty with Russia (the 1832 Treaty
of Commerce and Navigation) of eighty years' standing.
To all acts of ethnic discrimination, whether against
the Jews or other minorities, the Soviet Republic has put
an end. Typical of the drastic change in viewpoint was
Joseph Stalin's statement on the Jewish question in 1931.
"National and racial chauvinism," he said, "is a remnant
of man-hating customs characteristic of the era of canni-
balism. Anti-Semitism is an extreme expression of racial
chauvinism and as such is the most dangerous survivor
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? SOVIET ETHHIC DEMOCRACY
of cannibalism. It is useful to the exploiter, for it serves
as a lightning rod enabling capitalism to evade the blows
of the toilers. . . In the U. S. S. R. anti-Semitism is prose-
cuted most severely as a phenomenon profoundly inimical
to the Soviet system. "5
It is of considerable significance that Premier Stalin
himself, more than any other top Soviet leader, has been
responsible for both the theoretical and practical develop-
ment of the minorities policy. This has helped to give
to the policy additional authority and prestige throughout
the Soviet Union. Stalin's Marxism and the National
Question is the outstanding Soviet book on the subject.
Also during the formative years of the Soviet regime,
from 1917 to 1923, Stalin specialized in this field and did
yeoman work as the first and only Soviet Commissar of
Nationalities. This post was eliminated in 1923 as no
longer necessary, since plans were already advanced, and
were soon embodied in the Soviet Constitution of 1924,
to establish a special Chamber of Nationalities which
would concentrate upon the interests of the minority
groups.
As we saw in discussing the present Soviet Constitu-
tion,* (Article 123 makes a sweeping guarantee of racial
and national democracy and penalizes by law "any ad-
vocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and
contempt/j The enlightened Soviet minorities policy
runs as a major motif right through the Constitution. Re-
garding the Soviet of Nationalities, which is so important
in the political set-up, Article 35 provides that it be
elected "on the basis of twenty-five deputies from each
Union Republic, eleven deputies from each Autonomous
Republic, five deputies from each Autonomous Region
? See pp. 79-80.
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATIOH
and one deputy from each National Area. " With fifty-
one national divisions concerned, this adds up to a total
of 631 representatives. * For the Presidium of the Su-
preme Soviet, chosen at a joint sitting of the Soviet of
the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities, sixteen Vice-
Chairmen are designated, one from each Union Republic.
The electoral provisions for the Soviet of National-
ities mean that all the main national groups organized
in territories of their own have adequate representation
in the central Soviet Congress. The Armenian Soviet
Republic, for instance, with a population of about 1,350,-
000 sends the same number of delegates as the Russian
Soviet Republic, with a population of more than 114,-
000,000. The Yakut Autonomous Republic, with ap-
proximately 400,000 people, elects the same number as
the Tatar Autonomous Republic, with over 3,000,000
people. And each of the Autonomous Regions, ranging
in population from around 86,000 to 284,000, gets a voice
in the Supreme Soviet with five representatives. It is
only in a very limited sense, however, that the Soviet of
Nationalities can be said to correspond with the United
States Senate and the Soviet of the Union with the House
of Representatives.
All of the fifty-one national divisions of the U. S. S. R.
have control over purely local affairs in general, but they
must conform in all ways to the socialist principles laid
down in the Soviet Constitution. Naturally the Union
Republics possess greater power than the various ethnic
subdivisions within them. The Supreme Soviet of the
U. S. S. R. made important amendments to the Constitu-
tion in 1944, giving to all Union Republics "the right to
enter into direct relations with foreign states, to conclude
? Cf. p. 58.
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? SOVIET ETHHIC DEMOCRACY
agreements with them and exchange diplomatic and con-
sular representatives with them" (Article 18A); and the
right to have their own republican military formations
as component parts of the Soviet army (Article 18B).
These war-time amendments were a logical develop-
ment in the Soviet minorities policy in the direction of
democratic functioning and administrative decentrali-
zation. And they showed that cooperation and confidence
among the different peoples of the Soviet Union had
become still further tempered in the crucible of Hitler's
invasion. It is to be remembered, however, that the
federal state retains the responsibility of establishing the
general pattern of foreign relations for the U. S. S. R. and
its constituent Republics; and of organizing the defense
of the country and formulating the guiding principles
for the organization of all military units.
The first Union Republics to set up their own Minis-
tries of Foreign Affairs were those of the Ukraine and
Belorussia. At the San Francisco Conference in the
spring of 1945, the representatives of the United Nations
voted to admit the Ukrainian and Belorussian Republics
as participants in the Conference and as initial members
of the General Assembly. Thus the Soviet Union as a
whole, the Ukrainian Republic and the Belorussian Re-
public each has a vote in the U. N. Assembly, as distinct
from the Security Council where the chief and ultimate
power lies. In appealing for separate representation for
the Ukraine and Belorussia, Soviet spokesmen stressed
the great contributions and sacrifices which these two
nations had made in the war against Nazi Germany and
their direct involvement all the way through.
The unity in diversity which the Soviet Union and
its many nationalities have achieved is the resultant of
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several interacting factors. One of the most weighty has
been the Communist Party, whose influence extends to
every nook and cranny of the U. S. S. R. It is well organ-
ized in every Union Republic and other national division.
In the Soviet of Nationalities, as well as in the legislative
bodies and governments of the different ethnic groups,
a high proportion of the members ordinarily belong
to the Communist Party. The various nationalities on
their part are well represented in the Communist Party
Congresses, in the Party's Central Committee and in the
inner Politburo. The Soviet Communist Party acts as
a most potent force in welding the races, nations and
tribes of the U. S. S. R. into a vast and harmonious whole.
Turning from the political to the cultural, we find
that under the Soviet minorities policyjthe cultures of
the various ethnic groups follow the basic formula of
"national in form and socialist in content" as distin-
guished from "national in form and bourgeois or capital-
ist in content. " YThis means that literature, art, drama,
journalism, science and other expressions of culture are
free to develop in the native languages and national
forms, but must stay within the limits of fundamental
socialist and Marxist principles in what they say. And
they are subject to the general controls of Communist
censorship in effect throughout the Soviet Union^
In the definitive volume by Stalin that I cited earlier,
the author describes a nation as "a historically evolved,
stable community of language, territory, economic life
and psychological make-up manifested in a community
of culture. "6 In practice in Soviet Russia language has
been the most important single element in the determi-
nation of nationality. The role of language in the exis-
tence and development of nationhood can hardly be over-
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? SOVIET ETHHIC DEMOCRACY
estimated. Without a native tongue, spoken or written,
it is difficult, if not impossible, for any people to achieve
the spirit of self-consciousness characteristic of a nation.
From the start the Soviets have been aware of the
primary place of ^language] in the life of the different
peoples and have officially recognized in each minority
area the primacy of its predominant tongue. The Consti-
tution includes special provisions concerning this matter.
Thus, Article 121 provides that instruction in schools
is to be "conducted in the native language"; and Article
40 that "laws passed by the Supreme Soviet of the U. S.
S. R. are published in the language of the Union Repub-
lics. " Article 110 is also revealing: "Judicial proceedings
are conducted in the language of the Union Republic,
Autonomous Republic or Autonomous Region, persons
not knowing this language being guaranteed every op-
portunity of fully acquainting themselves with the ma-
terial of the case through an interpreter and likewise the
right to use their own language in court. " With few
exceptions, Russian is the second language taught among
the minorities and is the common medium for com-
munication.
Since the Revolution of 1917 Soviet experts have
drawn up written alphabets, grammars and dictionaries
for sixty-seven of the smaller peoples who possessed only
oral languages. A number of additional groups have
substituted simplified alphabets for the complicated
Arabic or Mongolian scripts upon which they previously
relied. Soviet schools use at least seventy languages alto-
gether; books are printed in no less than 110. The
encouragement and teaching of the native vernacular
has been of enormous assistance in reducing the high rate
of illiteracy among formerly backward races and national-
109
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