By the spring of 1921, when the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (b) adopted a new Soviet national policy aimed at providing full support to the national minorities of the RSFSR, Bryansk province, having been established in April 1920, was in fact still at the stage of its formation. Geographically, the province was located at the junction of the Ukrainian Chernigov province and the then Russian Gomel province, most of whose counties would soon be transferred to Belarus. With the beginning of the course on “korenization” (naturalization), along with such trends as, for example, Yakutization, Tatarization, Uzbekization ..., a vector for Ukrainization and Belarusization will be set. At the same time, the peculiarity of this process will be the fact that the policy of Ukrainization and Belarusization will not be limited to the territorial areas of these two republics: under the influence of the so-called “Polish factor”, Moscow will demand the implementation of this policy in Russian regions in places where the Ukrainian and Belarusian populations live compactly. The Bryansk authorities, following the guidelines of the center, will have to deal with both at the same time. However, the documents show that there was no excessive diligence on this issue on the part of the local authorities. The progress in cultural and educational work in these areas was achieved to a greater extent only as a result of constant and unrelenting pressure from the People’s Commissariat of Education and the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR. The Bryansk authorities allowed themselves to “take their time” with resolving the issues of korenization, hiding behind their full-fledged status as an industrial province, which allowed them to prioritize the socio-economic development of the region’s factory towns. The Ukrainization and Belarusization of schools, as well as the executive authorities of the province, were not among the priorities, and were not considered as such by the local authorities. The study is intended for specialists and anyone interested in the formation and implementation of the new Soviet national policy in the 1920s and 1930s.
Kodin et al. (Tue,) studied this question.