How are communist regimes nationalist?

Question

Communism is supposed to be an internationalist ideology.

However, in practice, communist regimes are nationalist (USSR, Popular Republic of China, Vietnam, etc.).

How is that? And how does this nationalism differ from ethno-nationalism?

Answer 1

Communism as Marx envisaged is explicitly international in that it calls for the building of international democratic (i.e. worker-centric) political structures.

In the earlier years of the USSR, it openly sought international ideological supremacy, the cascading of the Soviet revolution, the collapse of capitalism, and the integration of further territories into the Soviet system.

As time went on, these hopes and efforts were moderated by the fact that the capitalist world itself increasingly used the state to organise and develop the economy, to redistribute wealth to workers, and to provide security against unemployment and sickness - all reducing the attractiveness or advantage of any communist transition - whereas the USSR itself rowed back from the most radical economic experiments which failed.

Stalin it seems soon recognised that the primary task was to preserve the Soviet system as a model covering part of the world, rather than assuming the USSR was in a position to conquer the entire world.

The USSR was a nation insofar as it was a power in the world amongst others, rather than a single state that governed the entire world. And once it became obvious that this would be the indefinite status, it optimised itself largely along the logic that applies to other nations.

The PRC meanwhile was nationalist from the outset. There was never an ambition for global conquest under a single Chinese state, and unlike the USSR the current territory covered by the PRC has significantly more historical tradition of being governed as a single state called "China".

The PRC have also had relatively sympathetic land neighbours from the outset (at least from a perspective of economic ideology and attitudes towards Western liberalism), a gargantuan population that rivals that of all Europe and North America, and came into being after WW2 and the development of nuclear weapons, meaning that concern about a successful capitalist military attack never predominated as it did for the USSR.

Finally, "ethno-nationalism" is broadly the nationalism as would have been understood by the term before WW2 - in other words, it's a Hitlerian ideology which categorises the world into races (or "ethnicities") and seeks to align (and maintain the alignment of) the scope of states and political territories with these races.

Ethno-nationalism since WW2 is broadly associated with the politics in colonial outposts like Northern Ireland or the former Rhodesia. It typically provokes war in its locality (as it did frequently when it reigned in Europe), and can be sustained nowadays only by transfers from a larger patron with different and more stable politics.

Answer 2

In the "Manifest" by K. Marx and F. Engels it is written that "the working class has no home country" so theoretically it is not. USSR also theoretically was not. The dominance of the Russian language was explained by the need to have a shared language everyone understands. It was claimed that the existing nationalities will soon disappear, also the Russian one, just the language remaining.

Answer 3

Steve touched on this already, but I think it needs to be expanded.

From around 1920 to 1980, communist movements in most of the world were strongly anti-imperialist, often to the point they defined themselves more as fighting against the occupying power than against capitalism. This is largely because foreign domination was the status quo, whether through a puppet regime (e.g. Cuba), a colonial mandate (e.g. Angola), or annexation (e.g Vietnam, part of French 3rd and 4th republics).

Since the Enlightenment, the world has seen nation-states as the main alternative to empires. To change the form of government in one country would mean gaining independence, and so nationalism had to be a cornerstone of any revolutionary manifesto, whether the original motive was communist, conservative, religious, right-wing or simply opportunist.

Of course, there is a more ambitious goal, to change the character of the entire empire, and that is how the USSR and PRC came to be. Both states continued traditional imperial power politics, playing to Russian and Han nationalism while suppressing the national identities of the countries they occupied/occupy.

Answer 4

There has historically been a consistent problem with Communists trying to foment revolution, and then run the resulting states. Communist leaders have been among the educated elites of their countries. As such they are almost always in the minority -- sometimes a tiny minority -- and unable to raise an army on their own. Almost all Communist revolutions have been carried out in coalitions with other parties who would normally be excluded from participating in the resulting government.

In 1919 Béla Kun, a Hungarian Communist, started a revolution which created the very short lived Hungarian Soviet Republic. Even though Kun was a friend of Lenin, and had funding from the CPSU, he couldn't raise a big enough army without enlisting the help of the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, which was much larger and better integrated into Hungarian society.

The Hungarian Soviet Republic collapsed four months after its establishment, due primarily to partisan Romanian nationalists who wanted to sever ties from Hungarian influence. Previously, in WWI, Hungarian nationalists had worked to sever ties from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Although Béla Kun was a died-in-the-wool Communist and friend of Lenin's, his goal of transforming Hungarian society depended on help from "bourgeois Democratic Socialists" and had to focus on the struggle between Hungarian and Romanian nationalism.

This pattern has repeated itself across the world. Minority elite Communists needing to enlist or co-opt those with divergent political views and/or national liberation anti-colonial partisans. None of this was foretold in Marx's utopian writing, and as time progressed the ideals became, notably in China, "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Socialism With Chinese Characteristics", codifying the sometimes drastic changes to Marx's writing while still referring to themselves as the Communist Party.

Answer 5

Nationalism comes from they believe they are in a weak position and must unite. While it's not something in the definition, the people among them with the strongest opinions tend to choose between things, politics or economy or culture, nuclear weapons or conventional weapons, honor or reason, now or future, with the cost of the other, instead of getting them all. If you are strong, choosing between them as in one mind would only cause redundant duplicated work, not even making the chosen option developed better.

China isn't weak. But as the current situation of the internet, it's difficult for everyone to share the same information and everyone to realize their situation, and people with strong opinions are more vocal. It's hardly near the official stance. And as everyone is attacking each other, I doubt anyone want to devote resources to solve the problem for now if it is one. Someone's personal dependency of a choice implies they are not the capable exact person to develop something new to make a change, after all.

It's irrelevant to communism, as the part about communism technically is they officially believe communism must come after capitalism everywhere in the world, even if not actively pursuing this, but nothing is said about they are more or less near the situation to make communism appropriate than the other countries.