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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 April 2017
Focusing on the European margins of the former Russian Empire as it was reinvented by the Soviets and drawing on the central and local archives of the former Soviet Union, this article uncovers a particular construction of territorial sovereignty that emerged from interactions between countries that were both new and ideologically hostile to one another. It shows that although Soviet authorities adapted to the rules of negotiation necessary for the “co-construction” of a frontier, they gradually managed to affirm an exclusive sovereignty over the territory. The thick border that evolved between mutually suspicious neighbors, especially through the creation of buffer zones, was subsequently institutionalized and appropriated by the Soviets in order to control interactions and border crossings. This analysis of everyday life in these border zones offers new perspectives for a transnational history of the state.
1. There is an allusion to this song in the tale of the smuggler Piasecki, Sergiusz, Lover of the Great Bear, trans. Mann, John (London: Routledge, 1938)Google Scholar.
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3. The discussion presented here forms part of a wider study of Soviet borders, undertaken with the support of the Institut universitaire de France. See Dullin, Sabine, La frontière épaisse: Aux origines des politiques soviétiques, 1920–1940 (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 2014)Google Scholar.
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8. In certain areas of Soviet studies, nothing new has been added since the work of early scholars such as Richard Pipes, Leonard Schapiro, and Edward Hallett Carr.
9. The only dissertation on foreign trade dates back to 1969 and approaches the question from a purely quantitative angle, without providing much information on the institution or the actors involved: see Michael R. Dohan, “Soviet Foreign Trade in the NEP Economy and Soviet Industrialization Strategy 1913–1938,” (PhD diss., MIT, 1969). While it is still true that access to sources concerning foreign trade remains difficult in Moscow, this could be compensated by consulting the archives of the individual former republics and regions.
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42. Natsional’nyi arkhiv Respubliki Belarus’ (hereafter “NARB”), 6/1/347.
43. Baron, Nick and Gatrell, Peter, eds., Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London: Anthem Press, 2004)Google Scholar.
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45. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Sotsial’noi i Politicheskoi Istorii (hereafter “RGASPI”), Dzerzhinsky collection, 76/3; Solov’ev, Evgenii D. and Chu-gunov, Aleksandr I., eds., Pogranichnye voiska SSSR 1918–1928: Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, vol. 1 (Moscow: Nauka, 1973)Google Scholar; and Dekrety Sovetskoi vlasti (Moscow: Gos. Izd-vo polit.litry, 1959), 2:331 Google Scholar.
46. NARB, 4/1/671. On the history of this vast survey documenting the pogromsof 1908– 1922, see Miliakova, Lidia, ed., Le livre des pogroms. Antichambre d’un génocide. Ukraine, Biélorussie, Russie, 1917–1922, trans. and ed. Werth, Nicolas et al. (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2010)Google Scholar. See also Chopard, Thomas, Le Martyre de Kiev. 1919. L’Ukraine en révolution entre terreur soviétique, nationalisme et antisémitisme (Paris: Vendémiaire, 2015)Google Scholar.
47. Declarations made by individual claimants had to include information under five headings: place of loss, name of complainant, reason for loss, nature and volume, and evaluation of cost. NARB, 6/1/18, p. 16.
48. See Piasecki, Lover of the Great Bear .
49. Sabanin and Braun, Sbornik deistvuiuschikh dogovorov, 57, 91, and 119.
50. The total size of the armed forces (police and border guards) allowed in the two zones was limited to five hundred men overall, that is, a maximum of forty men per verst of border during the first six months and thirty thereafter (1 verst = 1,066.8 meters).
51. NARB, 693/1/1, 24; 6/1/18a, p. 2.
52. NARB, 4/1/671.
53. The Russian and Ukrainian governments sent a succession of notes on April 11 and 16, May 3 and 26, and July 4, with Polish denials issued on April 19 and May 23: see Dokumenty Vneshnei Politiki SSSR (hereafter “DVP SSSR”) (Moscow: Politizdat, 1960), 4:62, 96, 139, and 203.
54. NARB, Circulars issued by the NKVD, Minsk, March 1923, 1715/2/35.
55. In the mid 1920s, there were about two thousand civic guards drawn from local inhabitants of the border zone.
56. Certain aspects of this issue are discussed in Dullin, Sabine, Men of Influence: Stalin’s Diplomats in Europe, 1930–1939 [2001], trans. Veasey, Richard (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
57. Cited in Rupasov and Chistikov, Sovetsko-finliandskaia granitsa, 115.
58. The protocol concerned instructions for arbitration commissions dealing with border incidents, which were agreed between the representatives of the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Belorussian SSR on the one hand, and Poland on the other on June 1, 1921. The border was divided into five sectors in which sat five subcommittees made up of three members from each party. Meetings were held at least twice a month. The commission ceased to meet upon the formation of the USSR in July 1923. Diplomats negotiated a new agreement on border-conflict resolution as early as September 1923, though this was not signed until August 3, 1925. See DVP SSSR (1963), doc. 257, 8:464.
59. The role of the Mixed Control Commission was subsequently conferred upon a Russian-Finnish border committee chaired, for the Soviet area, by the first secretary at the Russian embassy in Helsinki.
60. DVP SSSR (1962), 9:481–84 and (1963), 7:391–92.
61. DVP SSSR (1962), 6:26.
62. Accord signed at Tiraspol on November 20, 1923: see Sabanin, Sbornik deistvuiuschikh dogovorov, 252.
63. DVP SSSR (1960), 4:269.
64. Geouffre de La Pradelle, La frontière, 68.
65. League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. 97 (Geneva, 1929–1930), no. 2222, pp. 117–29.
66. “O monopolii vneshnei torgovli,” letter from Lenin to Stalin on behalf of the members of the Central Committee, 13 October 1922, in Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, 43:220.
67. Gosudartvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter “GARF”), 3316/16a/22, Polozhenie ob okhrane granitsy, June 1923.
68. On February 21, 1925, an exchange of memoranda concerning the definitive closure of the trading counters on the Latvian border was annexed to the text of the draft agreement on the resolution of border conflicts between the USSR and Latvia, which was ultimately signed on July 19, 1926: see note 49, DVP SSSR (1963), 8:157.
69. GARF, 5446/8/496, pp. 3, 5, and 17–19.
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72. On the development of concessions for seal hunting in the White Sea granted to Norwegian companies in 1924–1925, see: DVP SSSR (1963) 8:719; Chubarian, Aleksandr and Riste, Ulav, eds., Sovetsko-Norvezhskie otnosheniia, 1917–1955 (Moscow: E˙ lia-Art-O, 1997)Google Scholar.
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76. On the Tsarist legacy, see Dullin, La frontière épaisse.
77. In certain sectors where the border was inaccessible, the 4-meter strip containing the agreed border-control paths could be located up to 7.5 kilometers within the boundary line, in which case the regional executive committee was obliged to cede the necessary land.
78. See Dullin, “Les protecteurs.”
79. The administrative subdivisions were modified and their boundaries changed in 1923, at the time of the USSR’s formation. At the intermediate level in a republic such as Belorussia, the uezd was replaced by the raion and the okrug. For the sake of convenience, I use the term “district” to refer to this intermediate administrative level. See NARB, 6/1/334.
80. NARB, 6/1/546, p. 121, decree of the Mozyr okrug executive committee, October 29, 1925.
81. NARB, 6/1/175, p. 8, protocol no. 4 of the meeting of the Presidium of the TsIK of the Belorussian SSR, February 2, 1923.
82. NARB, 6/1/353, pp. 2–3.
83. Only authorities and judicial officials at the local, regional, and republic levels were exempted from the visa requirement.
84. For instance, a commission for combating contraband was created on the Karelian Isthmus on January 5, 1923, and customs barriers were set up 7 kilometers from the border.
85. GARF, 130/6/642, p. 5, cited in Chandler, Institutions of Isolation, 144.
86. NARB, 6/1/175, p. 16.
87. NARB, 6/1/224, p. 124.
88. Plekhanov, VChK-OGPU, 297. Poles were under particular surveillance, as were Belo-russians professing the Catholic faith, considered by the Chekists to be Poles in disguise.
89. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Arkhiv/Osobyi Arkhiv, Korpus Ochrony Pogranicza collection, 356/2/4.
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