The Korean Deportation and Life in Central Asia 177divisive sentiments and categories were openly propagated by state officials
and institutions, and in popu lar culture by the late 1920s.
Koreans worked long hours, saved their earnings, and looked for op-
portunities to educate their children or move up the socioeconomic ladder,
especially those who had been Russified and lived in urban environs. At
times, the state and other more established Soviet nationalities blamed the
Koreans for these virtues. They were called aliens, un- Soviet, adventurists,
swindlers, contrabandists, and later, during the 1930s, wreckers, spies, and
agents of foreign espionage. The Soviet Koreans were deemed “alien” to Soviet
socialism despite possessing the appropriate “class” profile as peasants and
laborers.^140 These “tsarist continuities” and stigmatized categories could not
be laid to rest because they had never been properly addressed, mitigated, or
extinguished by the Soviet state in both policy and popu lar culture.^141
Stalin’s definition of a “nation” was not constructed by environmental
factors but was actually quite racially defined. He stated, “A nation [i.e.,
nationality] is a historically evolved, stable community of language, terri-
tory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a community
[shared] of culture.”^142 Among the ele ments that constructed Stalin’s term
“nationality” none are constructible or contingency- based except economic
life. A national language, psychological makeup, and a shared, common
culture require, at minimum, five to ten generations to be constructed.
Why? Valid socio- anthropological systems such as language, culture, and
psychological makeup would require wide ac cep tance, internalization by a
majority, the capability for in de pen dent absorption of new ideas and similar
forms, modification and metamorphosis, and many other traits of auton-
omy. This would also make these systems inheritable and thus, capable of
being reified and primordialized.^143 Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, who also
supported this view, stated: “Stalin spoke of the nation as a stable commu-
nity. Lenin always saw nations as transitory. Although he tried to deny it,
Stalin drew attention to the stability and permanence of nationalities.”^144
Therefore, Stalin’s ele ments of a nationality in a “stable community” of lan-
guage, psychological makeup, and culture would be the functional equiva-
lents of racial qualities that do the work of “race.”^145
Another example of Stalin’s views on nationality and the “national
character” are those he expressed to Churchill and Roo se velt during their
conference in Tehran, Iran, from November 28 to December 3, 1943. The
three world leaders began to discuss how the Allies would divide, control,
and rehabilitate the Axis territories, the Japa nese Empire, and Eastern Eu rope
after the Second World War. Roo se velt and Churchill were at loggerheads
with Stalin on the issue of the rehabilitation of the German people and how