The Stalin Revolution was not only a brutal transformation of the economy and the political hierarchy; it also had an effect on state policy toward the nationalities. After an initial promotion of the nativization policy in the years of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), official enthusiasm for "korenizatsia" began to fade. The learning of Russian was encouraged, and in 1938, it was made compulsory for all Soviet students. Most Armenians in school were still receiving instructions only in Armenian (77.7 percent at the end of the 1930s), and only a small minority (2.8 percent) were studying in Russian. But in the years after 1938 the percentage of those studying in Russian steadily rose. Stalin's policy was to make Russian the lingua franca of the whole country, while permitting the continuation of the national languages within the individual republics. Russian was recognised as "the language of the socialist revolution", the most "progressive" language in the USSR. Many Russian word forms were introduced into Armenian. The word "hanrapetoutyoun" (republic) was replaced was replaced by respublika, "kusaktsoutyoun" (party) by partia, khorhourdayin (Soviet) by sovetakan.
At the same time that local nationalism was denounced, Soviet patriotism, which was often a disguised form of Russian nationalism, was promoted. Lenin had always emphasized the greater danger posed to the socialist cause by Great Russian chauvinism, but in 1934 Stalin told the Seventeenth Party Congress that local nationalism was great a danger to socialist unity as Great Russian chauvinism. Gradually, nearly imperceptibly, Russians were elevated to the level of a superior people and the nationalities lowered to a second-class category (at the same time one must remember that Stalin himself was not Russian, but Georgian). While nineteenth-century writers, such as Raffi and Rafael Patkanian, and even certain Soviet Armenian writers were condemned as "nationalists", films depicting Peter the Great, General Suvorov, Ivan the Terrible, and Alexandr Nevski – all Russian historical figures – were praised. All artists had to conform to the norms set down by the state-run writers' union, and these included Stalin's famous dictum that Soviet culture must be "national in form, socialist in content". What this meant in practice was that official Soviet views were to be expressed in national languages and idioms. The canons of Socialist Realism, an aesthetic theory created in the 1930s, were to be applied to all writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians. Negative aspects of Soviet life had to be played down or eliminated altogether. Writers and artists were required to create positive heroes who could serve as models for young readers. Fiction was to be realistic in style but highly romanticised in content. A beautiful, bright picture of the future was to be drawn.
By the outlook of the World War II in 1939, the essential features of the Stalinist order had been established. The Soviet Union had become a new kind of political and social system in which an all-encompassing state had eliminated all centres of autonomy and resistance to its monopoly of power. Civil society and the economy had been swallowed by the state. Political decision making was tightly held in the hands of Stalin himself and his closest associates – Beria, Molotov, Malenkov, Zhdanov, and Mikoyan. The secret police dominated all sections of the party, eliminating the remnants of the autonomous prerogatives of the national republics or local administrations. State-directed terror guaranteed political conformity and passivity. Armenians were free to celebrate the economic and cultural achievements of the Soviet system and the benefits it brought to the Armenian people, but they were not free to criticize the system or to suggest that Armenia might be better off independent. Any hint of separatism was condemned as Dashnaktsoutyoun, and nationalist expression, even of the most innocent variety, could lead to ruined careers or loss of life.
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