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PIATAKOV: A MIRROR OF SOVIET HISTORY 141ism and "nationalism in general." 31 It continued by defending the multinationalproletariat in the towns, denouncing the NEP for having encouragedthe development of private capitalism and nationalism in "backwardregions," and criticizing the "natsionalizatsiia mestnogo apparata" conductedat the expense of the "national minorities" (even though, in principle,the platform was in favor of ukrainizatsiia, turkizatsiia, etc.—if properlyconducted—and demanded bigger investments in the more backwardrepublics).Of course, this attitude of the Left was not without its own logic. It wastrue that the korenizatsiia policies often took crude, provincial, even"mafioso" forms and that, in consequence, the quality of the bureaucraticmachinery often deteriorated and unpalatable new leadership groupsemerged; it was also true that these policies gave rise to petty disputes andnourished rancor among the nationalities. But the republican and localleaderships understood perfectly well that they were objects of scorn andreacted accordingly, looking for a dialogue with Stalin.Such a dialogue was made easier by other characteristics of the localpowers that likewise irritated the opposition. At the republican level, in fact,forms of power were evolving which to some extent retraced the centraldevelopments and pointed to the diffusion of mentalities similar to those ofthe elite in power in Moscow. An example of this is the growth in the practiceof the leaders' "cults," already widespread by the mid-1920s at theobkom as well as at the republican level (in Ukraine, for example,Skrypnyk's "cult" was launched).It is not surprising, therefore, if at the Fifteenth Congress in 1927 theleadership of the KP(b)U once again sided with Stalin (who, incidentally,had agreed to recall Kaganovich to Moscow) in the final struggle againstthe opposition. Nor if, in the two following years, the leadership sided withStalin in opposition to Bukharin and in the launching of the "great offensive."It is noteworthy that in 1929, in order to criticize Bukharin, Skrypnykbrought out of the closet his ten-year-old friendship with Piatakov, who waselected as a symbol of centralism and anti-republicanism. But Piatakov wasby now a supporter of Stalin, and it is not easy to understand the reasons forthe political blindness shown by the Ukrainian leaders. To the reasons listedabove, however, must be added an interesting phenomenon of the end ofthat decade that, as far as I know, was first described in reference to the31From a certain point of view, the 1920s ideology of the Left can thus be seen as a specialcase of that "good imperial ideal" analyzed by Ronald Grigory Suny, among others. For its rossiiskaia(in contrast to russkaia) form, the sovetskaia one was substituted.