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words, "the regime of the dictatorship of the workingclass as well as the present directing position of theCommunist party."Economic planning and the overriding needs of defencehave led to greater and greater control by the centre, notonly through the party and the Supreme Soviet, butthrough the Union Commissariats (by 1940 swollen toover forty in number) and the Red Army high command,while the range of state action, always totalitarian inprinciple, has become so in fact. Hence, while federalismwas very marked for the first ten years, notably inthe Ukraine, "where the remnants of distrust of theGreat Russians had not yet disappeared, and centrifugalforces still continued to operate" (Stalin) (cf. p. 115), ithas since been whittled away substantially into restrictedlocal self-government, again working through the partyand the Soviets. Although the right of secession forthe constituent republics of the Union still figures onpaper in the constitution and one chamber of theSupreme Soviet is formed on federal lines, in fact theSoviet state has become a multi-national union ratherthan a federation of many nations. In glaring contrastwith tsarism, the local languages, arts, and history ofthe Soviet peoples have been continuously encouragedby every means; but for the last dozen years strictlywithin the limits of the Stalinist slogan "nationalist inform, socialist in content." This means very closecontrol and extreme penalties for anything which mightbe interpreted as political nationalism.For some years past the policy of socialist nationalismhas been combined with the intensive inculcation ofSoviet patriotism. Russia, 'the prison house of peoples,'has been succeeded by the Union, 'the friendship of thepeoples of the U.S.S.R.,' a rival formula as it were tothe British Commonwealth of Nations. "For Sovietpatriots homeland and communism are fused intoone inseparable whole" (Molotov). Military service isobligatory for all, Moslems included, unlike the tsaristconscription which in general excluded them. The 1936constitution declared that "the defence of the fatherlandis the sacred duty of every citizen of the U.S.S.R.," and