Stalin’s Diversity Experiment: When “Woke” Politics Met Soviet Reality

History has a way of recycling ideas in new clothes. What is sold today as “diversity” or “inclusion” once wore the uniform of Soviet socialism. In the 1920s, Joseph Stalin’s USSR embarked on policies that would not look entirely alien in the language of modern identity politics. Minorities were celebrated, ethnic distinctions promoted, and new scripts and cultural rights introduced with enthusiasm. Yet, within two decades, Stalin himself abandoned this experiment, returning to a heavy-handed centralisation that crushed the very diversity he had once fostered.

It raises the awkward question: if even the Soviet Union — with total state control and ideological zeal — found such “woke” diversity measures unsustainable, why do we assume they work better today?

The Early Soviet “Affirmative Action”

After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks faced a fractured empire. Dozens of ethnic groups, languages, and faiths were scattered across the former Tsarist lands. Rather than imposing Russian dominance outright, the early Soviet state embarked on a policy known as korenizatsiya (“indigenisation”).

The idea was simple: empower minority groups by elevating their languages, cultures, and leaders. Quotas were set for local governance so that Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and many others could see themselves represented in the Soviet bureaucracy. Schools switched to native tongues. New alphabets were invented for illiterate populations, sometimes scrapping Arabic or traditional scripts in favour of Latinised or Cyrillic ones.

It was, in modern language, a diversity drive. The Soviets were determined to showcase equality, even at the expense of efficiency. Russians were instructed to take a step back so that “marginalised voices” could speak.

For a while, it seemed to work. Minority elites enjoyed rapid promotion. Local cultures, once suppressed by the Tsars, blossomed under official protection. Soviet propaganda boasted of being the first empire to put diversity at its heart.

The Hidden Flaws

But beneath the celebrations, cracks began to show. Elevating one identity often meant sidelining another. The more Moscow empowered national elites, the more those elites began to ask uncomfortable questions about self-rule. Rather than binding the USSR together, “representation” risked creating dozens of proto-nationalisms.

Resources were stretched thin. Teaching in minority languages required a flood of teachers, textbooks, and administrators. Translating endless government decrees into dozens of tongues slowed bureaucracy to a crawl. And while urban intellectuals cheered, peasants in villages often wondered why Moscow cared more about writing new alphabets than feeding the population.

Perhaps most importantly, the policy ran headlong into the problem every diversity regime faces: who decides the boundaries of identity? In Ukraine, for instance, was the language to be standardised on eastern dialects, western dialects, or something in between? Each choice alienated someone. What began as empowerment turned into a political minefield.

Stalin’s Reversal

By the late 1930s, Stalin’s patience wore thin. Faced with looming war in Europe, internal purges, and fears of disloyalty, he abandoned the experiment.

The shift was brutal. Moscow rolled back local languages in favour of Russian. National elites who had risen through affirmative policies were suddenly purged as “bourgeois nationalists” or “foreign agents.” Quotas vanished. A single Soviet identity, rooted in Russian culture and language, was re-imposed with an iron fist.

Ironically, the very man who once promoted minority alphabets ordered them scrapped and replaced with Cyrillic. The proud banners of diversity were folded away, replaced by red flags proclaiming unity.

The lesson was clear: diversity, when pursued for ideology rather than practical cohesion, can destabilise an empire rather than strengthen it. Stalin chose survival over inclusion.

Echoes in Today’s Debates

It would be naïve to pretend that Stalin’s Soviet Union and today’s Western democracies are directly comparable. Yet there are striking parallels in the logic. The Bolsheviks argued that empowering minorities would strengthen the state by making it look progressive and fair. Advocates of modern diversity policies make a similar claim: inclusion makes institutions stronger.

But what if both claims are overly optimistic?

History suggests that identity is not easily managed from above. Policies meant to harmonise groups often sharpen divisions. Elevating one group can alienate another. Attempts to enforce equality through quotas risk undermining competence, fuelling resentment, and triggering backlash.

The Soviet example reminds us that diversity drives are not cost-free. They require resources, constant negotiation, and, ultimately, a willingness to override merit in the name of representation. And when reality bites — whether in a famine-stricken empire or in a modern company struggling to meet targets — ideology gives way to pragmatism.

A Skeptical Lesson

So, what can be learned from Stalin’s failed experiment with woke diversity?

1. Representation doesn’t equal unity. Empowering groups can encourage them to push further for autonomy.
2. Top-down identity management is fragile. Bureaucrats cannot define culture without alienating someone.
3. Practical needs win over ideology. When survival is at stake, leaders abandon inclusion for efficiency.
4. The pendulum can swing hard. Today’s celebrated minority leader may be tomorrow’s scapegoat.

The Soviet Union was perhaps the most radical laboratory for social engineering in history. If diversity failed even there, under conditions of totalitarian control, why should we expect smooth success in pluralistic societies today?

This is not to argue for uniformity or suppression. It is to caution against naïve optimism. Inclusion is not a magic formula. Diversity, pursued as an ideological end rather than a practical good, risks repeating Stalin’s paradox: policies that promise harmony but deliver discord.

Conclusion

Stalin’s early embrace of diversity looks, from a distance, like an uncanny rehearsal of modern “woke” politics. It had the same slogans — representation, empowerment, inclusion. It stumbled on the same problems — fragmentation, inefficiency, resentment. And it ended the same way many radical experiments do: in reversal, centralisation, and a return to authority.

The next time we are told that diversity is unquestionably a strength, it may be worth asking: strength for whom, and at what cost?

History rarely offers clean lessons, but it does offer warnings. Stalin’s Soviet Union is one such warning — that identity politics, however noble it sounds, can sow divisions that no leader, however powerful, can fully control.