This book explains how state institutions affect ethnic mobilization. It focuses on how ethno-nationalist movements emerge on the political arena, develop organizational structures, frame demands, and attract followers. It does so in the context of examining the widespread surge of nationalist sentiment that occurred through the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It shows that even during this period of institutional upheaval, pre-existing ethnic institutions affected the tactics of the movement leaders. It challenges the widely held perception that governing elites can kindle latent ethnic grievances virtually at will to maintain power. It argues that nationalist leaders can't always mobilize widespread popular support and that their success in doing so depends on the extent to which ethnicity is institutionalized by state structures. It shifts the study of ethnic mobilization from the whys of its emergence to the hows of its development as a political force.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the norms and practices of ethnic diversity management in the Russian Federation in the last twenty years. It examines the evolution of the legal framework, the institutional architecture and the policies intended to address the large number of challenges posed by Russia’s immense ethno-cultural diversity. It analyses the legal, social and political changes affecting ethno-cultural relations and the treatment of ethnic minorities, and assesses how ethnic diversity both influences and is shaped by transformations in Russian politics and society. It concludes by appraising how successful or otherwise policies have been so far, and by outlining the challenges still faced by the Russian Federation.

This book explores how the Volga Tatars, the largest ethnic minority within the Russian Federation, a Muslim minority, achieved a great deal of autonomy for Tatarstan in the years 1988 to 1992, but then lost this autonomy gradually over the course of the Putin era. It sets the issue in context, tracing the history of the Volga Tatars, the descendants of the Golden Horde whose Khans exercised overlordship over Muscovy in medieval times, and outlining Tsarist and Soviet nationalities policies and their enduring effects. It argues that a key factor driving the decline of greater autonomy, besides Putin’s policies of harmonisation and centralisation, was the behaviour of the minority elites, who were, despite their earlier engagement in ethnic mobilization, very acquiescent to the new Putin regime, deciding that co-operation would maximise their privileges.

The collapse of the Soviet Union provides several situations where the presence of Russian-speaking minorities produces a potential challenge to the consolidation of former Soviet Republics as independent democracies. My dissertation examines ethnic relations in two former Soviet Republics: Ukraine and Kazakhstan. The goal of this dissertation is to answer the question of how different degrees of institutionalization of ethnically defined territorial minorities--i.e. when provided with institutions of political and cultural autonomy--create stimulus for elites to engage in ethno-political mobilization. My research question is the following: What explains variation in the degree of ethno-political mobilization by Russian-speaking minorities, in newly emerged states that were once former Soviet republics, especially Ukraine and Kazakhstan? My dependent variable, consequently, is a qualitatively evaluated degree of ethnopolitical mobilization by Russian minorities. I hypothesize that if an ethnic minority is a regional majority in an ethno-federal or autonomous territorial unit, the institutional and ethno-demographic structure of this situation will create a stimulus for elites and political entrepreneurs (regional government officials, labor unions leaders, etc.) to present ethno-political claims--as opposed to non-ethnic, civic, socio-economic appeals for support--that are both electoral and non-electoral. This hypothesis is narrowed to the conditions of the nationalizing newly emerged states, and the following case studies are proposed to be tested in the dissertation: the Crimea and the Donbas region in Ukraine (two similar regions where different levels of ethnic mobilization of Russian-speakers took place during the early 1990s), and the Qaraghandy in Northern Kazakhstan, the region where Russian-speakers were successfully integrated into the dominant Kazakh nation. The dissertation, after examining these three mentioned case studies, will test a hypothesis that the institutionalization of ethnically defined territorial structures and the provision of minorities with autonomous institutions may intensify ethnic mobilization under certain conditions and produce conditions leading to ethnic mobilization. This hypothesis is consistent with already existing institutionalist theories, arguing that demographic factors determine the ability to use institutions of autonomy as mobilizing tools. Consequently, ethno-demographic differences between Russian-speakers in the three cases within two different former Soviet Republics are defined by their institutions' different types and arrangements. This theoretical argument, if proved, will also have a practical meaning: once the conditions under which autonomy produces ethnic mobilization are identified, it will be suggested not to implement autonomy in such cases where the potential for ethnic mobilization exists.

Valery Tishkov is a well-known Russian historian and anthropologist, and former Minister of Nationalities in Yeltsin's government. This book draws on his inside knowledge of major events and extensive primary research. Tishkov argues that ethnicity has a multifaceted role: it is the most accessible basis for political mobilization; a means of controlling power and resources in a transforming society; and therapy for the great trauma suffered by individuals and groups under previous regimes. This complexity helps explain the contradictory nature and outcomes of public ethnic policies based on a doctrine of ethno-nationalism.

Demands for national independence among ethnic minorities around the world suggest the power of nationalism. Contemporary nationalist movements can quickly attract fervent followings, but they can just as rapidly lose support. In Constructing Grievance, Elise Giuliano asks why people with ethnic identities throw their support behind nationalism in some cases but remain quiescent in others. Popular support for nationalism, Giuliano contends, is often fleeting. It develops as part of the process of political mobilization—a process that itself transforms the meaning of ethnic identity. She compares sixteen ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, where nationalist mobilization varied widely during the early 1990s despite a common Soviet inheritance. Drawing on field research in the republic of Tatarstan, socioeconomic statistical data, and a comparative discourse analysis of local newspapers, Giuliano argues that people respond to nationalist leaders after developing a group grievance. Ethnic grievances, however, are not simply present or absent among a given population based on societal conditions. Instead, they develop out of the interaction between people’s lived experiences and the specific messages that nationalist entrepreneurs put forward concerning ethnic group disadvantage. In Russia, Giuliano shows, ethnic grievances developed rapidly in certain republics in the late Soviet era when messages articulated by nationalist leaders about ethnic inequality in local labor markets resonated with people’s experience of growing job insecurity in a contracting economy. In other republics, however, where nationalist leaders focused on articulating other issues, such as cultural and language problems facing the ethnic group, group grievances failed to develop, and popular support for nationalism stalled. People with ethnic identities, Giuliano concludes, do not form political interest groups primed to support ethnic politicians and movements for national secession.