This book examines Soviet nationalities policy from the 1920s to the present. Tracing nationalities policy to its roots in Bolshevik efforts to arrest the decay of the Russian Empire, Dr Simon looks at the evolution of Soviet policy, analyzes the reactions of non-Russian peoples to the policies and discusses the forms of expression and the goals of

This text provides a survey of the Soviet management of the nationalities question. It traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of several official national languages and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programmes.

Nested Nationalism is a study of the politics and practices of managing national minority identifications, rights, and communities in the Soviet Union and the personal and political consequences of such efforts. Titular nationalities that had republics named after them in the USSR were comparatively privileged within the boundaries of "their" republics, but they still often chafed both at Moscow's influence over republican affairs and at broader Russian hegemony across the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, members of nontitular communities frequently complained that nationalist republican leaders sought to build titular nations on the back of minority assimilation and erasure. Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Moscow, Krista A. Goff argues that Soviet nationality policies produced recursive, nested relationships between majority and minority nationalisms and national identifications in the USSR. Goff pays particular attention to how these asymmetries of power played out in minority communities, following them from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Dagestan, and Iran in pursuit of the national ideas, identifications, and histories that were layered across internal and international borders. What mechanisms supported cultural development and minority identifications in communities subjected to assimilationist politics? How did separatist movements coalesce among nontitular minority activists? And how does this historicization help us to understand the tenuous space occupied by minorities in nationalizing states across contemporary Eurasia? Ranging from the early days of Soviet power to post-Soviet ethnic conflicts, Nested Nationalism explains how Soviet-era experiences and policies continue to shape interethnic relationships and expectations today.

Khazanov's astute assessments of ethnic and political strife in Russia, in Chechnia, in Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, among the Meskhetian Turks, and among the Yakut of Eastern Siberia illuminate the interconnections between nationalism, ethnic relations, social structures, and political process in the waning days of the USSR and in the new independent states. Exploring the Soviet nationality policy and its failure to satisfy national aspirations, Khazanov demonstrates the fatal flaws of totalitarian rule and the impossibility of reforming it. Khazanov cautions that the liberal democratic direction of current transformations in the former Soviet Union should not be taken for granted. For most of the independent states, he points out, departing from totalitarianism requires creation of a civil society for the first time in their history. The state's partial retreat from the public sphere leaves a dangerous institutional vacuum, in which nationalism is emerging as the dominant ideology. He warns that this new, post-totalitarian society is still a far cry from a genuine liberal democracy and, despite its inherent instability, may turn out to be a long-lasting phenomenon.

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.

Two of the most striking manifestations of Soviet image culture were the children's book and the poster. This text plots the development of this new image culture alongside the formation of new social and cultural identities.

This book examines the role of Russian and Serbian nationalism in dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1991.