It is a truism that, with only a few notable exceptions, western scholars only belatedly turned their attention to the phenomenon of minority nationalism in the USSR. In the last two decades, however, the topic has increasingly occupied the attention of specialists on the Soviet Union, not only because its depths and implications have not yet been adequately plumbed, but also because it is clearly a potentially explosive problem for the Soviet system itself. The problem that minority nationalism poses is perceived rather differently at the "top" of Soviet society than at the "bottom. " The elite views - or at least rationalize- the problem through the lens of Marxism-Leninism, which explains nationalist sentiment as a part of the "super structure," a temporary phenomenon that will disappear in the course of building communism. That it has not done so is a primary source of concern for the Soviet leadership, who do not seem to understand it and do not wish to accept its reality. This is based on a fallacious conceptuali zation of ethnic nationalism as determined wholly by external, or objective, factors and therefore subject to corrective measures. In terms of origins, it is believed to be the result of past oppression and discrimination; it is thus seen as a negative attitudinal set the essence of which lies in tangible, rather than psychological, factors. Below the level of the leadership, however, ethnic nationalism reflects entrenched identifications and meanings which lend continuity and authenticity to human existence.

In terms of economic potential and political future, the Ukraine was second only to Russia itself among the fifteen Soviet Republics that comprised the USSR after World War II. Although Ukraine was dependent upon the dictates of Moscow, there was much evidence to support the thesis that the spirit of the Ukrainian nationalism had survived and flourished under the weight of Soviet nationality policy. Despite liquidating the Ukrainian Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church, the attempt to eliminate the Ukrainian language and its rich literary heritage, and bombarded by mass propoganda aimed at the schools, the Ukrainian people continued clinging to their national identity against these odds. In this analysis of the political and social structure of the Ukraine since World War II, Dr. Bilinsky shows that the methods designed to integrate the Ukraine in the USSR have produced factors which contributed to rather than diminished Ukrainian national consciousness. This book is about the Ukraine, but in a larger sense it is a systematic, comprehensive, and revealing ctitique of the Soviet policies and techniques employed in holding together the widely differing cultural, linguistic, and geographical segments of the world's largest state.

Focusing on schools, festivals, commemorative ceremonies, and monuments, Catherine Wanner shows how Soviet-created narratives have been recast to reflect a post-Soviet Ukrainocentric perspective. In the process, we see how new histories are understood and acted upon. This reveals regional cleavages and the resilience of cultural differences produced by the Soviet regime. For some people, the system they criticized yesterday is the one they long for today.

****The second edition, published by Columbia University Press in 1963, is cited in BCL3. It is now revised in light of much German archival material opened since 1963. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the 2014 crisis, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s de facto war between Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a historical and contemporary understanding behind President Vladimir Putin Russia’s obsession with Ukraine and why Western opprobrium and sanctions have not deterred Russian military aggression. The volume provides a wealth of detail about the inability of Russia, from the time of the Tsarist Empire, throughout the era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since the dissolution of the latter in 1991, to accept Ukraine as an independent country and Ukrainians as a people distinct and separate from Russians. The book highlights the sources of this lack of acceptance in aspects of Russian national identity. In the Soviet period, Russians principally identified themselves not with the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, but rather with the USSR as a whole. Attempts in the 1990s to forge a post-imperial Russian civic identity grounded in the newly independent Russian Federation were unpopular, and notions of a far larger Russian ‘imagined community’ came to the fore. A post-Soviet integration of Tsarist Russian great power nationalism and White Russian émigré chauvinism had already transformed and hardened Russian denial of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a people, even prior to the 2014 crises in Crimea and the Donbas. Bringing an end to both the Russian occupation of Crimea and to the broader Russian–Ukrainian conflict can be expected to meet obstacles not only from the Russian de facto President-for-life, Vladimir Putin, but also from how Russia perceives its national identity.

This book looks at the entire Stalin era, and includes chapters on ideology, politics, economic development, social change, nationalities, culture and external relations. The final chapter deals with the Great Terror.