The Soviet Union

The USSR was a unique empire in the universality of its claims and its aim of complete equality between nationalities. Its strengths and weaknesses were indissolubly connected. It was formally a federal state, with extensive rights given to constituent nationalities; in practice it was tightly centralized through Gosplan, the armed forces, the security services, and the Communist Party, with its messianic ideology. The USSR’s tight centralization ensured that in wartime it could mobilize social energy to an unprecedented extent, but also that in peacetime localized patronage became the main form of social cohesion. The economy was so rigidly planned as to discourage innovation, which meant that the USSR could not maintain its superpower status. Its nationality policy both encouraged ethnic feeling and repressed it. The final collapse was precipitated by the clash between the largest republic, Russia, and the Soviet Union as a whole.

Soviet Nation-building: Organizational Practices and Problems of Federalism. 1920s.

The article analyses some problems of Soviet nation-building and the formation of the federal system in the 1920s, using a new source on the activities of the Nationalities Department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK). The activity of the Department of Nationalities of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1919-1937) was directly linked to the implementation of nationality policy in the RSFSR, although it occupied a subordinate position in the emerging Soviet system of national-state building. During the formation of the USSR and after the liquidation of the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities, it was the Department that accumulated in its practice the integrative organizational, administrative, socio-cultural, and other functions that were associated with the modernizing efforts of the authorities in the multi-ethnic space of the USSR and the RSFSR itself. As part of the executive body of the supreme power of the largest USSR republics, the Department dealt with many operational and planning issues related to the organization of local executive bodies on national issues, helping the representations of autonomies in the capital, preparing normative acts on nation-building issues, and providing direct administrative, financial, economic, social and cultural support to autonomies. The relationship between the center and the autonomies was a major focus, and the tasks of the Nationalities Division required them to act as intermediaries in their cooperation with various agencies in the center and in the regions. The author focuses on several fundamental issues of nation-state building through the prism of the AllRussian Central Executive Committee Department and its head S.D. Asfendiyarov in 1926-1927, when the important discussions and appeals of the leaders of several autonomies to the center were held to settle the relations between different subjects of the federation, all-Russian and all-union process of state building.

A Soviet Ethnic Cleansing? The Polish-Soviet Population Exchange and the Making of Modern Ukraine, 1944–1947

The article examines the population exchange between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1944–1947, its role in the shaping of modern Ukraine, and its place in the evolution of the Soviet nationality policy. It investigates the factors involved in the decision-making of individuals and state officials and then assesses how people on the ground made sense of the Soviet population politics. While the earlier scholarship saw the transfer as punitive national deportation, the article argues that it was neither punitive nor purely national nor was it a deportation. The article shows that the party-state was ambivalent about the Polish minority and was not committed to total national homogenization of Western Ukraine. Instead, the people themselves were often eager to leave the USSR because of the poor living conditions, fear of Sovietization, and ethnic conflict. Paradoxically, one of the largest Soviet nation-building projects was not the product of coherent nationality policy.

Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjuncture: Soviet Nationality Policy in Its Comparative Context

Soviet nationality policy was one of several political responses to cultural diversity in the interwar period. The author situates that policy in its comparative context, contrasting the Soviet Union to its eastern European neighbors and to British and French rule in Africa. Contrary to the nationalizing policies of the new states of eastern Europe, which sought national unity at the expense of ethnic minorities, Soviet nationality policy was initially based on practices of diff erentiation. Contrary to the colonial policies of Britain and France, which were based on ethnic and racial diff erentiation, Soviet policy sought to integrate all peoples into one state. In the mid-to-late 1930s, however, Soviet policy took a nationalizing turn similar to its neighbors in eastern Europe, without completely abandoning policies of ethnic diff erentiation. We should thus understand the Soviet approach as a unique hybrid of contradictory practices of nationalization and diff erentiation.

The Roots of Ethno-Political Mobilization in Nagorno-Karabakh

The current conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in the second half of the 1980s, but its roots are deeper, reaching back at least to the first quarter of the 20th century. The aim of this article is to place these problematic aspects of mutual Armenian-Azerbaijani relations in their historical context and to link them with the current conflict. This article also identifies the factors that underlay the initial stages of the conflict and its subsequent escalation. The ethno-political mobilization of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, but subsequently also of Armenians in the Armenian SSR and Azerbaijanis in the Azerbaijan SSR, was driven by specific conditions that emerged during the collapse of the Soviet state. The gradual ethno-political mobilization in both union republics, as well as in Nagorno-Karabakh itself, was a by-product of Soviet nationality policy, and was enabled by the policy of glasnost. This article identifies the following key factors that created suitable conditions for the escalation of the conflict: Armenians’ dissatisfaction with the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan (fueled by the perception of numerous historic injustices), the legal and social chaos brought by the disintegration of the USSR, and the political and economic weakness of the newly emerging states.

Institutional Historical Memory and History in Post-Soviet Belarus

Belarusian institutional historical memory (as defined by Richard Ned Lebow) and the interpretation of Belarusian national history have experienced radical shifts in the past several decades. The first shift (1990–1994) was characterized by radical rejection of the interpretational and methodological patterns of the Soviet period, resulting in the creation of a new concept of Belarusian national history and historical narrative. The second shift in the existing historical narrative and institutional memory followed rapidly. It came with the transformation from a parliamentary republic into a parliamentary-presidential (1994) and then presidential republic (1996). The second wave demonstrated a clear shift towards a methodological, theoretical approach and terminological framework typical of the historiography of the Soviet period. These changes were in response to the growing demands for ideological control of institutionalized historical research supported by the government in the same decade. One of the characteristic features of recent Belarusian state-sponsored historiography (Lyč, Chigrinov, Marcuĺ, Novik and others) is the linking of post-Soviet national initiatives to Nazi occupation and collaboration in World War II. Another typical feature is simplifying historical explanations and often using undisguised pejorative terminology. The last shift in institutional historical memory also resulted in further re-interpretations of many symbolic centres and milestones of Belarusian history (for example, the period of the first years of post-Soviet independence, the introduction of new national symbols (Pahonia coat of arms and white-red-white flag) and the interwar nationality policy of Belarusization of the 1920s.)