This book has been about the development of economic interests and movements for greater sovereignty. Using my analytic framework of imagined economies, I have examined the experience of Russian regional autonomy movements in the early 1990s and have argued that regional economic interests are intersubjective, contingent, and institutionally specific, and likewise, that the economic basis of the sovereignty movement in Sverdlovsk was a function of local understandings of the economy and particular institutional contexts.

Two last points on the role of institutional context need to be made to conclude and extend this analysis. First, I will discuss how attention to institutional context and social understandings, in particular the orthodox and heterodox interplay during perestroika, help us to understand both the timing of nationalist movements in the USSR and the end of the Soviet system. Second, I will briefly outline how the changing institutional context helps explain how regional economic demands were transformed in the post-1993 period. Finally, I will consider some implications of the imagined economies framework for further research in political economy, the constructivist paradigm, and studies of nationalism.

Timing of Nationalist Movements and the End of the Soviet System

One of the most intriguing questions of Russian and Soviet politics is why the USSR collapsed. And what explains its timing in the late 1980s rather than earlier?