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The Current Ethnic Situation in the USSR: Perennial Problems in the Period of “Restructuring”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

A.M. Khazanov
A.M. Khazanov*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University (Israel)
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Abstract

It has already been pointed out by many scholars that the supranational Soviet state meets many sociological criteria of an empire. Thus, it is populated by many different ethnic groups; they did not join the state voluntarily, having all been conquered in the past or incorporated into the state by force; and they are still forcefully kept together, even though force is far from being the only factor. Last but not least, the Soviet empire, like any other, has one dominating nation: the Russians. Thus, many regularities in other empires may also be applicable to the Soviet Union.

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , Fall 1988 , pp. 147 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © 1990 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe 

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References

Notes

1. This was already noticed by many scholars. See, for example, Allworth, Edward, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1971); H. Carrère d'Encausse, Decline of an Empire: The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt (New York: Newsweek, 1979); Robert Conquest, ed., The Last Empire: Nationality and the Soviet Future (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1986); and many others.Google Scholar

2. The Soviet.literature*** which propagandizes and gives a detailed exposé of this concept is so enormous and monotonous that there is neither the possibility nor the necessity to provide even selective bibliography here. Of the works by anthropologists see, for example, Sovremennye etnicheskie protsessy v SSSR (Moskva: Nauka, 1977); Etnicheskie protsessy v sovremennom mire (Moskva: Nauka, 1987), pp. 97–163; L.M. Drobizheva, Dukhovnaia obshchnost' narodov SSSR: Istoriko-sotsiologicheskii ocherk mezhnatsional'nykh otnoshenii (Moskva, 1981); Yu. V. Bromley, Etnosotsial'nye protsessy: teoriia, istoriia, sovremennost' (Moskva: Nauka, 1987), pp. 146-256 (with an extensive bibliography of the question).Google Scholar

3. Naselenie SSSR: Po dannym vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1979 g. (Moskva, 1980), p. 23; Guboglo, M.N., Sovremennye etnoiazykovye protsessy v SSSR (Moskva: Nauka, 1984), pp. 65-66.Google Scholar

4. Present-day ethnic processes in the USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 139.Google Scholar

5. Etnicheskie protsessy v sovremennom mire (Moskva: Nauka, 1987), p. 146.Google Scholar

6. Bruk, S.I., Naselenie mira, Demograficheskii spravochnik (Moskva, 1986), p. 146. However, during recent years the number of marriages between members of different ethnicities has been declining sharply in several Soviet republics. Besides, interethnic marriages account for a significant number of divorces—see Radio Liberty. Report in the USSR, vol. 1, no. 6 (1989), p. 24.Google Scholar

7. Naselenie SSSR…, pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

8. Round-table discussion: “Natsionalnye protsessy v SSSR—resultaty, tendentsii i problemy,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 6 (1987).Google Scholar

9. Tishkov, V., “Narody i gosudarstvo,” Kommunist, no. 1 (1989), p. 54.Google Scholar

10. Kuzio, Taras, “Opposition in the USSR to the Occupation of Afghanistan,” Central Asian Survey, vol. 6, no. 1 (1987), pp. 112–113.Google Scholar

11. This information was revealed by the chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs, Kharchev, K., in his interview to the Soviet journal, Nauka i Religiia, no. 11 (1987), pp. 21–23.Google Scholar

12. Smith, Anthony D.S., Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1979), p. 185.Google Scholar

13. Beissiger, M., “Ethnicity, the Personal Weapon, and Neo-Imperial Integration: Ukrainian and RSFSR Provincial Party Officials Compared,” Studies in Comparative Communism, vol. XXI, no. 1 (1988), pp. 71–85, described this situation in Ukraine.Google Scholar

14. Aitmatov, Ch., “Tzena-zhizn',” Literaturnaia gazeta, 13 August 1986.Google Scholar

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16. A Novosibirsk scholar, Prigozhin, A.I., pointed out recently that “the leadership is drawn from the Russians; they predominate among the heads of the main agencies of power, in the Academy of Sciences, in the Central Committee [of the Communist Party of the USSR], in the All-Union Central Trade Union Council, and so on. In addition, Russian leaders also hold a special position in the national republics.” See Vek XX i mir, no. 12 (1988), p. 10.Google Scholar

17. About them see Kuzio, Taras, “Nationalist Riots in Kazakhstan,” Central Asian Survey, vol. 7, no. 4 (1988), pp. 79–100.Google Scholar

18. From numerous publications of this kind see particularly Pravda, 11 February 1987.Google Scholar

19. However, Bromley did not mention that living standards in Central Asia are still lower than in the European parts of the USSR. See Alastair McAuley, “Economic Development and Political Nationalism in Uzbekistan,” Central Asian Survey, vol. 5, no. 3/4 (1986), p. 165.Google Scholar

20. Pravda, 13 February 1987.Google Scholar

21. Pravda, 28 January 1987.Google Scholar

22. Micklin, P.P., “The Fate of ‘Sibaral’: Soviet Water Politics in the Gorbachev Era,” Central Asian Survey, vol. 8, no. 2 (1987).Google Scholar

23. Pravda, 8 January 1989.Google Scholar

24. Ibid. Google Scholar

25. Pravda, 13 January 1989.Google Scholar

26. On the latter see Khazanov, A.M., “The Ethnic Situation in the Soviet Union as Reflected in Soviet Anthropology,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique, 1990 (in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

28. From time to time even more far-reaching goals were put on the agenda, as reflected in a slogan “to embark on the merging of the nations” (Khrushchev in 1960; Andropov in 1982). In January 1989, Gorbachev boasted that he himself had prevented one of these attempts, which he characterized as “dangerous formulation” (see Pravda, 8 January 1989).Google Scholar

29. Suggestions to change a policy of ascribed ethnic identification recently begin to appear again in the Soviet press along with opposite opinions of those who oppose any changes in this matter.Google Scholar

30. Deriugin, Yu., “A problemy ostaiutsia,” Argumenty i fakty, no. 35 (1988), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar