The spectacular ease with which the republics of the USSR converted themselves into nation-states in 1991 puzzled many western observers.
Did this sudden transformation confirm the traditional view of the oppressive Soviet empire, which had imposed its ideology on pre-existing nationalities and was finally undone by its peoples’ long-suppressed national stirrings?1 Or did it corroborate the ‘revisionist’ vision of the Soviet Union as the creator of territorial nations with their own modern high cultures, political elites, and state symbols?2
Access to declassified Soviet archives allows researchers for the first time to examine in unprecedented detail the inner workings of Soviet nationality policy.
The emerging picture of the USSR is that of a nation-builder,’ albeit one that periodically cracked down on the national identities that it had previously fostered.3 But the archival findings also suggest that the question could have been posed differently. Instead of pondering what the Soviet Union had been doing to its nations, scholars could have asked how interaction among Moscow ideologues, local bureaucrats, non-Russian intellectuals, and their audiences had shaped national identities within the USSR.
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