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.

“Socialist in content, national in form:” the making of Soviet national art and the case of Buryatia

This article examines the fine art of the Soviet national republics and its discourse in the Soviet Union, which were considerably shaped under the influence of socialist realism and Soviet nationality policy. While examining the central categories of Soviet artistic discourse such as the “national form,” “national distinctness,” and “tradition,” as well as cultural and scientific institutions responsible for the image of art of non-Russian nationalities, the author reveals the existence of a number of colonial features and discursive and institutional practices that foster a cultural divide between Russian and non-Russian culture and contribute to the marginalization of art. Special attention is paid to the implications of this discursive shaping for the local artistic scene in Buryatia.

Whose land is it? Land reform, minorities, and the titular “nation” in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan

Each of the post-Soviet Central Asian states inherited both inefficient collectivized agricultural systems and an understanding of the nation rooted in categories defined by Soviet nationality policy. Despite the importance placed on territorial homelands in many contemporary understandings of nationalism, the divergent formal responses to these dual Soviet legacies have generally been studied in isolation from one another. However, there are conceptual reasons to expect more overlap in these responses than generally assumed; in this paper, we engage in a focused comparison of three post-Soviet Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) in order to investigate how nationalizing policies and discourse, land distribution, and ethnic tensions interact with each other over time. We reveal that the nationalizing discourses of the three states – despite promoting the titular groups vis-à-vis other groups – have had limited influence on the actual processes of land distribution. Furthermore, the Kyrgyzstani case challenges the assumption that the effect flows unidirectionally from nationalizing policies and discourse to land reform implementation; in this case, there is evidence that the disruption caused by farm reorganization generated grievances which werethenarticulated by some nationalistic political elites.