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AMERICAN FOREIGN POLO & THE 
DISINTEGRATION OF THE USSR 

MICHAEL MANDELBAUM, editor 
A COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS BOOK 

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THE RISE OF NATIONS 
IN THE SOVIET UNION 



iJipillll 

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THE RISE OF NATIONS 
IN THE SOVIET UNION 



American Foreign PoUof 6* the Disintegration of the USSR 



EDITED BY 
MICHAEL MANDELBAUM 



COUNCIL ON l-OKUION RliLATlONS HKESS 

NEV YORK 



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COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS BOOKS 



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The Rise of nations in the Soviet Union : Americm foreign policy and 
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Includes index. 
ISBN 0-87609-100-1 : Si 4.95 

1. United Slates— foreign retatkm*— Soviet Unkm. 2. Soviet 
Union — Rae^ relations — United States. 8. NatkinaNfm Soviet 

Union. 4. So\ iet Union — Politics and governments— 1985— 
1. Mandelbaum. M ichaeL 11. Coundi on ForeigD Rfhlinnt 

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CONTENTS 



Acknowledgements vi 

1. Inanoductkm 

Michael Mandelbaim 1 

2. Russian-Soviet Nationaliiy Policy and Foreign Policy: 
A Historical Overview of the Linkage Between Them 

Sergn Maksudrnt ^ WWkm Tm^^ 15 

3. Totalitarian Collapse, Imperial Disintegration, 
and the Rise of the Soviet West: 
ImpUcatkxis for the West 

Akxandar /. Mot^ 44 

4. The Soviet South: Nationalism and the Outside World 

Ronald Grigor Suny 64 

5. The Soviet ' Nationality Front ": Some ImpUcations 
for U.S. Foreign and Security Pohcy 

Jwrtmy R. Axrael 89 

Appendix I: Nationahties in the Population 
of the USSR 103 

Appendix II; Symposium Pariicipants 109 

Index 111 

About the Authors 117 



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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 



This volume is part of the G>uiidl on Foreigii Relations Project 
on East-West Rdatkms, which is supported by the Carnegie 
Corporation. 

The chapters w ere first presented as papers at a symposium 
on Soviet Nationalities and American Foreign Polity held in New 
York Citv on October 25-26, 1990. The symposium was orga- 
nized by the Council on Foreign Relations in cooperation with 
the Nationality and Siberian Studies Program of Columbia Uni- 
vernt/s Harriman Institute. A list of participants in the sympo- 
sium is in Appendix II. 

The editor is grateful to Theresa F. Weber for organizing 
the symposium and supervising the publication of the book. 



I 

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1 



INTRODUCTION 
Michael Mandelbaum 

During the Cold War, American relations with the Soviet Union 
were as Karl von Clausewitz characterized the art of fighting a 
shooting war: simple but difficult. The Western approach to 
Scyviet foreign policy was opposition to all that Moscow sought to 
do beyoad its bonders, tempered with caution induced fay the 
power of nuclear weapons. 

The American and Western attitude toward Soviet internal 
affairs was one of complete disapproval. The political system that 
Lenin had founded, Stalin had built, and Khrushchev and 
Brezhnev had partly redesigned had no redeeming features 
whatsoever in Western eyes. Nevertheless, the West, for all its 
distaste for that system, made little effort to change it beyond 
protesting the mistreatment of the few brave soub who dared to 
challenge it direcdy. 

Then, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and 
tmrned Soviet-American relations upside down. His Siew think- 
ing" about military affairs led to arms negotiations in which the 
Soviet side conceded that it was overarmed and agreed in princi- 
ple to the sharp and one-sided reductions that for decades the 
West had claimed were needed for a stable balance of military 
power. 

He reversed his country's policies of the 1970s and 1980s in 
the Third World by using Soviet influence to move conflicts in 
southern Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America toward 
resolution and by withdrawing his army from Afghanistan. 

Of greatest importance, he did not seek to block the over- 
throw of Soviet-sponsored communist regimes in Eastern Eu- 
rope or their replacement with freely elected governments. The 
end of communist control there in 1989 removed the original 
and most signlfirant cause of the CM War. 

1 



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2 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



At home, his policies of fostering wider political discussion, 
holding elections that were relatively free by historic Soviet stan- 
dards, and permitting virtually uninhibited emigration eased 
the most objectionabie features of the Soviet pditkal system and 
seemed to place the country on the path to democracy. 

But this happy procession of reform ran aground on an 
intractable issue that not onlv caused Gorbache\ to change liis 
course and inflamed passions throughout the coiuitrv, but also 
created grievous political tensions and ultimately violence. The 
disorder mounted steadily until, by 1991, the Soviet Union 
seemed headed toward dvil war. This cxplofiive issue was the 
multinational character of the Soviet state. 

THE RISE OF SOVIET NATIONS 

Isolated expressions of non-Russian dissatisfaction with one or 
another oi Moscow's policies had become, by the first part of 
1991, a serious challenge to the very existenoe of the Soviet 
Union. 

The first episode occurred in December 1986, in Kazakh- 
stan, where Gcrbachev's decision to replace an ethnic Kazakh 
with a Russian as Communist Vsarty leader provoked demonstra- 
tions in the capital, Alma-Ata. The next year, 700 Crimean 
Tatars, a people Stalin evicted from their homeland during 
World War II. staged a rally in Red Square to publicize their 
desire to return. 

The first outbreak of violence on a large scale took place in 
the Caucasus. In 1988, hundreds of thousands of Armenians 
gathered in Yerevan and other cities in the republic to demand 
that Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely Armenian enclave in the 
neighboring republic of Azerbaijan, be transferred to the juris- 
diction of Armenia. Rallies in opposition to this demand took 
place in Azerbaijan, and the protests led to violence between the 
two communities. By 1 990, tens of thousands of Armenians had 
been forced to flee Azerbagan, and comparable numbers of 
Azerbaijanis had become refugees from Armenia. 

In the Baltic republics, national self-assertion was directed 
at Russians and at the Soviet Union. By 1989, natkmaUst senti- 



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MAND£LBAUM □ 3 



niciii there was so strong that 2 milHon people iornied a human 
chain across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to mark the 50lh 
anniversary of the Nazi-So\det pact that had consigiied them to 
involuntary memberriiip in the Soviet Union. 

By the end of that year, national frontt— political organiza- 
tions that fvere the functional equivalents of political parties- 
had emerj^ed in several of the non-Russian republics. The 
Uni(jn-u ide elections to the republican supreme Soviets the fol- 
lowing year brought many of their members to jx)wer. By the 
end of 1990, all fifteen Soviet republics — including the huge 
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR), under the 
leadership of Boris Yeltsin— had prodaimed their sovereignty; 
the purpose of these prodamatkms was to daim far more power 
for the republican governments than Moscow had ever granted 
them. 

The Baltic republics and the republic of Cieorgia went e\en 
further. The\ announced their intention to secede entirely f rom 
the Soviet Union. While proposing a new treaty among the 
constituent republics that would give more authority to tlw re- 
publican governments, Gorbadiev insisted that he would not 
allow the country to break up. At the beginning of 1991, he 
authorised the dispatch to Lithuania and Latvia of paramilitary 
forces, which killed more than a dozen people there. The West 
protested the killings. Thus, six years after he had come to 
powei. the national question had become the Soviet leader's 
principal preoccupation and the focus of sharp disagreement 
with the country with which Gorbachev had ended the Soviet 
Union's bitter 40-year conflict— the achievement for which he 
had received the Nobel Peace Prize the previous year. 

The rise of the national question was an ironic development 
in East-West relations. The multinational character of the Soviet 
state and the polilit al aspiratit)ns of the non-Russians had not 
concerned Mikh.iil (.orbachev when he came to power. An eth- 
nic Russian w ho had never lived outside the RSFSR, he had no 
appreciation of the force of nationalist sentiment beyond Russia's 
borders and turned out to be inept at responding to iL 

Nor had this issue been a contentious one in Soviet- Ameri- 
can relatiom. Fh>m time to time, the West had taken note of iL In 



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4 □ THE Rl&£ OF NATIONS 

the nineteenth century, the Russian empire was widely known in 
Europe as the prison house of nations, and President Ronald 
Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire/' Mr. Reagan's 
politkal emphasii, however, WM on the adjective rather th^ 
noun, and throughout the Gold War, the national rights of the 
non-Russians — even the Baits, whose incorporation into the So- 
viet Union the United States had alwavs deemed illegitini.ite — 
had ne\ er been an important item on the Last- West diplomatic 
agenda. 

To compound the irony of the rise of nations in the Soviet 
Union, the muitinatkmal character of the Sonet state did not 
originate in the 1917 revolution and was not even a distinctly 
communist contribution to Russian history. It was a centuries-old 

legacy of the tsars, although one that the Bokheviks had fought 
to retain. Thus Mikhail Gorbachev, who had been bold and 
resolute in luidoinii the work of Bre/hne\ , of Stalin, and e\en, up 
to a point, oi Lenin, iinally balked when it came to discarding the 
achievements of Peter 1 and Catherine the Great. 

The subject of this bo<^ is the fate of that imperial legacy in 
the Soviet Uiikm of ttxlay and its effea on the West, particularly 
the United States. Each diapter offers an analysu of the natkmal 
question, a discussion of the course it is likely to follow, and some 
thoughts on how the West and the L intcd States should respond 
as it unfolds. 

The essays apj)i()a(h the subject trom different perspec- 
tives. The first, by Sergei Maksudov 8c William Taubman, pro* 
vides a historiGal overview of the multinational character of 
Russia and the Soviet Union, with special attention to the sim- 
ilarities and differences b etwe en the present moment and the 
historical period it most closely resembles— the years imme- 
diately following the revolution of 1917. 

Next come two essays that assess the strength of nationalism 
in diiterent parts of this huge country. Alexander Motyl writes 
about the "Soviet West" — the Baltics, the Slavic republics 
(fiekmissia, the Ukraine, and Russia), and Mokiova (formeriy 
Moldavia). Ronald Simy surveys the ''Soviet South**— 
Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia (all in TVanacaucasia) and 
the five largely Muslim republics 6[ Central Asia (Kazakhstan, 



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MAND£LBAUM □ 5 



wlu'ie Russians ()iitnuinl)cr Kazakhs, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, 
Turkmenistan, and Kirghizia). Finally, Jeremy Azrael addresses 
direcdy the dilemrnas and choices that the national question 
poset for the foreign policy of the United States. 

ROOTS OF NATIONALISM 

Although it caught the West and the Soviet leadership olf guard, 
the rise of nations in the Sov iet Union should not have tome as a 
surprise, for the Soviet state is the last of a political species that 
once dominated the world but is now virtually exdnct: the muld- 
national empire. The question that the surge of nationalist acdv- 
ity there properly poses is not why it is happening at all, but why 
it did not happen until now. 

The beginning of the answer is that Gorbachev s policies 
have severelv damaged the major prcjps of the communist re- 
gime. The Sov iet I n ion has rested, as Maksudov 8c l aubman 
note, largely on the "pillars" of ideology and dicutorship. The 
first has fallen victim to glasnost and democratization; orthodox 
Marxism-Leninism is almost entirely discredited. The second 
has been dramatically reduced. 

At the same time, nationalism itself has become an increas- 
ingly potent force throughout the Soviet Union. This has oc- 
curred parlh bv default. Motyl argues: the ruling ideologv has 
collapsed, and no other tocus of f)ohtical allegiance is available. 
Nationalism grew in strength throughout the Soviet period, 
however, even when orthodoxy still reigned. As Suny notes, by 
creating administrative units along national Hues, giving national 
languages official status, and recruiting local political elites 
from the indigenous populations, the Soviet authorities unwit- 
tingly helped to establish the infrastructure of nationalism. If 
imperial Russia was the prison house ot nations, its Soviet suc- 
cessor has also been, and entirely uninLentionally, the nursery of 
nationalism. 

The country's economic collapse has also fortified the drive 
for autonomy and independence among the constituent repub- 
lics of the Soviet Union. Economic logic would seem to point in 
the opposite direction. RepuUics should, in theory, have an 



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6 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



interest in preserving some kind of association to take advantage 
of a large integrated market. That is the dear trend, after all, in 
Western Europe. 

Soviet economic deterioration had become so marked by 
1990, however, that many had come to see membership in the 
Union as an intolerable burden all apart from any desire for 
national autonomy. Only b\ escaping f rom the tvrannv of central 
plainiing and the swav of the worthless ruble, more and more 
people concluded, could they hope to achieve prosperity for 
themselves. The republics had become, in a sense, economic 
refugees from tlie Soviet Union. 

IMPERIAL DISINTEGRATION 

The crumbling of Marxism-Leninism, the unclenching of the 
iron fist that had ent(irced rigid connnunist rule for 70 vears. and 
the ongoing economic collapse are the functional equivalents for 
the Soviet Union of the two world wars of this century, which 
compelled the other great multinational empires to disband 
because they were either defieated or severely iveakened. How 
those other empires ended provides some dues to the likely 
course of events in the Soviet Unkm. They are not particularly 
happy precedents. 

The American. British, and French empires ended more or 
less peacefully, although that judgment needs considci able qual- 
ification in the case of France, which fought and lost a bitter war 
with the Vietnamese communists in the first half of the 1950s 
and went to the brink of dvil conflict over the bloody effort from 
1958 to 1962 to keep control of Algeria. 

For the Soviet Union, the process of dcoolomzation is likely 
to prove more difficult than it was for any of these three. As the 
dest endant of the tsarist imperial domains, the Soviet empire is a 
much older one than those o\ er which the I nited States, Britain, 
and France presided. The Western empires began as nation- 
states that, during the nineteenth century, came to govern 
foreign t e rri t ori e s . Russians ruled over non-Slavs from the 
sixteenth century and never in their history had a stricdy na- 
tional, nonimperial identity. Moreover, the American, British, 



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MANDELBAUM □ 7 



and French empires were geographically separated from the 
home country. The Soviet empire is geographically contiguous. 
No buffer of water separates Russia from the Ukraine, Kazakh- 
Stan, and the other provinces, making the task of disengaging 
from them aD the more difHcult. 

As an oM, land-based state whose rulers historically defined 
their role in imperial, rather than merelv national, terms, the 
Soviet Union iA Kxhix more closelv resembles the vanished em- 
pires of the Austrian Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Turks. Their 
examples are also not promising for the prospects for the peace- 
fid evolution of the territories that Moscow governs. Although 
they perished in Worid War I, the Hapsburg and Ottoman states 
kit in their wake political conflicts that perust to the present day. 
In 1 99 1 , there was instability in the former Hapsburg domaini in 
eastern and southern F.urope, in part because of the decline of 
the Soviet power that had helped to enforce order there for 
decades. Similarly, the treacherous, violent politics of the Arab 
world that produced the war in the Persian Gulf had their roots 
in the centuries4ong Ottoman rule in the Middle £a8t 

Although they left persistent political conflkti in their wake, 
these empires disappeaoed both s^rupdy and oomfdetdy; their 
rulers suffered decisive military defeats. The Russian masters of 
the Soviet Union are unlikely to be defeated in the same way. 
Other countries will not be able to dictate the fate of the Soviet 
I'nion as the victorious allies did — or tried to do — ^after World 
War 1 in the case of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The 
1920 treaties of Triancm and Sevres at least offered blueprints — 
flawed though they were — for the disposition of the Austrian 
and Turkish imperial territories, respectively. 

Yet another feature of the national question portends trou- 
ble. The USSR contains large diasporas: an estimated 60 million 
people live outside their home republics, of whom approx- 
imately 25 million are Russians. Historically, when imperial au- 
thority has collapsed, large movements of populations have 
occurred, as minorities have left newly independent state»— or 
been forced out by the numerically dominant groups. This has 
already happened in the Caucasus, where most Armenians have 
left Azerbaipm and most Axerbayanis have fled Armenia. Be- 



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8 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



cause the number of nonnationals scattered throughout the 
republics is so laige> the potential exists for disaster: millioiis of 
refugees and communal violence on a scale not seen since die 
partitkHi of India in 1947. 

NATIONAL DIVERSITY 

While in India three major communities were involved in the 
upheaval — Hindus, Mushms, and Sikhs — the Soviet Union is 
more diverse. It consists not only of fifteen separate republics, 
each with its own language, but also of more than 100 distinct 
and ofiBdaHy recognized groups. The republics di£(ier in size, 
geography, rehgion, and history. They also differ widdy in the 
social and political changes that have taken place in the Gor- 
bachev era, and especially in the strength of local sentiment in 
favor of independence. 

The most Western, the most democratic, and the most 
deeply conunitted to independence are the Baltic republics. 
Their claims to separate statehood are strongest in American 
eyes. They are also tiny, together comprising only slighdy more 
than 2 percent ci the Soviet population. 

The largest republics are the Slavic ones. Some 54 million 
people live in the Ukraine, and much of Soviet industry and 
agriculture is located there. The secession of the Ukraine, unlike 
Baltic independence, would deal a mortal blow to the Soviet 
Union as it now exists. Some Ukrainians, many associated with 
the nationalist movement Rukh, favor secession. Rukh is 
strongest in the western districts of the republic, which were part 
of Poland befinre the war; in these areas, die Ulurainianlangw 
predominates and most people bekmg to the Uniate church, a 
branch of Catholicism. These districts comprise, however, only 
about 1 5 percent of the Ukrainian population. The eastern and, 
to a lesser extent, central parts of the repubUc are more 
Russified. 

The most important republic for the future of the Soviet 
Union is the RSFSR, which, %nth half the country*s populaucm 
and two-thirds of its t er r i tor y , has dominated the Soviet Union, 
as it eariier dominated the Russian empire. Russian nationalism 



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MANDELfiAUM □ 9 



is a growing force in Soviet affairs. It has taken several forms, 
which display a range of attitudes toward the idea of maintaining 
the Union as a multinational state. Among these is a histnriraliy 
u n precedented strain of nonimperial nationalism, which is will- 
ing to contemplate a future without the non-Russian, or at least 
the non-Slavic, provinces that the tsars subdued and governed 
over the centuries. This is the position of Boris Yeltsin. 

To the south, the Armenians and Georgians of the Caucasus 
are similar to the Baltic peoples in that they are Christian and 
oriented to the West The Geoiigians seek fuU independence. 
While relations among the three Baltic peoples have been cordial 
and cooperative, the Caucasus has been the scene of consider- 
able violence, particularly between Armenians and A/erbaijanis. 

The upheavals of the G<n:bachev era have had the least 
impact in the five Islamic republics of Central Asia: Kaiakhstan, 
Uzbekistan, Turiunenistan, Tajikbtan, and Kirghizia. To be 
sure, the years since 1985 have not left these republics entirely 
untouched. Uzbeks have founded a nali(3nalisl movement called 
Birlik. Conflict has arisen between and among the groups of 
Central Asia — for example, between Uzbeks and Tajiks. In ccm- 
trast to the situation in much of the rest of the country, however, 
traditional communists still hold local power there. Rnr the most 
part, moreover, the loyalties of the peoples of this region seem to 
be cultural and religious rather than national. They see them- 
selves more as Muslims than as Uzbeks, or lurks, or (as in the 
case of the Tsyiks) Persian speakers. 

IMPLICATIONS FOR WESTERN POLICY 

The unexpected and unpredictable rise of nations in the Soviet 

Union presents Western policymakers with three sets of issues. 

First, the question of Baltic independence, whi( h moved to 
the center of Soviet-American concerns at the be^^inning of 
1991, was similar to problems that the United States and the 
West fdctd in dealing with the Soviet Union diuring the Cold War. 
The West was boimd to endorse the Baltk peopleaT right to 
independence. But Washington's support for the Baits risked 



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10 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



alienating Moscow, thus ending the close cooperation on inter- 
national iMues the two govemments had achieved during the 
Gorbachev era. 

During the Cold War, American administrations had to 
balance the moral and political imperative of speaking out and 
acting in response to Soviet violations of the rights of its own 
citizens against the need to conclude international agreements to 
stabilize the rivalr\ between the two great nuclear powers and 
reduce the danger of war. 

Tiie debate over the Jackson- Vanik amendment of 1974, for 
example, which denied most-favored-nation trading status to 
countries that restricted emigration, including the Soviet Union, 
embodies this dilemma. On one side of the debate were those 
who argued that the duty of the United States was to do every- 
thing possible to protect the basir human right of emigration; on 
the (Jther, those who insisted that trade w ith the So\ iet Union was 
a usef ul instrument for moderating Moscow s foreign policies. 

The drive for independence in the non-Russian republics 
outside the Baltics presents a second and even more comf^kated 
series of choices. The others lack the Baltic peoples' Ic^ and 
historical daim to Western support. Since their annexation in 
1940, the American government has never accepted Lithuania, 
Latvia, and Estonia as Soviet republics; but when Franklin D. 
Roosevelt formallv recogni/ed the Soviet Union in \9l^^, the 
United States implicitly acknowledged the other republics (with 
the exception of Moldova, which the USSR also seized in 1940) as 
part of the Soviet state. 

Closer inspection, however, reveab this distinction to be a 
weak basis fin* the West to decide which claims of independence 
to support. The republic of Georgia, for example, was part of the 
Soviet Union in 1933 because the Bolsheviks conquered it in 
1921. But (ieorgia had proclaimed its independence in 1920, 
and the RSFSR had signed a treaty affirnung that indepen- 
dence; 22 foreign countries had also recognized it. In the 1920s, 
the Baltic peoples were fortunate in that the Red Army was not 
able to occupy their homelands; the Georgians were not as fortu- 
nate. It hardly seems fair to reject Georgia's daims to indepen- 
dence because of this 70-year-old piece of geopolitical bad lucL 



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MANDELBAUM □ 11 



Not all the non-Russian republics were unluckv in precisely the 
way Geoi^gia was, and some came under Russian rule much 
earlier, but no non-Russian part of the Soviet Union chose its 
status entirdy voluntarily. 

Yet, these peoples* daims of sovereignty and dedarations of 
independence contradict a widelv honored postwar interna- 
tional principle: the sanctity ol existing borders almost regard- 
less of their origins. Governments of every political stripe have 
feared that abandoning this prindpie woukl open the way for 
endless controversy and even massive viidence— to which they 
themselves might fall victim. 

In the Soviet I'nion. alxmdonini^ the existintj tjoxtining 
arrangements — even though they were imposed by the uiiperial 
expansion of the Romanov dynasty and modified, often arbi- 
trarily and even cruelly, by the communists — would lead to a 
series of potentially explosive questions. 

It would certainly raise the question of who deserves inde- 
pendence, an issue that is bound to be conleniious. Gorbachev 
has already made clear his determination to resist all indepen- 
dence movements, while republks such as the Ukraine may wcfl 
prove to be divided on this matter. 

The question of independence, even if it could be answered 
to general satisfaction, would raise yet another: Where should 
the borders be drawn between and among the new independent 
states? Russia would claim the largely Russian northern part of 
Kazakhstan, a position that the Kazakhs would not accept. The 
Status of Nagorno-Karabakh has already provoked bloodshed. 
Other countries could become invohfed. Ethnic Azerfaayanis live 
both in the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan and in northern Iran. 
The international border that divides them is at best artifidal. 
The redrawing of Soviet borders could call into question the line 
of division between Romania and Hungary, for example, or the 
Oder-Neisse line, which separates Germany from Poland. 

Setting national bcnrders in a way that satisfies all nations and 
all peoples is no more possible now than it was after Worid War I, 
whm die most thorou^ reanangemem in history of the map of 
Europe took place. 



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12 □ THE R1S£. OF NATIONS 



Even it new borders could be decided with muiiinal dissat- 
isfaction, the question of the status of minorities within the nfw 
states would remain. Ethnic Russians living in Georgia, for exam- 
ple, can move to the RSFSR. For the Abkhaaans and Osetins, 
however, what is now the Georgian repuUic is the site of their 
ancestral homes. Because they are less numerous than the Geor- 
gians, ihev cannot h()|)c to control the entire republic. I luis, 
even as the GeorgicUis deniancl independence trom the Russians, 
the Abkhazians and Osetins agitate for freedom from Georgia. 
These smaller peoples accuse the Georgians of treating them as 
badly as the Geoiig^ans daim they are being treated by the Rus- 
sians. Among the dozens of ethnic groups in the Soviet Union, 
many have similar grievances and aspirations. 

This second set of issues that the disintegration of the Soviet 
slate raises will |)ose two cjuestions ot j)()licv for the United States 
and the West: which claims to independence to support, and 
what steps to take to protect the rights ot the many minorities 
that are bound to be frustrated bv whatever political arrange- 
ments emerge from the Soviet Union. 

Although the choices the West makes in response to these 
issues will be difficult, they may, in the end, be largely academic. 
Even if Western governments conclude that they would prefer to 
see the Soviet Union jjreserved in some form, it mav well be that 
nothing lhe\ — or auNone — can do will keep it together. The 
continuing ccjllapse ot the ( ountrv could produ( e far more insta- 
bility than has occurred thus far, and thata>uid,in turn, present 
the West with a third set of issues. Tlie nadons of Western 
Europe coiikl find themsdves flooded %vith immigrants from the 
western republkaofthe Soviet Union. The West wouki then have 
to either try to absorb minkms oi people for whom it is not 
prepared or, in effect, reconstruct the Iron Curtain. 

There is another, even more dangerous possibility. The rise 
of nations and nationalism hasalread\ generated \ iolence. which 
could grow and spread until it becomes a civil war. I he national 
question has already dra%m the Soviet army further into the 
political arena than at any time since 1917. A number of its 
officers have expressed vehement sentiments in favor of pre- 
serving the Union, as well as outrage at the laige-scale avoidance 



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MANDLLBAUM □ 13 

of military service in ihe non-Russian republics, particularly the 
Baltics. For their part, many non-Russians see the army as an 
instrument of both national and personal oppression— the ulti- 
mate guarantor of Moscow's authority, as wd! as an oiyiniiafion 
in which Russians routinely abuse non-Russian conscripts. 

In the event oi ( war, the West would have to he con- 
cerned about the possibility that the violence would spill over the 
borders of the Soviet Union into other countries, such as Poland 
or Turkey. There would also and inevitably be grave concerns 
about the control of the thousands of nuclear weapons scattered 
throughout the country. 

Nationalist turmoil mav. I'mallv. a^ive rise, as A/rael warns, to 
one or more torms oi political extremism in the Soviet Union, 
which could make the country as dangerous to its neighbors as it 
was during the long years of the Cold War. 

Amid all the imcertainties surrounding the future of the 
So\iet Union one thing may be safely predicted: nationalism will 
not disappear. The j)re\i()us outbreak ol nalion.ilisi activity, 
following the 1917 revolution, was ruthlessly suppressed by the 
communists — along with ail other forms of independent political 
activity. A crackdown of comparable and perhaps even greater 
bnitality wDuld be required to silence all the voices throughout 
the country now calling for sovereignty and independence. 
While a return to the terror and mass killings of the fn si three 
and one-half decades oi communist rule is not impossible, 
neither is it likely. 

Such an outcome is unlikely in part because the last time it 
(xxnirred, it was undertaken by people acting in the name of an 
ideology in which they believed, drciunstances that cannot easUy 
be re-created now. Moreover, nationalism is more potent now not 
only bee ause no alter uaii\e toe us ot [joliuc al allegiance exists and 
because Soviet rule uninieiitionallv nurtured nationalist ieeling, 
but also because nationalism has achieved an exalted interna- 
tional political statiu. it has come to be accepted as the normal 
basis of governance the world over. National self-determination 
has consequendy come to be seen as one of the basic rights of any 
people. 



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14 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



There is, of course, no universally accepted test for deter- 
mining just which groups qualify as nations and therefore de- 
serve their own state. In practioe, that question is inevitably 
decicled by how much political support and military power a 
group can muster. But because nationalism is so widely consid- 
ered legitimate, nationalist claims are useful political tools. When 
self-proclaimed nations talk, the world listens. In the 199()s, the 
surest way to ^et a hearing for any demand — whether for re- 
sources, recognition, or territory — is to pose that demand in 
natkmai terms. Social groups living in the Soviet Union therefore 
have strong iiicentives to proclaim themsehes nations, the better 
to get what they want. 

Thus the rise of nations in the Soviet Union will continue. It 
will preoccupv whoever holds power in Moscow. It will influence 
the political, economic, and soci.il relations among Russians and 
their non-Russian neighbors. And it will shape Western and 
American policy toward the peoples and the governments of the 
large stretch of Kurasia that is now constituted as the Union of 
Soviet Socialist Republics for the indefinite future, well into the 
21st century. 



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2 



RUSSIAN-SOVIET NATIONALITY 
POUCY AND FOREIGN POUCY: 

A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE 
LINKAGE BETWEEN THEM 

Sergei Maksudov & WUUam Tavbman 



This c hapier concerns the impact of relations between Russians 
and non- Ru ssians on other countries, both before 1917 and since 
then, and the impact of the outside world on Russian-non- 
Russian relations in both the tsarist and the Soviet periods. Our 
topic has not often been addressed in Russian and Soviet 
studies.' Truth to tell, it has not been considered very important 
until (juile latently. Today, the potential breakup of the USSR 
has tocused (outside attention on non-Russian nation.ilities. But 
even today, it is difficult to recall instances in which Russian— 
non-Russian relations substantially affected tsarist or Soviet for- 
eign policy, or vice versa. In fact, we shall argue, quite a few such 
cases have occurred, and they add up to patterns that are not just 
striking, but also extremely instructive for our time. 

Central to these patterns is the existence of empire, a con- 
cept that embraces relations between Russians and non-Rus- 
sians, and foreign relations, as well. With the rise of both the 
tsarist and the Soviet enipiies came foreign expansion and 
heightened control over subject p>eoples at home. Imperial de- 
cay, on the other hand, has meant retreat abroad and new 
possibilities for non-Russian nationalities within the empire. 
These two patterns are logical and familiar, but less obvious ones 
are libewise discenubie. Under both the tsars and the Soviets, the 
growth of empire had the unintended effect of fostering a sense 
of nationalism on the part of subject nationalities. Such nation- 
alities reacted negatively to dominant Russian nationalism but, in 
the nineteenth century, they also learned from Russians and 

15 



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16 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



Other Europeans what it meant to be a modern nation. The tsars* 
Soviet succe ss ors went so for as to provide their **captiv€ natioiis" 
with such concrete prerequisites of natkmhood as repuhlic 
status, governmental institutions, an industrial base, and an 

educated populace. 

Imperial decay would seem to open the way to separatism 
and e\en potential independence for non-Russian nationalities. 
But before 1917 such separatism encountered resistance from 
rulers of the old empire and from champions of a potential new 
empire, and the same is true today. Russians were the dominant 
nation in the tsarist era and have remained so throughout the 
Soviet period, but their nationalism, too, has been subordinate to 
a larger imperial idea. As each empire disintegrated, the specter 
of a new, more narrowly Russian empire arose to threaten the 
hopes of non-Russian peoples. 

In both contexts, outside powers played an important role in 
the rise and fall of the empire, sometimes as victims, sometimes 
as beneficiaries, almost always as watchful, worried observers. As 
sometime rivals of the empire, Western powers might have been 
expected to champion the subversive cause of noo-Russian 
nationalities. Instead, they have often taken their overriding 
interest to be stability, and so supported either the existing 
government or its would-be Russian imperial replacement as a 
matter of realpolitik. 

The notion of empire, so central to our argumeiii. must 
itself be disassembled. Both the tsarist and the Soviet empires 
rested on three main pillars, but these were different in each 
period. Under the tsars, these pillars were orthodoxy, autocracy, 
and nandnost (national spirit), to use the terms employed by 
nineteenth-century statesman Count Uvarov. During the Soviet 
period, the pillars have been ideologv, dictatorship, and nation- 
alism. Moreover, the history of each empire can be divided into 
subperiods that correspond to each element of the trinity. Our 
point is not that each pillar gave way to the next, but that each 
supplemented those that preceded it, at first reinforcing the 
empire, but ultimately weakening it when the nationalist pillar 
began to work at cross purposes with the others. 



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MAKSUDOV & TALBMAN □ 17 



It was thus relativclv laic in the imperial dav that Russian 
nationalism itself be( ame the main buttress of the empires. Be- 
fore that, what held them together at home and animated their 
dealingi with outsiders was orthodoxy and autocracy in the fint 
instance, and ideobgy and dictatorship in the ieoond. But 
besides buttressing empire, Russian nationalism was bound to 
undermine it, both because it stood in potential opposition to 
the statist imperial idea and because it proxoked aaswermg non- 
Russian nationalisms in a multinational domain. 

When empires collapse, the question becomes. What next? 
The years 1917 and 1991 illustrate remarkably similar, but also 
lignifkandy different, outcomes. After examining the linkage 
be twe e n nationality policy and foreign policy in the tsarist and 
Soviet periods, we wOl consider the present and future in the 
light of 1917. First, however, two comments are in order con- 
cerning our decision to give equal time to both empucs. 

In 1985, one might have relegated the pre-i917 era to a 
brief prefator\' survey on the grounds that it was oi historical 
interest only. Today, we will argue, the tsarist period, and partic- 
ularly the cnidal year 1917, seem no less and in some ways 
more— relevant than the Soviet period for understanding the 
current situation. 

\cl, pairing the tsarist and Soviet empires in this chapter 
raises the question ot how similar they actually are. Is the Sox iel 
empire simply the tsarist domain under a new name, that is the 
Soviet Union? Or is it, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has insisted, a 
kind of imperial Moloch that demanded and received blood 
sacrifices fhmi all its nations, and especially from the Rusoan 
nation?* Obviously, this difference of interpretation goes very 
deep. It is part of the Wcstcmizcr versus Slavophile dispute as to 
whether the USSR is best understood as an extension of tradi- 
tional Russian autocracy and political culture (the Westerni/.er 
position) or as the imp>osition onto Russia of a Western (i.e., 
Blarxist) form of political organization. 

In our view, both empires were more imperial than Russian, 
even in their last, Russian nationalist phases. Both empires ex- 
ploited Russian nationalism (which one might therefore caU 
imperial or statist natmalism) more than Russian nationalism 



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18 □ TH£ R1S£ OF NATIONS 



exploited empire. NeecUess to say, these dif ferences are impos- 
sible to measure and extremely difficult to estimate. But we 
agree with Roman Siportuk, who contends that the Rniiian 
"empire never became a Bnttian natkm-ftate." Szporhik accepts 
Ladis R. D. Kristof s "Hiotkm of a discrepancy or conflict between 
the *state idea* of the imperial regime and the 'national idea' of 

the Russians," a dil fcrence captured in the "distinction between 
riisskii and wssiiskii, between what pertains to the (Great) Russian 
p>eopie and what to All-the-'Russias/" As Kristof points out, the 
tsarist empire's formal name wsuiRossiiskaia Imfmia, usARimkaia 
Impmia, and the tsar was the iiii«rnistu^ mpenimr? 

This distinction between the imperial amd the Russian idea 
wascnidalin 1917 and b so again today. When the tsarist regime 
cx>l]apsed, even liberal Russian nationalists like Paul Milyukov 
hoped to retain, or even expand, the empire. In 1991, bv con- 
trast, for perhaps the first time ever, Russian nationalism has 
separated itself from, and insome cases even turned against, the 
idea of empire, thus opening up the possibility of a nonimperial 
outcome this time around. 

THE TSARIST EMPIRE AND ITS PILLARS 

The Russian empire took shape even before the Russian nation 
did, or at least in parallel with it. In that sense, Russians have 
never lived in a state that was anvthin^ but an empire. .\s a result, 
the borders of that empire have always felt natural and inevita- 
ble, even to those Russians who have preached isolauonism. For 
example, when Solzhenitsyn caUs upon Russians to abandon the 
non-Slavic portions of the USSR and occupy themselves with 
assimilating thenr own realm, he indudes in die Russian heart- 
land areas that were annexed to the empire over the course of 
the last ceniurv or so, like the Amur region and northern 
Kazakhstan (n(3t to mention Kbnigsberg, southern Sakhalin, 
TuNa. and parts of Finland).^ 

Another attribute of both Russian and Soviet empires worth 
noting at the start is that summariied in V. O. Kliuchevikii*s 
famous aphorism: The state swelled, and the people shrank."* 
In a paper about the nationality issue, we should say all peoples. 



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MAK5UDOV & TAUBMAN □ 19 



Russian and non-Russian, withered under the weight oi the 
despotic state. 

Yet, despite these continuities across each imperial era, the 
hi8toi7 of both the Russian and the Sofviet empires can in^ 
divided into periods that correspond to the trinity of orthodoxy, 
autocracy* and nationality. 

First PUlar: Orthodoxy 

Let us begin, as Count Uvarov did, with Russian orthodoxy. The 
period we have in mind lasted from the christening of Rus at the 
end of the tenth century to the fifteenth century overthrow of 
the Mongol rule by Ivan III. It was during this time that the 
consolidation of the eastern Slavonic tribes took place, as well as 
their intermixing with Finnic peoples, their tem|X)rary subjuga- 
tion b\ the Mongols, and their eventual subordination to a 
Moscow slate. 

All these peoples inhabited a region united by religion. 
Orthodoxy demarcated the boundaries of the Russian slate and 
legitimated its pretensions to further territory in the West then 

belonging to Lithuania but populated by people profiessing a 
belief in orthodoxy. Religion formed the baeds for distinguishing 

natives irom inf idels, or irKa'ertsy (adherents ot a r(3reij^n creed). 
Orthodoxy justified designating Moscow as the chosen state, the 
heir to Byzantium, the 1 bird Rome. 

The term "nationality" in its modem meaning did not exist 
in this period.^ Greeks were the original carriers of what became 
Russian orthodoxy, m^ose texts were written in Old Church 
Sbvonic (really south Slavic), a language far removed from spo- 
ken Russian. Ironically, the Mongols protected orthodoxy dur- 
ing their rule. Orthodoxy was the primary prerequisite for 
inclusion in the Russian ruling class, whether as a bovar or as a 
member of the dvohane (nobility). Even the l atar muny (heredi- 
tary military elite) were included in the Muscovite aristocracy 
once the Mongols were defeated, as were indigenous leaders of 
Turkic and Finnic tribes such as the tkmjosh and mmriu^ Tatars 
settled whole regions of the country, such as the Kasimovskii 
Principality on the Oka. Because their devotion to the Muscovite 
prince was problematic, since the prince's external enemies were 



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20 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



also Tatars, orthcxloxy served as a supplementary guarantee of 
their loyalty. Likewise, orthodoxy played a role in defending 
against German incursions in the Baltic area, and in gaining the 
support of many Lithuanian boyars who entered the service of 
Muscovite princes.^ 

Second PiUar: Autocracy 

The Russian word lor autocracw samoderzhavie, is composed ot 
two elements — samoderzhets, or emperor, and derzhavie, which 
connotes a state or empire with power centralized in the head of 
that state. The first Russian to openly declare his state an autoc- 
racy, and himself tsar and inheritor of both Byzantiiim and the 
Golden Horde, was Ivan IV (the Terrible). Under his reign, 
Russia became a multinational state encompassing vast terri- 
tories, both along the Volga and extending into Siberia, with 
Finnish and Tatar populations. It was on the basis ot both ortho- 
doxy and autocracy (even more than Russian nationality, let 
alone Russian nationalism) that the Russian emp ir e maintained 
itself while expanding to the east, west, and soudi, until roughly 
the middle of the nineteenth centmy. 

Constantinople having fallen to the Turks in 1453, by the 
sixteenth century the Muscovite state considered itself not sim- 
ply orthodox, but the onlv true orthodox domain. This sense led 
Moscow to create its own patriarchate in 1589, thus severing the 
umbilical cord connecting it to Byzandum. Orthodoxy was now a 
Russian religion. Simultaneously, the character of the state itself 
changed. The power q£ the Muscovite prince became both un- 
limited and hereditary, and to his title Sovereign of All Russia 
was added Tsar of Kazan, Astrakhan, and so on. Moreover, in a 
way that foreshadowed later conflicts when nationalism rather 
than orthodoxy or autocracy fueled Russian expansionism, the 
sixteenth-century annexation ot the Tatar domains of Kazan 
and Astrakhan sparked a quarrel between Moscow and i urkev. 
The latter laid daim to Kazan and Astrakhan in the name of its 
Muslim population; the Crimean khan also considered these 
lands to be his. 

During the Time of Troubles, at the beginning of the seven- 
teendi century, neighboring states and noo-Riissian peoples in- 



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MAKSUDOV & TALBMAN □ 21 

creased their influence over the affairs of the Russian state. 
Tatars and Lithuanians had pla\ ed a role in the struggle f ur the 
Muscovite throne in the fifteenth century; Poles and Don Cos- 
sacks played a similar part at the beginning of the seventeenth 
century. Among pretenders to the throne during this period 
were notable boyar dynasts (Godunovs and Shuiskiis) and the 
Polish impostor Vladislav, who would have converted to oriho- 
doxN if he had hcc(jnie the Russian tsar. At the same time, a 
Russian nationalist element made its appearance in the form oi 
Russian merchants ot the northern cities who dispatched the 
irregulars of Minin and FozharskiL But if some urban dwellers 
supported the notion of a national autocracy, ordinary people 
(iniduding peasants and Cossacks) viewed such an autocracy as 
their archenemy — witness the later rebellions at the periphery 
by the Cossacks of Stenka Raziii.and the followers of the Cossack 
Pup^arhex. who proclaimed himself Peter IV, thus winning the 
support of many non-Ru&sian peoples along the Volga, including 
the Bashkirs.^ 

Rirticularly revealing (of the not yet fully Russian character 
of the Russian empire in these years) was the nationality of those 
who carried out Russian imperial diplomacy. According to 
Friedrich Engels, whose summary of the situation was later to 
evoke the wrath (^f that non-Russian but extremely pro-Russian 
tsar Joseph Stalin; 

The external policy of Rniria i» imqufttionably that area in whidi 
mrism has been moic powerful. Russian diplomaqr formed a kind 

of new Jesuit order, quite powerful enough to overcome even the 
I sar s whims and put a slop, within its own sphere, to the wide- 
spread corruption that surrounded it. In ihe beginning, ihis order 
was recmitea mainly from foteisncn: Conicani tudi at Bdoo de 
Borgo, Germans like Nessclrode, and Baltic Germans such as 
Liven. The verv founder of the order. Catherine II [ I 729- 1796]. 
was a ioreigner herself. To ihis very day [1890] only one pure- 
faboded RuMian, Gorchaluyv, has oocupira the 
Older. And hb tiKoeiior [N. IL Giers] once agam carries a foreign 
name. 

It is this st'( ret soc ietN. ifi railed tnos(l\ Ironi foreign .iristo- 
crais, ihai has lilted the Russian stale lo iis present position ol 
power. . . . It has accomplished more than all the Russian arndes in 
expanding the borders of Russia from the Dniepr and ihe Dvina 
beyond the Vistula to the Prut, the Danube and the Black Sea. from 
the Don and the Volsa to the Caucasus and to ihe sources of the 
Amu Dmyu and the Sfr Dmya, It has rendered Russia great and 



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22 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



powerful and fearsome, and has opened iis path luward world 
doninatioa.* 

ThM Pillar: Naikmality 

1 he idea of ilic Russian j)C()ple as a chosen imperial })e()ple — a 
people with a mission to bring religious orthodoxy to the world, 
to support the principle of autocrac\ , and to unite various Slavic 
and non-Slavic peoples—developed during the nineteenth cen- 
tury, first in educated sodecy and then within the ruling dass 
itself. The eventual result of this self-conception was to compli- 
cate nationality relations within the empire and to provoke a 
dittereniiated Western i(.'Sj)onse to various non-Russi<in peo- 
ples. Western powers had more s\ inpath\ tor some non- Russians 
than others. What we now call human rights considerations 
conflicted with geopolitical aims — ^with the need to keep the 
tsarist empire in business as a counterweight to others, but also 
with the need to keep the Ottoman empire going to check the 
Russians. 

The Russian national idea developed gradually. But by 
1839, when the Marquis de Custine visited Russia, Nicholas I 

had already ordered that Russian be spoken at the court (hence 
ladies of high station learned a few Russian phrases so that they 
could be heard to exchange them when the tsar passed bv). 
Nicholas 1 told Custine that he was a ( hampion of autocracy 
pardy because it was in accord with the tem[>er oi the nation. The 
tsar lamented to Custine how difficult it was for him to also serve 
as the constitutional monarch of MancL^^ 

In fact, Nicholas not only ceased to recognize the Polish 
constitution, he suppressed the Polish rebellion of 1830-1831 
and dispatched many Mes to Siberia. IVocests arose in Fhmoe 
and Kngland, and Russia moved toward an alliance with the 
conservative monarchies of Austria and Prussia. Meanwhile, Po- 
lish revolutionaries who had fled Warsaw to Western capitals 
"were \ery successful, particularlv among HIh ral circles, in build- 
ing a picture of tsarist Russia as the embodiment of all that was 
reprehensible and reactionary in politics."" In a sense, then, we 
have here an eariy case in which relations between iiationaUy self- 
conscious Russians and non-Russians (in thb case, Poles) ad- 
versely affected Russia's standing in other countries. A some- 



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MAK6UDOV & TAUfiMAN □ 23 



what similar case involved the Caucasian mountaineer leader 
Shamil, whose long and fierce resistance to Russian ruJe compli- 
cated Russian relations with Persia and Turkey.'^ 

The dcwetopinem of Slavophilism toi^^ 
nineteenth century uhiniately had a similar effect. Slavophiles 
bcKcwd that the Russian people had taken their own historical 
path (in response to the dictates of orthodoxy and the Russian 
soul) and ought not imitate the West. I heir ^oal. the unification 
of all Slavic peoples, translated in political terms into a Slavic war 
of liberation against Turke> . Of course, Slavophilism alone did 
not trigger sudi warfiune. The Slavophik cast of mind oombined 
with the Russian state's longstanding aspbratkm to seiae Con- 
stantinople to produce the Crimean Wur of 1853. And that, in 
turn, brought about the English and FVench intervention that 
resulted in Russia's crushing defeat. 

Previously, those same European power?* had long sup- 
ported Russia in its wars with l urkey; even England had fought 
alongside Russia to defeat the Turkish fleet in 1828. But the later 
wpahming of Turkey, combined with the outward thrust of an 
incrcasmgly self-consciously Russian empire, evdked the alarm 
of many European statesmen, among them Benjamin DisraelL" 

In the aftermath of the Crimean War, the arrow linking the 
nationalitv issue with foreign relations hegan to point the other 
wav — that is, from outside the empire back into it. The move- 
ment toward domestic reform that resulted from the devastating 
Crimean War defeat did not actually address Russians' relations 
with non-Russians; rather, it focused on the need to free Russia's 
own serfs and thus end its backwardness. But in the longnm, the 
reforms of the 1860s would allow space for non-Russians as weU 
as Russians to organize to defend their interests. In the short 
riui, it was (once again) the Poles who rose in rebellion, in 1863, 
receiving moral support, but not concrete assistance, from Eng- 
land and France. According to Barbara Jelavich, "it was . . . un- 
doubtedly the Polish insurrection that broke decisively the ties 
between Furis and St. Petersburg," ties that had been re- 
established since the Crimean War (and would be resurrected in 
the 189Qs with the help of a big Finrach loan).'^ Having crushed 
the rebeOkm, Russia proceeded to incorporate the Kingdom of 



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24 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

Poland into Russia itself and apply the policy of Russification to 
other non-Russian areas of the empire, as welL 

Later stiU in the nineteenth century, what cailier oou^ 
been called Ruwian national aetfconickHitneti graduaPy turned 
into out-and-out nationalitm. Moreover, the regime's attempt to 
base itself on an imperial Russian nation antagonized other non- 
Russian nationalities. Il was parllv in response to intensified 
Russification that nationalist movements in non-Russian areas 
began to demand greater freeck)m and independence. It the 
Russians had rights and privileges as a people, why should others 
not hanw such r^ts and privikges? Yet, the gowernment cienied 
Ukrainians, Baits, and Boles the right to study in their own 
languages in upper school grades and in hi|^ier educational 
institutions. Nationalist movements in support of these non- 
Russian peoples developed in neighboring countries, prompting 
the Russian go\ernment to trv to prevent its neighbors from 
encouraging anti-Russian feeling within Russia itself, in Lvov, 
for example, then called Lemburg in the Austro-Hungarian 
empire, Ukrainian scholars published books and journals in 
Ukrainian, while the tsarist government subsidiied publication 
of the pro-Russian newspaper Shoo, Austro-Hungarian GaUda 
was so rife with activity by Ukrainian nationalists (led by Pro- 
fessor M. S. Grushevskii. who would head the Central Ukrainian 
Rada in 1917 ) that it was known as the Piedmont of the Ukraine. 

Similar tensions arose in the Asian part of the empire. In its 
effort to aUot sufficient land to liberated Russian p>easants, the 
government seized millions of acres from Kazakh and Kirghiz 
nomads as part of the Stolypin reforms. The result in 1916wasto 
provoke local uprisings; the fliglit of refugees to duna, Iran, 
and Afghanistan; and border tensions with diese countries. In 
bloodv clashes in Turkestan. Russians and Kazakhs died in large 
numbers; afterward, Russians began to flee back to Russia. 

Even farther to the east, Russia was building the railroad to 
China and occupying northern parts of Manchuria. In a sense, 
this was ^'straightforward'* impoial behavior, but it was aooom- 
panied in the press fay widespread nationalist and racist propa- 
ganda about the '^How peril''that played no small role in setting 
the stage for the Russo-Japanese War. 



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MAKSUDOV & TAUBMAN □ 25 



Finaily, there was the "Jewish question." Ever since the 
eighteenth century, Jews had been prohibited from living in 
purely Russian gubemias, and under Nicholas I, their sons had 
been forcibly baptized and taken into the army for 25-year terms. 
But it was Alexander III who reduced the Me of Settlement 
(forbidding Jews to live outside cities and small towns); intro- 
duced quotas in state high schools (Jews were to constitute no 
more than 3 percent of the students): exiled Jews from Moscow, 
where they had been permitted to live since 1865; and forbade 
them to take part in local government. When bkxxly pogroms 
occurred in 1881 and 1882» the government sympathized with 
accusations that Jews were engaging in ritual killings in the 
Ukraine. It is ironic but revealing that the number of pogroms 
sharply increased in the immediate aftermath of the tsar's Octo- 
ber Manifesto of 1905, offering greater freedom to society. As in 
the late 1980s, partial political liberalization opened the door to 
unofficial anti-Semites who interpreted ireedom to mean the 
freedom to beat up Jews. The extreme nationalist Union of the 
RusHan Feopfe, which arose in 1905, has its contemporary coun- 
terpart in the ultra-nationalist, and-Semitk: sodecy, Famfoi 
(memory). 

Coming on top of official government restrictions, this anti- 
Jewish violence led to massive Jew ish emigration (amounting to 
about 2 million people) to America and, eventually, to tensions 
between Russia and the United States. According to John Lewis 
Gaddis, Americans were offended in part by the discrimination 
to which American Jews were subject while traveling in Russia, 
but also by what they regarded as "an outrage against humanity." 
After quiet efforts failed to persuade the Russian government to 
change its policies, American Jewish organizations got the White 
House to issue official protests and, finally in 1911, unilaterally 
to abrogate a Russian-American commercial treaty dating back 
to 18S2. if ail this reminds one of similar American efforts in the 
1970s, so should the result: abrogation of the treaty failed to 
create the intended eflfea; the attempt to interfere brought 
about an anti-American backlash, espedally in extreme Russian 
nationalist drdes; and the Jews* situation further deteriorated as 
the result of new reprisab." 



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26 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



These, then, are some examples of how increased Russian 
nationalism poisoned both nationality relationi within the em- 
pire and the empire's relationt with other countries. Moreover, 
as both sorts <^ tensions rose, they he^tened Russian national- 
ism itsdf, which, after the 1905 revolution, several radical na- 
tionalist, chauvinist parties (such as the Union of the Russian 
People and the All-Russian National Union) represented in the 
new Duma. 

On the eve of World War I, Russia's strength seemed sub- 
stantiaL The empire was far-Hung and had millions of men 
under arms. Yet it was rotting at the core. Historians who have 
debated whether Russia could have survived and even pros- 
pered in the absence of world war have concentrated on the 
country's political and economic condition.** But for our pur- 
poses the issue is the impact of nationality relations. National and 
ethnic enmities not only were beginning to boil within the em- 
pire, but were contributing to international tensions, as well. 
Among the causes of World War 1 were territorial and other 
concrete issues. But these were part of a complex web of tensions 
and miscalnilations to which the empire's increasingly Russian 
sense of itself made no small contribution. 

As for the war, it aggravated Russian relations with yet 
another non-Russian nationality — the Germans. Anti-German 
speeches and pogroms were followed by the arrest and exile of 
Russian citizens of German background — as well as of Jews, who 
were regarded as German sympathizers. On the other hand, 
Czechs and Serbs captured along with other soldiers of the 
Austro-Uungarian empire were welcomed as brother Slavs and 
encoura^^ to form a fighting corps of their own. 

Looking back on the tsarist history we have briefly summa- 
rized, we can think no better epitaph than that offered by the 
tsarist statesman Sergei Witte: 

For decades, our policy has been founded on a basic mistake: we 
still haven't realized that ever since the time of Peter the Great and 
Catherine the Gkreat thm has been fK> su^ 
Runian empire. When neariy 35 percent (^f the population amsisti 
of inorodby [non-Russians] (and the Russians themselves are di- 
\ided into (ireai Russians. Little Russians, and White Russians), it 
is impossible lo conduct a iweniieLh century poUcy liiai ignores thai 
aU-in^onjuit foct, that ignores the national charactenitka — rdi- 



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MAKSUOOV & TAUfiMAN □ 27 

gion, language, and so forth— of other natkmaliciet that are part of 
the Riia£ui cmpiie.*' 

We would add only that the Western powers duplicated the 
error of Riuiian policy by treadng Rusiia as a unitary empire. 
They refimned to it as a prison house of peoples, Imt they seeined 
to care little about those imprisoned in it, with the partial excep- 
tion of Poles, Finns, and Jews. 

THE SOVIET EMPIRE AND ITS PILLARS 

If Russian nationalism was the last base and refuse of the tsarist 
regime, the revolutionary year of 1917 blew up that base while 
the dvil war destroyed or exiled its leading champions. Ulti- 
mately, new sorts of nationalisnis, such as National Bolshevism, 

would emerge. But in the meantime, virludlU all the non-Rus- 
sian areas, all the itiowdtsy. grasped for independence, thus con- 
tributing in their own way to the Bolshevik victory. 

If our aim here were stricdy historical, we would now focus 
on the mcmths between February and October 1917. fiut since 
we want to compare that year with the era of perestroika and 
glasnost, we wiD skip past 1917 for the moment, and proceed 
instead to examine the linkage between nationality policy and 
foreign policy in the Soviet period. 

first Pillar: Ideology 

The first pillar of the Soviet empire was ideology. Ideology 
animated the process of organizing relations among nationalities 
inside Bolshevik Russia and shaped relations with other coun- 
tries. In both realms, ideobgy created conflict; moreover, the 

two sorts of conflict intertwined. Of course, the new Soviet re- 
gime had economic and sec urilv interests, too, especially during 
a time ot world war, civil war, and outside intervention. And 
warmed-over Russian imperial nationalism likewise played a 
part. For example, Lenin reasserted Russian rights to the Chi- 
nese Eastern Railroad even as he repudiated tsarist debts to 
oipitalist states. According to an authoritative Soviet history, the 
railroad was *tNiilt with funds taken by the tsarist government 
from its taxpayers, that is, from the Russian people."** 



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28 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



Like other political parties that had appeared on the Russian 
political scene before 1917, the Bolsheviks had no clear or fully 
worked out program for dealing widi the nationality issue. But 
they devetoped ideas that were sufiEkientiy fc^ 
to serve them weD. At one level, they proclaimed an intema- 
tionalist commitment to world revolutioti. At another, thev in- 
sisted that the achievement of a world socialist state required not 
Russia's destruction but its transformation. At vet a third level, 
they offered independence to non-Russian f>eoples while at the 
same time calling on them to unite voluntarily in what would 
eventually become a worldwide Soviet republic In sum, they 
promised non-Russian nationalities equality and independence, 
but with a catch. They wouki grant such indepeiidenoe only if it 
served the cause of socialism as defined by the party — and in the 
eyes of the partv, it did not. 

While all these abstract principles were being proclaimed, 
from the Baltic to the Ukraine, and from the Caucasus to Central 
Asia, non-Russian nationalities were trying to take their fates 
into their own hands. *^ Weakened for die time being by war and 
intervention, the Bolsheviks were in no position to dictate the 
outcome. It would take several years before they won back key 
areas of the tsarist patrimcmy. The fact that White forces in the 
civil war stood for a Russia whole and united won the Bolsheviks 
some support among non-Russians. But as earlv as 1918, Lenin 
and Stalin ordered the commander of the Red Army in the West 
to "support with every means possible the provisional Soviet 
governments and, of course, only the Soviet governments of 
Latvia, Estonia, the Ukraine, and Lithuania.**^ Communists in 
non-Russian areas depended on the Red Army to seize power 
and hM power, and eventually the Red Army got the job done. 
Everywhere except in Finland, Poland, and the Baltics, separatist 
efforts were snuffed out. Last to be crushed were the Basmachis, 
whose desperate resistance to Soviet rule in Kazakhstan and 
Central Asia lasted for nearly a decade. 

How did the process of reestablishing the empire intertwine 
with the new Bolshevik state's foreign rdations? Ideokigy was not 
the only foctor that complicated those rdadons. Initially, the 
course of the war was decisive. Until the Tnaty of Brest-Lhovsk, 



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MAK5UOOV & TALbMAN □ 29 



Russia remained at war with the Central Powers. Alter Bicst- 
Litovsk* it was in ei tect at war with the Allies, who sought Russia's 
reentry into World War I. But even before the overall arinistioe 
in November 1918, and certainly afterward, the Western pofwers 
worried about the Bolsheviks' revolutionary ambitions. In the 
service of those ambitions, Lenin even tried to readi beyond the 
border of the former Russian empire. He considered, although 
did not undertake, armed assistance to the Hungarian Soviet 
Republic and the German proletariat. Likewise, he considered 
expeditions to Iranian Azerbaijan and even to India. 

Of all the considerations that modvaled the Allied powers to 
intervene in Soviet Russia, a firm commitment to independence 
for non-Russians was conspicuous by its abs en ce. Instead, the 
West generally took the Me of Rwsskm nationalism, at first 
bee ause it seemed the main bulwark against Bolshevism, but also 
because, despite the demise ot the Hapsburg and Ottoman em- 
pires, and despite Woodrow Wilson's talk about national self- 
determination, the West was not about to force the Russians, 
whether White or Red, to give up their empire. 

The kaleidoscopic pattern of national and international con- 
flkt during these years is far too complex to convey here. Suffice 
it to say that both the Central Fowers and the Entente got more 
deeply involved in relations between Russians and non-Russians 
than any outside power has since, and that the ebbs and Hows of 
German or Allied armies temporarily determined the outcome 
of Russian-non-Russian conflia in the Ukraine, the Aakics, and 
elsewhere. 

The Baltic states emerged from the dvO war period as 
independent states partly because they 'Svere on Western Eu- 
rope's doorstep and the great powers were prepared to support 

them."^* On the other hand, the Caucasus was far away. As long 
as White forces were holding their own in the Caucasus, the 
Allies preferred to back them rather than local non- Russian 
nationalists. Even as the White Volunteer Army collapsed in the 
wmter of 1919-1920, the Allies decUned the three independent 
Canrasian repuUics'request to be placed under League of Na- 
tkw mandates. The AlBed Supreme Councfl extended de facto 
recognition to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, but failed to 



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so □ THE R1S£ OF NATIONS 



back that up with concrete support. The Great Powers' de jure 
recognition of Georgia came just as the Red Army was about to 
launch the invasion that would establish Soviet rule.^ Basmachi 
resistance in Central Asia, which only General Semyon Bu- 
denny's cavalry raids ended, attracted some protest in Turkey, 
but virtually no attention in the West. 

In sum, during the civil war period, the West got its best look 
yet at the multinational nature of the Russian empire, but it paid 
relatively little attention and soon seemed to ibrget entirely what 
it had seen. 

Second FiUar: Dktaiorship 

Before the dvfl war was over in 1921, and even more afterward, 

the Bolsheviks realized that they needed not only revolutionary 
ideology to build socialism, but a powerful state apparatus — 
which they euphemistically called a dictatorship of the prole- 
tariat, but was in £act a dictatorship of the party and ultimately of 
its leader. In nationality af£aurs, the corresponding shift %vas 
from a putative community of interests among peoples to a 
commitment to the unity of the newly powerful Soviet state. 

The imfdications of this change were substantial in both 
nationality af^rs and Soviet foreign relations. But in contrast to 
developments in the earlier period, the two sets of consequences 
developed in parallel rather than being intertwined. 

In nationality affairs, this second period is marked by Sta- 
lin's successful efforts to create an extremely centralized USSR. 
In foreign afiEurs, Soviet policy moved akmg two quite differ 
tracks. On one, it continued to support the world communist 
movement. On the other, it reestaUished relations with neigh- 
boring states and proceeded to strengthen its economy, partly in 
preparation for possible war. Moscow also incorporated Bukhara 
and Khiva (which until then had been formally independent) 
and the Far Eastern Republic. The West showed little if any 
concern about these moves; indeed, the United States in effect 
facilitated seizure of the Far £astem Republic by demanding the 
departure of Japanese troops from the regkm. 

Nationality policy might well have been expected to affea 
foreign policy in the late 1920b and early 19S0s. Claims to the 



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MAKSUOOV & TAUBMAN □ 31 



contrary nolwilhsianding, Stalin's brutal collectivization and the 
famine that followed were not directed primahl) against non- 
Russian peoples, although the losses were particularly great in 
the Ukraine and Kazakhstan.^ But the national groups there 
and elsewhere suffered aO the more because Stalin's polides 
no account of the differences among them, subjecting them all to 
the same draconian changes. How did the West react to the 
damage collectivization and famine had done? Hardlv at all. 

The Ukrainian famine and the desolation of Kazakhstan 
received little attention in the West, where questions even arose 
as to whether such events had actually occurred. Moreover, it was 
precisely during this time period (in 1933) that the United States 
reoogniaed the Soviet Union for the first time. Of course, the 
United States and the other Western demoi had various 
geopolitical, economic, and other reasons for cultivating decent 
relations w ith the USSR. Nor were they the first to have had their 
view of Russian/Soviet reality obscured by Potemkin villages; 
that tradition, too, went way back in Russian imperial history. 
But the fact remains that, with the possible exception of Turkey's 
reaction to the crushing of the Basmadu rebellion, relations 
between R u ssia n s and non-Rus si a n s had minim a l impact on the 
USSR*^ ftn-eign rdatkms during this second period of Soviet 
empire. 

Third Pillar: Nationalism 

This situation was to change during the third period. As eariy as 
1936-1937, Stalin's "chosen state" began to attach highest prior- 
ity lo its "dbosen peopte,** to the "older brother^ of aU the Soviet 
peoples, the *'|^orious Russian people.** Berhaps the first area of 
Soviet life to feel the impact of this change was language; with the 
exception of (ieorgian and Armenian, all the languages ot the 
Soviet peoples were required to adopt the Cyrillic alphabet in the 
late 1930s. Likew ise, Russian history and culture became oblii^a- 
tory subjects of study. Having become Lenin's successor, Stalm 
obviously wanted to be, and to be seen as, the successor of Ivan 
the Terrible and Beter the Great. 

Mainly because of World War II, but linked as wdl with die 
new preference for Russians over non-Russians, Soviet foreign 



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S2 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



relations soon had a devastating ef fect on certain non-Russian 
nationalities within the USSR. Even before the war, in 1937— 
1938, the govenunent suspected Soviet dtiieiis oS Korean and 
Chinese extraction (appronmatdy 200,000 in all) of harboring 
sympathy for J apan and therefore exiled them from the Eu" 
to Central Asia. After Soviet troops occupied the western 
Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Bahics. it sent hundreds of thou- 
sands of Poles and Baits to camps and into exile. Finns, loo. the 
indigenous population of Leningrad Oblast, were resettled. 
£arly in the war, Moscow abolished the Volga German Republic 
and focdhly resettled its inhabitantt in Kaaakhstan and Siberia. 
(To this day, Moscow has not Kinstated their aittonomous static 
either on their former territory or anywhere eke.) The govern- 
ment also exiled Tatars from the Crimea and various Muslim 
peoples (as well as Greeks and Bulgarians) from the Crimea and 
the Caucasus region. C)t ficialh . Moscow accused these peoples of 
collaboration with the Germans; in fact, their exile was part of 
preparation for an expected clash with Turkey. 

The annexadon of the Baltics, Bessarabia, and western por- 
tions of the Ukraine and Bekmissia was dearly aimed at restor- 
ing the Russian empire, even though the government justified 
these moves ideologically as responses to requests by peoples 
living on these territories. But the new conquests extended be- 
yond the borders of the old empire. Buko\ ina had been part of 
Romania; I'/hgorod, Lvov, and Mukachev were taken from 
Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, respecuvely. Konigsberg 
had been German; southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles, Japanese; 
and Tuva, an independent territory (near M ongolia ) , becnne an 
autonomous Soviet republic in 1944 without any protest from 
Moscow's wartime allies. Stalin foiled in his attempt to occupy 
Xinjiang during the late 1990s and northern Iran aftter the war. 

During the war, the invading Germans tried to play on 
Russian-non-Russian tensions. Nazi ploys included treating 
Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war differently (often al- 
lowing the latter to return to their homes), forming national 
military units composed of smaller non-Russian peoples, and, of 
course, identifying the Bolsheviks with the Jews. Such tactics 
produced lasting successes only in the Baltics, which had just 



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MAK5UDOV & TAUBMAN □ 33 



endured a fresh Soviet occupation. (Latvian and Lithuanian 
military units fought doggedly against the Red Army even under 
the nmt hopelesi drcuuistanoes.) In the Ukraine, Hitler could 
noc bring hinudf to offer real national autonomy to the popula- 
tion and was soon arresting nationahst foUowers of Betlura. Still, 
before the war was over, hundreds of thousands of ciii/cns 
(mostly non-Russian) fought against StaHn on the side of the 
Germans, offering resistance that continued long after the war 
in the Ukraine and the Baltics. 

This is not to say that Soviet antifascist propaganda was 
exclusively Russian nationalist in nature; it also featured intema- 
tionalisi slogans in response to threats the Nazis posed to non- 
Russian Soviet peoples. During the war, national churches in 
Georgia and Armenia received greater freedom, just as the 
Russian Orthodox church did. £ven the Jews were authorized to 
create the Jewish Antifudst Committee, which sent its leading 
members to the United States to rally support for the USSR 
and to collect money. Shortly af ter the war, of course, some of 
the same committee members were arrested and accused of 
espionage. 

The postwar glorification of the Russian peo|^ assumed 
ugly and even absurd forms: Russians were declared to have 
been ""main victors'* in the war; a variety of sdentifk disoQfverM 
were attributed to them; their history, including its imperial 

expansion, was proclaimed progressive. Meanwhile, the higher 
party elite consisted mostly of men of Russian nationality. 

After the war, what might be called the internal Soviet 
empire (i.e.» the USSR proper) became part of a laiiger Soviet 
imperial system in whidi the three pillars we have been examin- 
ing came to support three geographically distinct ports of that 
system. While Russian nationalism increasingly buttressed Soviet 
rule within the Soviet Union itself, ideology justified support for 
communist and revolutionarv movements and "progressive 
states" around the world. Meanwhile, in the realm between the 
internal empire and the vfoM at large, dictatonhip (theo- 
retically justified by ideokigy) was extended to areM that Soviet 
troops had occupied (East European countries and Mongolia). 



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M □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



Within this intermediate realm, a variety of important state 
and party agendes were in effect merged or fused with their 
Soviet counterparts: military, state security, dipkwnafir, higher 
party, and even certain economic organs. This process resem- 
bled (and was probably modeled on) that whidi had taken place 
in the 1920s when the non-Russian republics were merged with 
the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Vet, 
rumors and signs to the contrary notwithstanding, Stalin did not 
proceed to include the people's democracies as new Soviet re- 
publics. Ideology could luive easily been shown to demand their 
inclusion in a new "world union." Such a repnhiir might also have 
facilitated the kind of absolute dictatorial control that Stalin 
exerted within his internal empire. The main reason for not 
creating new Soviet socialist republics was probably a wish to 
avoid unnecessarily antagonizing the West. But the rise of Rus- 
sian nationalism within the USSR militated against it, as well. 
The Russians' weight and influence within an expanded USSR 
would have diminished. (Actually, the size, if not the relative 
weight, ofthe RSFSR was actually etiAoncMf after the war with the 
inclusion of KOnigsberg— despite the latter's noocontiguity with 
the Russian Republics-Sakhalin, and a small part of Finland, 
Pechenga.) 

After the war, various non-Russian nationalities were either 
favored or disfavored in accordance with the dictates of foreign 
relations. Ukrainians and Belorussians received the great (but 
empty) honor of having their republics represented at the 
United Nations. This was Stalin's way of pardy making up for 
Western predominance in the UN. (In retrospect, the situation is 
highly paradoxical: What would the Baltics not give today to be 
represented at the UN? Yet, the Americans opposed Stalin's 
original suggestion that all Soviet republics be represented at 
Turtle Bay.) On the other hand, Moscow did not allow Arme- 
nians a day of remembrance to mark their slaughter by the 
Turks, lest their Turkish neighbors be alienated. As for the Jews, 
Stalin declared them cosmopolitans, suspect because they were 
likely to aid Israel or the United Stales. 

Although the plights of various non-Russian peoples com- 
manded the attention of their conationals outside the USSR, the 



MAKSUDOV 8c TAUBMAN □ 35 



Jews were the onK ones whose situation would eventually 
prompt the United States to exert substantial pressure on the 
Soviet Union (thus repeating in the Soviet period the pattern that 
obtained towanl the end of the Russian empire). With 
tion of some special sympathy for Baltic refugees (who, in con- 
trast to other former German war prisoners, were not handed 
over to the Soviets, on the grounds that the Baltics had not been 
part of the USSR in 1939), American polic ies toward the USSR 
hardly took into account the rest. For example, when the Ameri- 
cans decided not to open a consulate in Kiev in protest against 
Moscow's Afghan intervendon, they gave no consideration to 
Ukrainian nationalists* view that such a consulate could buttress 
Ukrainian prestige and facilitate contacts with foreigners. 

After Stalin's death, the Soviet empire changed in certain 
details, but not in essentials. Its external zone — the one charac- 
terized bv ideological and political intluence, but not slate con- 
trol — witnessed a dilution ot ideolog\. The USSR counted a 
series of authoritarian states (such as £gypt, Iraq, and Syria) 
among its friends; as long as they were prepared to support 
Soviet policy and declare themselves to be progre s sive (which in 
practice meant being not so mudi antkapitalist as anti-Ameri- 
can), they qualifM for political and economic support and even 
military assistance. The intermediate ring of people's de- 
mocracies received greater political leeway, and economic and 
cultural aulonomv, while control over the army, the secret police, 
and key party and state personnel assignments remained in 
Moscow. When that control was challenged or threatened (in 
East Germany in 1953, Hungary in 1956» Ciechoslotvakia in 
1968, and Fobnd in 1980), Moscow used military force to rees- 
tabhsh controL 

Within the Soviet Union itsdf, the Khrushchev and 
Brezhnev period witnessed a weakening of pressure on non- 
Russian peoples: Moscow rehabiliiaied Chechens. Ingush, and 
Kalmyks, who had Ix^en repressed (although it allowed the 
Crimean Tatars, like the Volga Germans, neither to reestablish 
their autanomous republic nor to return to their native land); 
the beginning* of nationalist rebirth appeared in the Ukraine 
while Pyotr Shelest was party leader there; the regional economic 



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36 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



councils that Khrushchev temporarily put in place of centralized 
ministries offered greater leverage to native elites. But mean- 
while, Russian nationalism continued to grow, accompanied fay 
the non-Russian (or even anti-Russian) nationalism of smaller 

p>eoples. The tension was visible in cadre policy (which continued 
to place Russians in high posts in non-Russian republics, but also 
allowed non-Russian party chieftains, including Sharai 
Rashidov of Uzbekistan, Vasily P. Mzhavanadze of Georgia, and 
Dinmukhamed Kunaev of Kazakhstan, to establish native pa- 
tronage machines) and language policy. In connection with work 
on tlic new 1977 Constitution, the Brezhnev leadership floated the 
idea ot abolishing the republics' constitutional right to self-deter- 
mination (since, after all, nations themselves were theoretically 
going to merge, leavinga unified Soviet natkm in their wake), but 
characteristically shrank fh>m taking such a decisive step. 

How did these developments in the internal Soviet empire 
affect Soviet foreign relations, and how were they affected in 
turn? If (with Adam L'lam) ue summarize post-Stalin Soxiet 
foreign policy as a combination of expansionism and coexistence, 
we can indirectly link both elements to Russian—non-Russian 
relations. On the one hand, Brezhnev-era Soviet expansionism 
reflected Moscow's conviction that Western power and resolve 
were eroding as a result of both external overextension and 
internal decay. Clearlv, this view had ideological roots (as well as 
some connection to Western reality of the 197()s), but it also 
reflected some traditional Russian contempt tor Western demo- 
cratic institutions. On the other hand, Moscow moved into 
Czechoskivakia in 1968 partty to prevem Western ideas from 
contaminating the Ukraine, and into Afghanistan in 1979 pardy 
out of fear of Muslim fundamentalism in Soviet Central Asia, as 
well as bevond Soviet borders. 

As for coexistence, its influence was evident primarily in 
Soviet treatment of Jews and Germans, who had powerful pro- 
tectors in the Untied States and West Germany, respectively. The 
alMUty of both groups to emigrate in substantial numbers de- 
pended on pressure from their foreign protectors and, of 
course, on the willingness of Moscow to respond to that pressure 



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MAK5UDOV & TAUfiMAN □ 37 



so as to soliclitv dcicnie. Additionally, in the case of the Jews, one 
must mention Arab pressure in the opposite direction — namely, 
to Kmit Jewish immigrratioii into Israel — as well as the effect of 
the various Arab-Israeli wars (especially the 1967 war) in inspir- 
ing many Soviet Jews to emigrate in the first place. 

This linkage between nationality policy and foreign policy is 
sii^^gestive, l)ut not earth-shaking. Why did the nationality issue 
within the I'SSR ha\e so little impac t on other coiniiries (and \ ice 
\ersa) during the j)ost-Stalin era? Largely, we suspect, because 
the ''super power" of the Soviet Union deterred non-Russian 
nationalities from rising in anything like revolt, and outside 
poMers from even thinking of interfering. That "super power^ 
Gonsbted of the ability not only to crush any possible non-Rus- 
sian rebellions, but to bribe non-Russian peoples (and especially 
their elites) with iclaiiye prosperity, upward social mobility, 
and increasing de l.icio autonomy. It also included the ability to 
hide the potentially explosiye problems that did exist, not only 
from the Western powers, but even from the Soviet leaders 
themsdves. 

AFTER THE EMPIRE: 1917 VERSUS 1991 

Jnst as 1917 marked the end of the tsarist empire, the current 
period seems to portend the demise of its Scn iet successor. The 
similarities between the two eras are remarkable, but key diifer- 
enoes make the present moment tuiique. Briefly comparing 
these two turning points is a good way to survey the most impor- 
tant features <^ the national question— and their impBrations for 
foreign poliq^ — today. 

By 1917, and a^in by the late 1980s, the first two pillars of 
empire (orihodow and autocracy in the early period, ideology 
and dictatorship later) h.id weakened almost beyond recogni- 
tion; while the third pillar, Russian nationalism, was proving 
more subversive than supp>ortive. 

In both periods, imperial decay opened the way for a rapid 
upsurge of non-Russian nationalist oonsdousncn. The pattern 
varied in both periods, with peoples in various regkms behaving 
dilSerently. But as central authority eroded, local authorities 



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S8 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



took on an increasingly nationalist coloration and played an ever 
larger role in the Ukraine, Geoipa, and eliewhere. 

In neither period did the central goveminent act quickly 
and decisively in responie to natkinalist unrest. The ft o v isaonal 
Government of 1917 put off the national questiim untU the 
Constituent Assembly could be called. The USSR Supreme So- 
viet did likewise in the lale 1980s. Nor did any of the political 
parties that appeared on the scene before or during these pe- 
riods have a clear idea of how to handle the nationality issue. 

Unlike their successors in the late 1980s, non- Russian sep- 
aratist movements in 1917 did not immediately demand fiill 
independence. (The exceptions are Poland and Finland, whose 
current-day counterparts are the nevirly free nations of Eastern 
Europe rather than the Soviet repubKcs t h e mselves .) But the 

Ukrainians. Latvians, and Poles quickly established n.itional 
armies, much as peoples in the Caucasus region have done lodav. 

Strife among non-Russian peoples on the periphery broke 
out in 1917 in some of the same places it has in recent years. 
Azerbaijanis and Armenians fought then, too, as did Russian 
settlers and local nationalities in Kazakhstan and Kii^^hizia. 

The parallels even extend to foreign policy. Western atti- 
tudes have been ambivalent and motives mixed in both cases. 
Concern about some non-Russians has been greater than that 
about others; human rights considerations liave again clashed 
with geopolitical aims. Because the Provisional Goverinnenl's 
p)olicy was to continue in World War 1 on the side of the Entente, 
the Allies supported the central authorities and tried to ignore 
the nationality question. The West has been repeating the same 
pattern recendy — that is, pre fe rring to deal with the center — 
except that this time its goal is not to continue a war but to build 
on the peacefiil initiatives of the Gorbachev leadership. 

Despite all these similarities, the current moment is unique. 
For one thing, non-Russians are more conscious (jf their national 
identity, better equipped to pursue it, and more determined 
than were their counterparts in 1917. Back then, nationalism was 
essentially an elite, urban phenomenon. Today, non-Russian 
elites are more numerous, and their natkmaKsm has a mass base. 
To varying degrees, the non-Russian republics also have an 



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MAKSUDOV & TAUBMAN □ 39 



industrial base, as well as a complete set of governmental and 
Other inMitiilions, including an administrative and policy appa- 
ratui — moft of this obtained, ironically enough, oourtety of 
Soviet poiver. 

Given these contrasts with 1917, it b not surprising that this 
time many of the non-Russian peoples are demanding not just 

autonomy within a larger Russian state but full independence. 
But the reactions of the imperial center and oi Russian national- 
ists are ditierent, too. As oi January 1991, the central govern- 
ment in Moscow was stronger than the 1917 IVovisional 
Government—- and it remains fiercely opposed to reconstituting 
the USSR on a narrowly confederal ba^, let alone to presiding 
over the breakup of the USSR. Today's Russian nationalism 
presents an even sharper contrast with that of 1917. 

Liberal Russians still championed empire in 1917. C>ompare 
Paul Milyukov, tor example, the leader of the Constitutional 
Democrats, who refused to renounce tsarist war aims, with Boris 
Yeltsin, whose newfound liberalism seemingly extends to offer- 
ing autoncMny to non-Russians within the RSFSR. £v€n Solzhe- 
nitsyn's conservative brand of Russian nationalism stops £ur 
short of Milyukov's imperial reach, since Solzhenitsyn would 
include "only" the RSFSR, the Ukraine, and Belorussia (along 
with parts of Kazakhstan) in a new Russian state. 

Of all the difierences between 1917 and the present, this 
rise of a small-Russian, nonimperial nationalism is particularly 
im portant, as it poses the prospect, for the first time in history, of 
a Russian nation-state that would not at the same time be an 
empire. 

But the habit of empire (which, as we have said, extends back 

to the verv dawn of the Russian state) dies hard. l o judge bv the 
electoral results of 1989 and 1990, most Russians are wearv ()f 
empire and are inclined to support those wlio urge emulating 
the West European example of cultivating democracy at home. 
But how deep does such feeling go? And how long b it likely to 
last, especially as the economic crisis that grips the nation 
worsens?** 

For the moment, the three pHlars of empire may have given 
way to new combinations: Gorbacliev's trinity amounts to social- 



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40 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

ism, a strong center, and strong republics; radicals champion 
liberalism, democracy, and independence. But ivaidng in the 
wings are new imperial combinations, such as omservative Rus- 
sian nationalists' orthodoxy, authoritarianism, and nationality, 
and the ominous slogan that produced a burst of applause at the 
fh^ session of the USSR Supreme Soviet in 1989 — ^homdand, 
great power, and communism. 

Millions of Russian settlers currently live in non-Russian 
republics. By their very presence there, they keep the possibility 
of empire alive. And if and when they come streaming home, 
telling tales of abuse and rejecticm by formerly sul^ect nation- 
alities, they could spark a new round of Rusnan chauvinism. One 
reason Russians have grown less chauvinist than non-Russians is 
that whereas the latter blame the Russians for their nations* 
plight, Russians have no one except themselves (and, of course, 
communists and Jews) to blame for theirs. Once they start blam- 
ing non-Russians, the results could conceivably be national and 
ethnic strife on a vast scale, even spilling across Soviet borders 
into £urope or the Middle East. 

That brings us back to Western attitudes and reactions. 
During the decades since 1917, the natkm-state has been ac- 
cepted, even escalted, as the normal form of political organization 
in the world. This has created powerful incentives for almost any 
group to call itself a nation and to claim its own state. If the West 
has been paying more attention to Russian-non-Russian rela- 
tions this time than it did in 1917, and has looked with greater 
sympathy on ncm-Russian causes, that is largely the result of the 
new legitimacy of national self-determination. 

But two other sorts of considerations (one new and the other 
very okl) cut the other way. The new foctor is the West's in- 
creased commitment to individual human rights. As the non- 
Russian nations begin to break free of Soviet imperial rule, they 
may (or may not) receive Western sympathy. But when they 
begin to war with each other, and to slaughter ethnic minorities 
within their own borders, even onetime anti-Soviet Westerners 
begin to wax nostalgic for the former Fax Sovietica. 

States have traditionally been mare concerned with geo- 
political stability than with human rights. Hence the nineteenth- 



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MAKSUDOV & TAUBMAN □ 41 



century Western interest in balancing the Russian and Ottoman 
empires. Hence the West's preference for White Russians over 
non-Russiaiis during the post- 1917 dvil war, and its deference to 
Stalin and his successors at the expense of their suhject nation- 
alities. The prospect today of a bloody breakup of the USSR 
largely accounts for the West's continuing attachment to a stable, 
unified (it not necessarily unitarv) Soviet stale. But in our \iew, 
such a state is no longer a real option. Force is probahh the only 
way to arrest the unraveling of the USSR, but force itself will 
bring on the very dvfl war it is supposed to prevent, while 
offering no incentive to solve the economic crisis that underlies 
much of the ethnic unrest 

If a viable, stable, postconununist Soviet Unkm is ever to 
exist, we believe that the republic govemments will have to recon- 
stitute it voluntarily. If we are right, then a concern with stability, 
as well as with national self-determination, suggests that the West 
reach out to support and influence all the peoples of the former 
Soviet empire, Russians and non-Russians alike. Too often in the 
past, under both tsars and Soviets, the West has rejected empire 
while at the same time treating with the imperiaUsts. At times* 
this approach may have been necessary. Today, all the nuyor 
peoples living on Soviet territory should become subjects of U.S. 
{X)licy, which should encourage them aU to coexist peacefully. 
Not onlv their future but ours hinges in large part on how 
Russians and non-Russians get along. 

NOTES 

The authors mould like to thank Peter Czap, Stephen Jones, and Jane A. Taubmm f&r 
tkeir helpful suggestions, arui partkipaiits im Iki C€UHal m fmgm Rtiafimu lym 

1. For examples of previous siudies, see Adam Ulam, "Russian Nauonalism," 

in Seiveryn Bialer, ed., ThePmutHe Cmtmd tfS&uktFlifmgn Policy (Boulder, 
Colo.: W enview Frets, 1981), pp. S-18; Jeremy Aznd, *The 'NarionaKty 
ftobfem' in the USSR," in the same volume, pp. 1S9-154; Robert Con- 
quest, ed.. The Last Empire: Nationality and the Sainet Future (Stanford, Calif.: 

Stanford University Press, 1986); and S. Enders Wimbiish. ed.. Sm'iet 
\ationalitm m Slralc^ir Perspective (New York: St. Marlin s hcss, 1985). 

2. William SaTire refers to the US6R as the Russian empire under a new name 
in hk ATfw r«r* ciAinm "^ce die Bakks U^^ 



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42 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



A27. Solzhenitsyn's latest tract appears in Lileralumaya gazeta, September 
18, 1990, pp. 3-6. 

3. See Soman Szporiuk, *Tlie Imperial legacy and the Soviet Natw 
frckkm," in Lubomyr Hsgda and Mark Bessinger, eds.. 71* NtOtaudUia 
flaetmrmSmfiHPdilksandSocielfCBow^ 1990), pp. 
2-3. English renders both nuM and mntiiUi as "Russian.*' 

4. The northern Caucasus area, which Soliheiutsyn also would retain, be- 
came part of Russia in the nineteenth century. 

5. V. O. Kliuchevskii. Kurs russkoi istorii, vol. 1 (Moscow: Mysl, 1987), p. 61. 

6. However, "identitv," which sometimes can get fairlv close to nationality, 
did. On this see John A. Armstrong. S'alioris Before NaUonaUsm (Chapel Hill, 
N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). 

7. Aca>rdiiig to KUuchevskiis calculations, only 33 percent of a late-six- 
teendwsentury listing of 980 noble fimiifo 

ground: 24 percent were from Western Slavic fiooBilies (Ukrainians, 
Bekirussians, Mes) and Uthuanians; 25 pensent were Gennans and other 
West Europeans; 17 peroent were Tatars and others from the Volga 

region; and 1 percent were of unknown descent. See V. O. Kliuchevskii, 
Kurs nmkoi istorii. vol. 2 (Moscow: Mysl, 1988), p. 193. 

8. The Cossacks came in several varieties. Cossacks from the Don and the 
Urals were a separate group but part of the Russian population. 
Zaporozhe Cossacks played a key role in the formation of the Ukraine, 
constitutnig its military diie and entering into the Ukrainian nobiUty. 

9. This comment appears in Kail Marx and FHedridi Engels, Sobmme 
sodmimm, ¥oL 16, pL 2, p. 6. Stalin's opinion, rendered in his article **0 
stat'e Engelsa, 'Vneshiaia politika russkogo tsarisma,* " first appeared in 
Bolshei'ik, no. 9 (1941), p. 2, and is reprinted in SSSR: Vnutmmie pm- 
tii'orechiia, no. 15 (1986). p. 247. 

10. See Ceorge F. Kennan, Tfw Marquus de Ciistine and His Russia in 1839 
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 74—75. 

1 1 . Barbara J elavich, St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Poftign Policf, 
1814-1974 (Bkwmington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1974), p. 99. 

12. Ibid., p. 83; and Rniz Kazemzadeh, 'T^nssia and the Middle East," in Ivo J. 
Lederer, ed. , Russian FofttgnFolky (New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 
1962), pp. 490-492. 

13. See Jelavich, St. PekfAwrg and Mioscaai, p. 189. 

14. Ibid., p. 143. 

15. See John Lewis Caddis, Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States: An 
Interpretive History (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978), pp. 29, 41-46. 

16. See Leopold Haimson^niieFtoblem of Social Staba^ 
1905-1917," with comments by Arthtur P. Mendel and Theodore H. Von 
Laue, in SUtok Review (December 1964), pp. 619-644, and Skmc Btaiem 
(March 1965). pp. 1-56. 

17. Sergei Witte, Vospominaniia, vol. 3 (Moscow. 1960). pp. 273-274. 

18. Istoriiavneshei poUtiki SSSR, 1917-1945 (Moscow: Politizdat. 1970). p. 21 1. 

19. For a short summarv of this period, see Bohdan Xahavlo and \'ictor 
Swoboda, Sonnet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem m the USSR 
(New York: Ree Fkcss. 1990), pp. 14-59. 



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MAKSUDOV & TAUBMAN □ 43 



20. V. I. Lenin, CoUecUd Works, vol. 28, 4th ed. (Moscow: Progress Publishers. 
1965) p. 225. 

21. fbhMfk>mASmJbodai,SaimtDhuiikm,p,47, 

22. Sec Richard Pipes, TkfPmwmHm tfihe Saaiei Unkm: Cnmrnuwitm amdNmUmt- 

aksm, 1917-1923 (New York: Atheneum. 1968), pp. 19S-84I. esp. pp. 
216-217. Also see Nahaylo and Swoboda, Soviet Disunion, pp. 46—47. 

23. See Robert Conquest. Hanrst of Sorrow: Sot'W'/ Collectivization and the Terror- 
Famnie (New ^'ork: Oxford I niversity Press. 1986), pp. 299-307: and 
Sergei .\Iaksiul(»\ . Poten nmelemia SSSR (Benson, Vt.: Chalidze Publica- 
lions, 1989), pp. 159-169. 

24. The oootervative Rinaian natinnalist journal Mahdaia fixmiwi has af- 
firmed that ""seven or eight tenths of the whole Russian empire . . . was 
opened up and muted fay the herok, sdfless, highly professional work of 
the Russian peasant. ... A second means of Russian-ttjrle colonization was 
the voluntary adhesion to Russia ot w hole countries such as the Ukraine 
and Georgia. " See Vera Briusova. ".\re the Russians to Blame lor Every- 
thing?" in Moiodaia gvardzta, no. 5 (1990), p. 249. 



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3 



TOIALITARIAN COLLAPSE, IMPERIAL 
DISINTEGRATION, AND THE 

RISE OF THE SOVIET WEST: 
IMPUGATIONS FOR THE WEST 

Alexander J. Molyl 

Contrary lo widespread perceptions, the nations of the Soviet 
U nion are not so much reawakening as they are being awakened. 
They are asserting themsdves, even to the point of punuing 
independence, because perestroika has compelled them to do so. 
Ironically, therefore, none other than Mikhail Sergeevidi Gor- 
bachev, a self-styled proletarian internationalist par excellence, 
must be considered the father of nationalism in the USSR. 

Thanks i() Gorbachev, not only is the Soviet totalitarian state 
disintegrating — a fact that can only be welcomed — but it is doing 
so chaotically — a develoj)nient that siiould be cause for alarm. It 
is to Gorbachev's credit that he destroyed totalitarianism; it is, 
alas, to his disrepute that he did so in a manner that wiU have 
severe repercussions both for the USSR's successor states and for 
the fledf^g democracies of Eastern Europe, as well as for 
Western Europe and the United States. 

The collapse of totalitarianism has transformed the Sovi- 
ctized nations into the most viable vehicles of sociopolitical oppo- 
sition and, thus, into the best hope for post-Soviet consolidation. 
At the same time, the uncontrolled nature of this collapse will 
confront these nations with insuperable difficulties that can but 
abort their efforts at eoonomk: and political revival Whatever the 
exact form that the emiiing political and economic disarray will 
take, other states— 4n particular, those of Eun^ and North 
America — will feel its effects in at least three ways. The in- 
capacity of the post-Soviet republics to halt ecological decline 
will undermine their ability to address environmental issues 

44 

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MOTYL □ 45 

effec tively. Waves of refugees from the tontinuing chaos of the 
post-Soviet states will assault their borders and soreK test their 
oommitment to human rights. And as political instability engulfs 
the republks and omfronts the West with painful choices that 
erode its hopes for unity, their security will be threatened. As I 
suggest below, the West %vould do well to forestall such a dismal 
future before euphoria over the end of the CoM War becomes 
despair over the enormous costs perestroika has imposed on the 
world. 

D£ rOTALiZlNG THE SOVIET S l A l E 

In 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev assumed the mantle of gen- 
eral secretary of the Communist Birty, the totalitarian Soviet 

state monopolized all the public space civil society generally 
occupies in democratic countries. It was still very much in charge 
in 1987—1988, when independent political, social, and religious 
groupings began emerging throughout the Soviet Union. Since 
then, however, literally everything has changed. The formerly 
Leviathan state has shriveled, and it has done so ivith breath- 
taking rapidity. 

Several factors deserve special attention in explaining the 
collapse of Soviet totalitarianism. First, by destroyinjj; Soviet ide- 
ology and values, rampant gl.isnosi eftectivelv transformed the 
Soviet Union into a criminal state. Not surprisinglv, close investi- 
gation of the all too many blank spots in Soviet history led to 
repudiation of the entire Soviet experience. As revelations of 
Stalinist and pott-Stalinist crimes against humanity came to 
lig^t— culminating in the discovery of numeroiu mass graves 
containing the mutilated remains of countless workers, peasants, 
and other "bourgeois enemies of the people" — most Soviet citi- 
zens logically concluded that dieir regime was liltle difierent 
from that of Hitler. 

Second, Gorbachev's haphazard economic reforms and as- 
sault on the system's only stable political institution — the party — 
threw the economy into chaos. After all, the command economy 
functioned, albeit inefficiently, as long as the central bureauc- 
racies determined inputs and outputs and the party possessed 



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46 □ THE iOSE OF NATIONS 

the authority to implement their decisions and, thus, to com- 
mand. Once the powen of central ministries were curtailed and 
the authority of the party was eroded, while little was done to 
introduce genuine market mechanisms, the Soviet economy was 
left with the worst aspects of two competing economic ap- 
p roaches : neither capitalist nor socialist, it could but decay to the 
point of collapse. 

Third. Gorbachev's attempt to create new poHtical institu- 
tions under these conditions was certain to result in failure. The 
quasi-representadve bodies — the Congress of People's Deputies, 
the revamped Supreme Soviet, the presidency--€ould not possi- 
bly assert their authority and establish their legitimacy in drciwi- 
stances of extreme discord and economic decline. Indeed, 
Gorbachev's own transformation into an unpopular dictator is 
the inevitable consequence of his tinkering with totalitarian poli- 
tics and economics. 

Fourth, Gorbachev's willingness to tolerate the emergence 
of political oppositions amid systemic collapse provided them 
with the very ideological, economic and poKtiral ammunsdon 
they needed to assert themselves above the institutions he had 
created and those, such as the party, he had weakened. More- 
over, the loosening of the party's control over its republican 
branches left them defenseless against criticism from below, thus 
forcing them to be responsive to their ethnic constituencies, to 
adopt increasingly nationalist positions, and, fmally, to forge 
infioomal coalitions with repubtican popular fronts against the 
center. 

Two errors— one tactical, the other strategic— account for 
the chaotic character of Gorbachev's brand of detotalizatkm. The 
first involves, as he himself has admitted, gross mistakes in pol- 
icy. Gorbachev u hollv underestimated, among many factors, the 
immense unpopularity of the Communist Party and the extent 
of national discontent in the republics. As a result, his endorse- 
ment of glasnost opened a veritable Pandora s box that quickly 
transformed the Soviet dtiieiUT's insatiable thirst for knowledge 
of their past and present into a weapon not of the state, but of 
society against the state. Glasnost, quite simply, thoroughly dele- 
gitimized the party and exposed tlw Soviet Umon as an empire. 



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MOi YL □ 47 



Gorbachev s second error, which greatly compounded the 
fint, was to embark on radical reform while consolidating power, 
a strategic miscalculation that enmeshed his polidet in a pair of 
fatal contradictions. Attempting to pursue reform and power 
simultaneously, and thereby repudiating the traditional pattern 
of Soviet succession dynamics, guaranteed failure on both 
counts. Thus, Gorbachev's struggle against the party negated 
the possibilitv of real reform, as onlv the ()ariv was in a position to 
change the s\stem in a stable and predictable manner. Gor- 
bache\ 's pursuit of radical reform, meanwhile, made it impos- 
sible for him to consolidate control of the party without 
destroying its authority in the process. In the end, reform could 
but fail, while the party, the country's only efl ecrive political 
institution for dose to 70 years, could but decay. Without the 
partv, Gorbachev's own authority could not extend beyond the 
Kremlin's walls; without reform, new institutions could not be 
created, and his legitimacy perforce went into steep decline. 

Worse still. C>orbachev also left himself dangerously vulner- 
able to attacks from those of his opponents ensconced in the very 
party and state institutions he was attempting to transform. Not 
surprisingly, such vulnerability repeatedly induced Gorbadiev 
to deny that the deleterious consequences of poorly conceived 
fx>licies were unintended and, thus, compelled him to embrace 
developments that were manifestly harmful to pereslroika. An 
excellent example of Ciorbachev's unwillingness to distinguish 
publicly between tactically expedient actions that ouitlank. politi- 
cal opponents and strategically suicidal moves that undermine 
systemic stability was his enthusiastic support of the miners* 
strikes of mid-1989. In hailing such popular initiadvcs, Gor- 
bachev undermined the country's ability to sustain itself and, 
consequently, to weather the radical l e foims promised by 
perestroika. 

The result of Gorbachev's miscalculations is that the detotal- 
ization of the Soviet system — a hopeful development that must 
be welcomed — has occurred chaotically, a dreadful process that 
cannot be. Such slikkimosi, a Russian word that fiiUy captures the 
unoontroUed character of Gorbachev's misrule, was not inevita- 
ble. Although the experience of other communist states suggests 



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48 □ TH£ RISE OF NATIONS 



that totalitarian systems may not be reformable and that their 
coUapte may be inevitable once refotm is initiated, it also illus- 
trates that chaos it aivoidable if the process of deinfaiiiation is 
extended and ddiberate. The examjdes of Hungary and China 
shofur that substantial sectors of the eoooomy can undergo de- 
totalization in advance of the polity's decay, while that of Poland 
suggests the possibility of the emergence of a nascent civil soci- 
ety. Nonchaoiic detotalization may not save communist states 
from doom, but it does facilitate the p>ostcommunist transition to 
democracy and the market by contributing to the creation of the 
rudimentary sodaL political, and economic institutions that 
serve as the base on whkh genuine dvil sodeties can be con- 
structed. To be sure, even the stable, autonomous, and sodaDy 
cohesive institutions that healthy civil sodeties provide do not 
guarantee functionini^ democracies and effecti\c markets. Nev- 
ertheless, they are a necessary condition of both. Such institutions 
act as intermediaries between dtizens and tiie state — ^without 
which democrades cannol function— and as the guarantee of 
private property and private enterprise— without which markets 
ai« impossd)le. In contrast, while chaotic detotaUzatkm does not 
exdudte the eventual creation of dvil sodety, it does make the 
process immensely more difficult. As a resuk, despite the enor- 
mous challenges conf ronting Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hun- 
garv, their experience with prolonged detotalization provides 
them with an immeasurable kad on the post-Soviet republics, 
Romania, and Bulgaria. 

THE EMERGING QUEST FOR SOVEREIGNTY 

One of the wholly unexpected consequences of pell-meD detotal- 
ization has been the remarkably rapid collapse ot the USSR's 
East European empire. Although it may be true that Gorbachev 
and his advisors understood that Soviet hegemony in Poland, 
Czechoftiovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, and Bul- 
garia was coming to an end, they cannot possibly have desired 
the ignominious denouement that occurred in late 1989. And 
yet, sudi an end was inevitable as imcontroOed detotaUiatson 
severdy delimited the USSR^ capacity to project power beyond 



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MOTYL □ 49 



its borders. Once the illegitiinaie East European sati ci})s were 
severed from their lord in Moscow, it was only a matter oi time 
before popular oppositkxis led by determined elites and fre- 
quently chariimatir leaders would oust them. 

The collapse of communism in the countries of Eastern 
Europe presages the future of the Soviet republics, as wefl. 
Politic al, economic, social, and ideological chaos has created op- 
portunities tor national oppositions to emerge; f urthermore, it 
has literally iorced the republics to turn inward as their only 
defense against a collapsing political and socioeconomic order. 
The universal nish to sovereignty of aU Union republics* several 
autxinoaious republics, some regions, and even a few dtie^ 
result not of political culture or of nationalist inclinations— after 
all, how could it be if even the Chukchi have declared sover- 
eigntv? — and it is hardlv "mindless," as Gorbachev wcjuld have 
the West believe. Quite the contrary, the quest tor sovereigntv is 
the direct result of perestroika. Gorbachev's inability to trans- 
fisrm a totalitarian state in an orderly fashion has csompeUed 
republics and other administrative units to act in aoooidanoe 
with their interests and, quite rationally, to seek refuge in inde- 
pendence. Swiss bankers would behave no differendy. They, too, 
would have no alternative if they wished to survive in the post- 
perestroika USSR. 

Three other factors have galvanized the quest lor sover- 
eignty. First, the collapse of Soviet ideology has created an ideo- 
fegical vacuum that ethnicity and religion, two sources of 
meaning that managed to survive totalitarian assaults relatively 
intact, nished to fin. They were especially attractive as substitute 
systems of meaning, inasmuch as the core of the discredited 
ideologv consisted of an anational entitv called tlie Soviet people 
who, of course, were tundamentally atheist. 

Second, Lenin's policy of creating titular republics endowed 
with symbolically sovereign statehood actually laid the institu- 
tional grounds for opposition to the center. Like the East Euro- 
pean peopfe's democrades, the Soviet republics possessed all the 
trappings of sovereignty, including kxal bureaucracies, plan- 
ning organs, foreign ministries, and republican parties, while 
Belorussia and the Ukraine also were members of a host of 



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50 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



internaiionai bodies. Once the opportunity to fill these forms 
with appropriate national content presented itseif, the republics 
were fully equipped to aa acooidingly. 

Finally, the dccades-kmg Soviet penecutk» of non-Rusiian 
diawdenti, who r ep r eic nted the vast nuyority of all Soviet polid« 
cal prisoners, transformed mere defenders of language and 
culture into ai clcni nationalists determined to save their nations 
by divorcing them from the imperial center. Moreover, bv incar- 
cerating the dissidents in concentration camps, Moscow effec- 
tively helped these nationalists f<Nrge transrepublican alliances 
and lefine their anti-So¥iet programs, whik by releasing them in 
1986-1987, it set loose a determined and ofganiied opposition 
elite on the weakened Soviet body politic. 

Because detotalization has spun out of control, Gorbachev 
has fmallv succeeded in creating a situation that is truly irrevers- 
ible. As a result, imperial collapse, the direct consequence of 
detotalization, can but reach its logical conclusion: some form of 
independence for all the republics. A pan-Soviet societal con- 
sensus is no longer within reach, as lodal animosities cannot 
possibly be overcome in the near future. An aU-Unkm economy 
cannot be revived without aooelerating centrifi;^ forces: a 
return to the command economy is institutionally impossible, 
doing nothing would be disastrous, while marketization — in con- 
trast to a tunttioning market — would onlv drive the republics 
further apart. All that is left to hold the Union together is 
coercion, and as Eduard Shevardnadze's resignation as foreign 
minister and the halfhearted crackdown in Vilnius and Riga 
indicate, Gorbachev fully understands that the president's only 
remaining allies are the forces of law and order.** But even 
coercion can no longer do the trick. A crackdown would be 
unlikely to succeed for two reasons. First, there is evidence to 
suggest that the KGB, the militarv, and especially the police are 
beginnini^ to f ragment along republican lines. Second, and more 
important, the degree of anti-Soviet, anticommunist, and anti- 
imperial sentiment in the non-Russian republics, as wdl as in 
Russia itself , is so intense that the inevitable resuk of a araduiown 
wouU be a massive dvil war that the forces of a declining center 
could not win. For better or for worse, the time to have cracked 



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MOTYL □ 51 

down successfully was no later than 1989. Indeed, one suspects 
that even the military and the KGB must recognize that a coun- 
trywide Tiananmen is no longer in the cards. 

STATE-BUILDING AFTER DETOTALIZATION 

The post-Soviet republics will have to confront the disastrous 
legal \ ot decades of communism, and thev w ill have to do so 
without the beneiltot strong civil societies, stable political institu- 
dons, and experienced elites. A comparison with postcolonial 
Moounbique and Angola is instrucuve. There, too, imperial 
collapse Irft the nadve populations bereft of resources and fac- 
ing staggering problems. But unlike the Sovietized nations, 
which had been traumatized by decades of totalitarian rule, 
Mozambique and Angola did not face the task ol ci eating market 
economies and civil societies tvom scratch. In this sense, their 
problems, however immense, were fewer and somewhat less 
complex. Clearly, the fact that both countries are still among the 
poorest in the world and are still embroiled in dvil wars— condi- 
tions that obviously are also related to their underdevelop- 
ment— does not bode well for the future of the post-Soviet 
republics. 

A glance at the former Kast German v mav also be worth- 
while. 1 he transition to democracy and capitalism in East Ger- 
many, a countr\ once routinely touted as socialism's success 
Story, is taking place under conditions that cannot be repeated in 
Eastern Europe or in the post-Soviet republics. Even East Ger- 
many's reimification with West Germany may or may not ensure 
that the billions of dollars to be pumped in anntially will raise its 
socioeconomic level to one approximating that of the VV^est. 
Needless to sav. neither political annexation, military occupa- 
tion, nor such massi\ e economic aid is likely to be forthcoming in 
the case of the post-Soviet republics. 

Nevertheless, although the future of the republics looks 
bleak, grounds for some optimism remai n esp ecially in light of 
the utter impotsibility of the Soviet Union's revival. In contrast to 
any version of the fragmented Union — ^which cannot reestablish 
societal consensus, build dvil society, or acquire stable political 



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52 □ TH£ RIS£ OF NATIONS 



institutions, tor the reasons adduced above — the republics have 
one enormous asset enabling them to embark on all three tasks. 
Quite simply, they are the titular homelaiKis of particular na- 
tkms, and just as the upheavab in Eastern Europe were part and 
parcel of national revivals, likewise only the Sovietized nations 
can save the p)ost-Soviet republics. 

The nations can do so bv serving as readv-made vehicles of 
consensus, civil society, and political stabilitv. Thus, inasmuch as 
national identity is rooted in a sense oi national community, it 
automatically provides for a certain amount of societal cohesion. 
By the same token, national tradidons — be they religious, polid- 
cal, or exclusively cultural— can under|mi the institutions of an 
emergent dvU society. Finally, national fronts, which enjoy wide- 
spread legitimacy in all the republics, can endow the poKtical 
arena with stabilitv, as well as generate some of the institutions 
that must come to populate it. Consequently, if stable transitions 
to democracy and the market are ever to occur in the former 
USSR, they can — but need not — occur only in the republics. 

They need not do so precisely because the nation and the 
institutions it generates can be double-edged swords. Thus, the 
republics, qua republics, like some of the countries of Eastern 
Europe, face at least two daunting dilemmas. The fact that 
distinctlv national movements form the base on which multi- 
ethnic ci\ il societies must emerge may lead to conflict and com- 
petition among ethnic majorities and minorities preciselv at a 
time when ethnic peace is a sine qua non of the building of civil 
sodety. At present, the democratic leaders of national move- 
ments, such as the Lithuanian Sstjudis or the Ulunainian Rukh, 
have managed to inoorporate ethnic minorities into majority 
movements. It is not too diliicuk to imagine their replacement 
with less effective or less restrained individuals. Nor is it unlikely 
that continued social, political, and economic chaos will increase 
interethnic strains and conflicts. 

Second, pell-mell detotalization has suddenly cast republi- 
can popular fronts in roles — as political parties and state- 
builders — for which they are singularly unprepared. Social 
movements are excellent vefaides of popular mobilization or of 
single-issue politics. Ever)day politics, on the other hand, re- 



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MOTYL □ 53 



quires protessional organizations and nonpartisan institiitions 
that can act as channels for a variety of political ibrces. Popular 
fronts are ideaUy equipped to provide the impetus Ibr such 
insdtutkms, but unless they eventually dissolve, they can also 
become barrien to the effectiveness of these same institutions. 
The role of Solidarity in postoommunist Poland may be instruc- 
tive in lliis ic'i^ard. 

To c om plic ate matters, just as republics have few slal)le 
social and pc^litical institutions, so, too, they lack seasoned and 
credible political elites. On the one hand, in the post-Soviet 
republks, as in the East European countries, the ongoing decline 
of communist parties will eventually result in the call for ptu^pes, 
retribution, and triab of particulariy egregious offenders. De^ 
communization, like de-Nazification, may be morally justified, 
indeed necessar\ ; vet it is likelv to have the most serious conse- 
quences lor republican political and economic systems. After all, 
it is bv and large only the communists who possess the bureau- 
cratic skills needed to run complex polities and economies. Their 
removal, hoivever understandable, will both increase social ten- 
sions and imilermine the effective wcMrking of fledgling political 
systems. On the other hand, not only do most of the writers in 
charge of popular fronts have no idea of how to create market 
economies (for which they cannot be faulted, as Western econo- 
mists are at no less a loss), but the policies thev pursue in attempt- 
ing to make transitions to market systems are likely to result in so 
much suffering as to tmdermine their own political status. 
Tripie-digit inflation and tmemployment of over 50 percent 
are a recipe for political disaster, especially for imtrained and 

Under conditions such as these, when weak elites must make 
extravagant promises in the t.ice of virtually insoluble problems, 
the lempiation for unscrupulous and disloyal oppositions — be 
they communists, soldiers, fascists, Nazis, or others — to subvert 
the democratic process is virtually irresistible. Even if this worst- 
case scenario does not come to pass, the postoommunist cliies of 
the Sovietized republics— or, fbr that matter, of Boland, Hun- 
gary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria— almost certainly 
win be imaUe to cope with perestroika's deadly consequences. 



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54 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



Ungovernability, political deadlock, and a return to the maxi- 
malist pditics of the interwar period are likely to result— but with 
one eiKinnous difference. Tbb time, the political in^^ 
and instalnlity wiU be played out on the wreckage of a totalitarian 

system, whose economic, political, and ideological pathologies 
will haunt the postcommunist states for decades to come. 

ISSUES FOR THE WEST IN THE POST-SOVIE I ERA 

The repuUics of the Soviet West— Esttmia, Latvia, Lithuania, 
Bekmissia, Moldova, and the Ukraine— will have a signifkant 

impact on Eastern Europe, Western turopc, and the United 
Stales because of one overriding factor, geographic proximity. 
Simply put, the Soviet West is about to become the West's back- 
yard. The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the removal <^ the Iron 
Curtain have ensured that something in the nature of a two- 
class European "common home"— one resembling the type of 
nineic'cnih-ccniurv chvelling occupied by haiUe bourgeoisie and 
Lumpenproletariat — will soon become a reality. 

Developments in the Soviet West will affect Western states 
for three addi t ional reasons. First, because the Baltic republics 
have a special relationship with the United States, which has 
never recognized their incorporation into the USSR, while the 
Ukrainians and Belorussians have seats in the United Nations 
and other international forums, these nations will increasingly 
voice their grievances, make demands, and curry favor on the 
world arena. By insinuadng themselves into the diplomatic 
agenda of the international system of states, they will eventually 
become players, even if minor ones, in a particularly sensitive 
part of the worid. 

Second, virtually identical economic systems, common eco- 
nomic problems, and a shared cultural and historical legacy 
suggest that a new Eastern Europe, incorp>orating Poland, Hun- 
gary, Czechoslovakia, Bekmissia, the Ukraine, and lithuania, 
wiU emerge m the near future. As problems of postcommunist 
and post-Soviet development wiU be common to all these states, 
the West win no longer be able to formulate one set of policies for 



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MOTYL □ 55 



Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and another tor the 
republics. 

Finally, most of the republic s o{ the Soviet West have sizable 
and vocal diasporas in Western £urope, the United States, and 
Canada, while afl have dose ties with ethnic cousins in Eastern 
Europe. Although emigre influence on policymaking has his- 
torically been minimal — with the obvious exception of that 
exercised by American Jewrv — it is likelv to increase as the post- 
Soviet republics become more important policy issues ior 
the West. 

Because the West cannot possibly isolate itself from the 
Soiviet West, the latter^s problems— and they promise to be 
many — will be our proUems. First on the short list is eoobgy. 
Environmental destruction in the region will continue unabated 

for manv vears, if only because Eastern Kurope must increase its 
reliance on "dirty" coal reserves and unsafe local nuclear energy 
facilities since Moscow raised its price of oil to world levels in 
1991. Western Europe will not be able to ignore such devastation 
because closer economic ties and transportation links will expose 
more of the West to the East's pollution, while heightened con- 
cern about ecological issues will be frustrated at a time when it is 
assuming the exalted status of dogma in West European political 
disccHirse. Another Chernobvl — a possibiliiN thai should not f)e 
discounted — would quickK f orce ifie European Economic Com- 
munity (££C) and the United States to take an immediate inter- 
est in the environmental affairs of the East. 

The extreme likelihood that both Eastern Europe and the 
Soviet West wiU sink to the levd of economkally marginal cou 
tries win lead to massive unemployment and social dislocations, 
and will undermine political stabilit\. I he innnediate conse- 
quence of such developments will f^e emigration. As millions of 
ref ugees flee westward, Western Europe, the L iiiied States, and 
Canada will have no choice, short of reraising the iron Curtain, 
but to accept them. Absorbing millions of former Soviet dti- 
»ns ¥fill be internally disruptive, straining social welfare sys- 
tems, producing ethnic backlash, and even threatening the dem- 
ocratic consensus. Rejecting them, however, wfll not only be a 
crass repudiation of human rights and, indeed, of everything 



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56 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

that the West claims to stand for; it will also be externally disrup- 
tive, pudiing the republics of the Soviet West even deeper into 
misery. 

Most of the dilenunas of Western Europe are likely to be the 
dilemmas of the United States, as weU, only more so. Unlike the 

West Europeans, who have never made human rights a funda- 
nicnial part of their foreign policies, Americans will face some 
wrenching moral choices that will test the depth of their commit- 
ment to human rights. Just as Washington's insistence that the 
USSR permit Soviet Jews freely to emigrate resulted in a closed- 
door policy once the Kremlin did just that, when millions of non- 
Jewish economic and political refugees n o doubt including 
thousands of communist criminals and their coOaborators— ask 
to be admitted, the United States will either have to abandon its 
moral stance or pc rniit millions of East Europeans to immigrate, 
at a time of growing social tensions and economic stringency at 
home. 

As disturbing as environmental destruction and refugees 
are likely to be, the greatest source of difficulty for Eastern 
Europe, Western Eiuope, amd the United States b the h^ 
probability of prolonged political inttability in the postoommu- 
nist states of the Soviet West. Bciland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, 
and a Romania enjoying increasingly close ties with Moldova 
would be affected immediately, especially as they are already 
engaged in seemingly intractable disputes over ethnic minorities. 
It does not, alas, strain the imagination to conceive of the entire 
region's reverting to interwar animosities, border conflicts, and 
military buildups, with the breakdown of democracies in the 
Soviet West leading to the breakdown of postcommunist de- 
mocracies in Eastern Europe. Indeed, Vklav Havel's request in 
late 1990 for emergency powers may be a foretaste of things to 

come. 

Even more worrisome, if and when massive instability en- 
gulfs the East, it could undermine East- West security arrange- 
ments. One cannot discount the possibiUty that desperate 
republics may come into possession of nudear weapons, given 
that the western border districts are still home to a variety of 
Soviet military units and armaments. Equally terrifying is the 



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MOTYL □ 37 



prospect of Russia's reasserting its national honor or asserting its 
interests by means ot military expansion into the Baltics or the 
Ukraine. Finally, Western negotiations with what remains of the 
USSR over troop reductions and nuclear disarmament will be- 
come immensely more complicated if some five to ten additional 
actors demand a voice in the process. 

The Soviet West's inevitable liberation will thus be pro- 
foundly destabilizing for a West that does nothing to c ushion the 
shock. Whether Western Europe can survive as a coherent entity 
when confronted by such pitiable neighbors is a question well 
worth pondering, especiaUy in light of the proposition that the 
division of £iuope into two ideologically hostile, economically 
incompatible, and politically competing halves enjoying the pro- 
tection of hegemons may have been the necessary condition of 
the emergence of a unified Western Europe. If so, then the 
return to multipolaritv in Europe may mean that realist logic will 
reassert itself, that security issues will again come to the tore, and 
that Western Europe's economic and political unification will 
remain on paper— -especially if, as seems likely, turmoil and 
instability on Germany's eastern border draws it away from its 
EEC partners and involves it in the affairs of its iieighbors to the 
east. Of course, international values may have changed and 
in t erdep en dence may have grown to such a degree as to prevent 
the reassertion ot raison d'etat over the moral imperatives of 
international community. But because Euro-optimism is such a 
recent phenomenon and follows, we dare not forget, a Euro- 
pessimism that seemed equally well-founded, it is at least plau- 
sible that the sentiments expressed in the Charter of Fsm are, 
perhaps, Fsuic^ossian. 

Security will pose the greatest dilemma for the United 
States, the end of the Cold War, the United States has 
emerged as the world's only genuine superpower, a role for 
which this countrv is. understandably, utterly unprepared. As 
the American invoK ement in the Persian Gulf suggests, the logic 
of "unipolarity'' may force the United States to become the 
world's sole policeman. Political instability or civil war in the 
USSR's successor states— be they in the West, the Caucasus, or 
Central Asiar-inig^t require the United States not only to cx- 



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58 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

pend scarce resources in Western and Eastern Europe, but also 
to involve itself even more deeply in the precarious politics of the 
Mkklk East. The ''pace diwklciid'' is luilil^ 
increasiiigly anardik worid dominate by one genumely great, 
though apparently dediiung, power — the United States. 

WESTERN POLICY OBJECllVES 

Like it or not, developments in the p>ost-Soviet republics will 
affect Western Europe and the United States, indeed, as Europe 
increasingiy becomes a single continent, qpealdng of the East as if 
it yum remote and removed from the West will be imposnble. 
The question, there f ore, is not. Should the West get imolvcd in 
the problems of the post-Soviet republics? It is, rather, How and 
to what extent should the W^est ^et involved? What policies 
should il formulate to avert the impending dangers? 

The past offers little guidance, as Western policy toward the 
republics has been \irtually nonexistent, while Western interest 
in and knowledge of the regkm hawe been only maiginaUy less so. 
As Sergei Maksudov 8c William Taubman demonstnrte, except 
for Western intelligence support of the post-Worid War II un- 
dergrounds in Lithuania and the Ukraine, and Radio Liberty, 
BBC, and Deutsche Welle broadcasts to the region, the West has 
ahvavs preferred to deal with Moscow, be it as the center of 
tsarism or as the capital of the turst workers' state. Nazi Germany 
may have been the only exception to this rule, but its policy 
toward the non-Russians was both temporary and tacticaL 

Western policy towird Eastern Europe such as bridge- 
building— is equaDy unhelpful as a guide, insofisur as national 
diversity, increased democracy, and greater autonomy, which 
were the goals of bridge-building, are no longer at issue in the 
disintegrating empire that is today's I'SSR. Quite the contrary, 
the West has an immediate and overridmg interest: to minimize 
instability while recognizing that the empire cannot be revived. 
Such a pressing goal requires activist policies. Leaving the matter 
in Gorbachev's hands would surely lead to disaster, as the fate of 
the Soviet Union is too large m matter for the ruler of the Krenilin 
to determine on his own. 



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MOTYL □ 59 



In an ideal world of liiniilcss resources and limited con- 
straints, the West in general and the United States in particular 
would adopt some or all of the following measures: 

• lYessure Gorbachev to dissolve the Soviet L'nioii imme- 
diately and to replace it with a confederation of sovereign 
States. Gorbachev's insistence on a new Union treaty and his 
unwillingness to make a clean break with the past are only 
intensifying resentments, increasing polarization and radi- 
calization, and thereby virtually assuring that the break with 
Moscow, w hen it does come, will be as bloody as possible. 
Irbrcing Gorbachev's hand now, when he is relatively de- 
pendent on Western support, would immediately reduce 
tensions between and among republics and introduce a 
greater degree of clarity and sobriety into the ralnilations of 
republican political elites. The sooner they begin addressing 
their pressing problems, the better. The longer they wage a 
divisive national liberation struggle against Moscow, the 
greater the resource waste and the polarization ot society, 
the smaller the chances that they will succeed in directing 
popular energies at the resolution <rf concrete tasks, and the 
less likely that they will want to maintain even economic 
relations with a sovereign Russia. Only a confederation of 
post-Soviet states, perhaps even headed by a figurehead 
president residing in Moscow, lias an\ chance oi providing a 
workable structure for republican cooperation on a whole 
range of security, foreign policy, and economic issues. 

• immediatelv establish diplomatic relations with the repub- 
lics of the Soviet West, even if Gorbachev opposes the disso- 
lution of the USSR. If the price of such an intervention in 
Soviet affairs is Gorbachev's fall from power, then so be iL 
Surely it is high time for the West to realize that the USSR's 
current condition is the direct result of his policies. Besides, 
Boris Yeltsin, who supports republican sovereignty, would 
be most likelv to succeed (Gorbachev, and his overall stew- 
ardship could not be any worse than Gorbachev s. 

• Warn Moscow that the West will respond to the repression of 



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60 □ THE Ri&£ OF NATIONS 



republics and 'democrats" with dipioinatic and economic 
sanctions along the lines of those imposed on Iraq after 
iSaddam Husiein's invasion of Kuwait. Civil war in the Soviet 
Union must be avoided at all costs, and that means deter- 
ring the army and the KGB from embarking on some- 
thing as foolhardy and counterproductive as a countrywide 
Tiananmen. 

• Envelop the republics in as many supranational insdtutiDns 
as possible so as to provide them widi stable structures and 

values for dealing with their problems. This may mean 
membership in the International Monetary Fimd (IMF), and 
the World Bank, inclusion in the Conference on Security 
and Cooperation in £urope process, membership in the 
North Atlantic Treaty Oi^puiizatimi, observer status in the 
EEC, and so on. The cuct form of involvement is less 
important than the inchiskm of potentially unstable coun- 
tries in a stable institutional environment. If international 
norms are imposed on republican elites, there is at least a 
chance that thev will accept these strictures and avoid viola- 
tions of human rights, aggressive behavior, and the like. Bv 
the same token, by involving these nations in Western insti- 
tutions, the West would have a greater say in the formulation 
and implementatkm of their policies toward, say, ethnic 
minorities. 

In particular, insist that the United Nations, which has 
been revitalized as a result of the Persian Gulf crisis, play a 

prominent role in the affairs of these countries. United 
Nations assistance — technical, tinancial. and humanitar- 
ian — may have a stabilizing influence on the elites and pop- 
ulations in the region. Such involvement ^^umes, of course. 
United Nations membership for the Baltic states, Moldova, 
Russia, and other post-Soviet republics. 

• Encourage, if not indeed compel, all the countries of East- 
em Europe and the Soviet West to declare themselves nu- 
clear-free zones and to sign the Nudear Non-proliferation 
IVeaty, to maintain strict limits on the size of national 
armies, and to forswear ter rito rial claims on their neighbors. 



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MOIYL □ 6i 



In return, promise these countries technical, llnancial, or 
Other forms oi material assistance ior the rebuilding of their 
eoonoiiiKs. 

• Initiate a second Nureniberi^. at which the leacling repre- 
sentatives oi the former communist regimes and their col- 
laborators would stand trial and be sentenced for their 
crimet against humanity. Only the West has the moral au- 
thority and the political dout to engage in such a replay of 
history. Such an action is both moraUy imperative and politi- 
cally expedient, as it would depolitidze the issue of decoin- 

innnization bv internationalizing it. It would minimize the 
tli\ isi\eness that would result from local purges and blood- 
leiiing, and enhance the West's moral authority in the re- 
gion. 

• Finally, and most important, prov ide massive economic aid 
to the republics. If the democracies are not moved to em- 
bark on such a measure for the promotion ot human rights 
anddvil liberties, they should at least consider the sobering 
thought of having to live with ten Mozambique east of the 
Oder-Neisse line. Ultimately, only an economic recovery can 
stem the flood of refugees, stabilize governments, reduce 
ethnic tensions, and help fledgling democracies survive. 
The costs ot such a second .Marshall Plan would, ol course, 
be enormous, but they are unlikelv to be any higher than 
those incurred after the region explodes and costh crisis 
management becomes imperative. The cost of the Ameri- 
can intervention in the Persian Gulf may serve asa reminder 
of what peacekeeping in Eastern Europe might involve. 

Specifically, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Euro- 
pean Bank for Reconstruction and Development should 

provide financial help to all ilic republics, while the indus- 
trial democracies grouped in the Organization for Eco- 
nomic C Cooperation and Development should tunnel direct 
developmental assistance at least on the order of their cur- 
rent aid to the Third World. In no cuciunstances, however, 
should assistance be forthcoming to the crumbling imperial 
center in Moscow. Such moneys wiU inevitably be misused by 



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62 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



the central economic ministries, whiie merely prokxiguig 
the misery of a dying empire. £ither way. Western resources 
will be wasted. 

FIRST STEP: NO STEP 

Or course, the world is not ideal, and Western governments are 
certain not to respond in this manner. Such massive policy shifts 
as recommended above usually take place after, and not before, 
crises occur. An immediately tangible — the functiooal 
equivalent of an invasion of Kuwait or a blitzkrieg against Po- 
land—is usually the sufficient condition of pohcy revohitions, 
and the Soviet Union has not yet fidlen victim to a bloody dvil 
war. 

Can nothing, therefore, be done to prevent disaster from 
occurring? Ongoing efforts to help Eastern Europe, such as 
those initiated largely by the private sector, are for the most 
part confined to encouraging en tr e p r en eurship, training elites, 
and supporting the creation of social and polhical institutions. 
These are, of course, all worthwhile measures, but they wiU not 
produce significant results in the short term. Building civil soci- 
eties and stable polities will take decades, while the post-Soviet 
republics will have onlv vears to address their problems. Indeed, 
as Poland's recent political travails suggest, even wildly popular 
postcommunist governments may not have the wherewithal to 
survive economic shock therapy without lapsing into political 
demoralization. 

What, then, shoukl the West do? While it may be unwiDii^ 
to recognise Gorbachev's subjects as sovereign, surely the time 
has come for it to realize both that the emperor's realm is disin- 
tegrating' and that the West ma\ soon become the largest prop of 
his remaining authoritv. If accelerating imperial dissolution is a 
nonstarter for policymakers, then reverting to the kinds of poli- 
cies pursued prior to the Malta summit and doing absolutely 
wMng to preserve the emjMre is surely much easier. A/of provid- 
ing funds to the Moscow ministries that ruined the economy in 
the first place, noi dealing with as many Union institutions as 
possible, and nof bestowing prizes, honors, and the like upon its 



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MOTYL □ 63 



statesmen are policv measures that should appeal to the inertia 
oi government bureaucracies and that are cost-i ree and risk- 
free. It GOtts nothing to do nothing, and a man who has done to 
little to propd the Soviet Union onto the path of stable reform 
cannot posribly construe doing nothing as a provocatkm. Gor- 
bachev win bluster, of course, and he may even make some 
threats, but, as should be evident by now, the USSR's last em- 
peror, like Albert Camus's Etranger, can do litlle in the face of the 
benign indif ference of the universe. 



NOTE 

/ wish to thank G. P. Armstrong, Charles F. Furtado, Jr., John Halstead, Bohdan 
Harasymiu: Allan Kn^edan. MUhofl M nndtibaum, amdjenik Radon fmr tkm kdfjftd 
comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 



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4 

THE SOVIET SOUTH: NATIONALISM 
AND THE OUTSU>£ WORLD 

Ronald Grigor Suny 

History confounds through surprises and seemingly unpredict- 
able events. The unfamiliar is fofced upon the uninitiated, and 
obscure and distant places become objects of concern. What 
might be called the Sarajevo syndrome, anunantidpafeed conflict 

arising from ill-understood causes yet with unexpectedly far- 
reaching cftects, was evident in February 1988 when tens of 
thousands of Armenians stood in the central square of Ste- 
panakert, the district center of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous 
Oblaftt (NKAO) in Azerbaijan, and demanded merger with the 
Armenian republic. The initial demonstrations precipitated a 
massive response in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia, 
where hundreds of thousands marched through the streets; 
violent attacks on Anneniam followed in Sumgait in neig^borm 

Azerbaijan. 

A fateful vote bv the U)cal Karabakh soviet defying ottkial 
state policy and supporting the merger of Karabakh and the 
Armenian republic proved to be not an isolated and containable 
challengie, but the first sign that the fragile fabric of the Soviet 
Union was unraveling. The Gorbachev leadership %vas faced a 
few months later vnth the mobiKra tinti of the Baltic peoples, and 
one by one the nationalities of the USSR coalesced around sepa- 
rate agendas favoring a greater role for non-Russians in their 
own self-determination. With the emergence of the mass nation- 
alist movements and the steady gravitation toward national polit- 
ical autonomy, sovereignty, and independence, the Gorbachev 
Revolution, largely a revohitioa from above, was transformed 
into an uncontroUed confrontation of the central state with a 
growing social revolution fnmi below. A guided democratization 

64 

I 

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SUNY □ 65 



had given wav to a massive anti-imperial struggle bv the peoples 
of the Soviet UnioD, which has in turn delayed and distorted the 
center*s plans for economic and p>olitical reforms and seriously 
limited the USSR's military and foreign polky capabilitiet. 

Cleariy, ndther Saiajevo nor iUrabokh and 
events without complex prior determinations. They appeared, 
however unexpectedly, at the conjuncture of long-term social 
and cultural processes with more immediate |)olitical failures. 
1 he nationalist articulation of social and political, as well as 
cultural, discontents was not simply a rising to the surface of a 
long-represied **natural,'* or eternally present* natkmal con- 
tckmneis; rather, for many relatively inarticulate and inchoate 
cclmidtiet, it was the resuk of a long process of national forma- 
tion that took place in both the centuries of tsarism and the 
decades of Soviet power. UnKkcmostof the peoples of the Soviet 
South, (ieorgians .md Armenians may have had ancient king- 
doms and distinct religions, languages, customs, and written 
traditions proclaiming their uniqueness; yet, only in the nine- 
teenth century did nationalist intellectuals constnict a coherent 
sense of a iiational past that supported polttkal daimi to auton- 
omy or independence. Borrowed from post-1789 Europe, the 
ideology of political nationalism enabled ethnic intellectuals and 
activists to formulate their own national political visions on the 
basis of their panic ular reading of history. New ''imagined com- 
munities," construe ted on the basis of ethnic cultures and lan- 
guages, emerged in the Caucasus and the western borderlands, 
but only with the greatest difficulty did the mass of peasants that 
made up the bulk of the ethnic commimities accept their mes- 
sage.* 

With the collapse of old state structures and the sundering 
of economic ties with the center during the years of revolution 
and civil war, the nationalists found an luiexpected but dan- 
gerous opportunity to realize their programs. The reiadve weak- 
neii of the Bolsheviks before foreign interventionists briefly 
alkfwed Che formation of semi-inciepemtent States in the bor^^ 
lands, but by 1920-1921 the Soviets had recovered much of 
what they had lost (with the notable exceptions of Boiand, Fin- 
land, the Baltic republics, and the western parts of Armenia, 



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66 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



Belorussia, and the Ukraine). When this process of nation-build- 
ing started again after the revolutkm and civil war. it occurred 
within a pseudof ederal Soviet state made up of ethnic territorial 
units and affected peoples in the east and south who had never 
had a national politkal tnKlition. Anneniam gathered on a sn^ 
part of their historic territory, which bcca n ie the Armenian 
Soviet Socialist Republic, and began their recover v from near 
annihilation. Belorussians, Jews, and Ukrainians sent their chil- 
dren to state-sjX)nsored schools that taught them to read in their 
spoken language. The Soviets divided Central Asian Muslims 
into new repuUks with no dear historic precedence and pre- 
sented them with a new secular vision ot nationhood. In all 
republics, the central government promoted political leaders 
from among the local people, as long as they professed loyalty to 
the socialist mission. 

From the age of Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin on 
through the century, the idea that ethnicity provides legitimacy 
for claims to cultural and poUtical rights and territory has had a 
powerful resonance, both in the USSR and throughout the 
world. The discourse oE nationaliMn ^>a«tna that ethnic culture 
and shared history give people of a partinilar nationality the 
right to control their historic territory (whether or not they make 
up a demographic majority) and to freely develop their culture. 
The Bolsheviks had incorporated this principle, axiomatic in our 
time, into their political program before the revolution, though 
the commimists, once in power, often compromised or neglected 
entirely their own ideal of national self-determination in favor of 
other principles— namely, intematinnalism and class stnigg^. 
Yet, the form of etlmk territorial states (Unkm republics, auton- 
omous republics, autonomous regions, and so finth) remained 
intact constitutionally* even as economic policies weakened the 
demographic hold of some nationalities over their lerritorv. A 
fundamental tension grew between the pull toward "nalixiza- 
tion ' of ethnic territories and political structui es and the pull 
toward acculturation and even assimilation into the larger Soviet 
community, the process of becoming part of a sauetskii narod 
(Soviet people). Once the limits of ethnic expression had been 
broadened under Gorbachev, and the legitimacy of past commu- 



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SUNY Q 67 

nisi practices scriouslv lalled into question, intellectuals and 
activists gave voice to this tension. Fears of cultural, demo- 
graphk, and linguistic degeneration combined with c o nc ern 
about the environment, economy, and abuses of power to create 
poiverful nationalist movements that simultaneously repre- 
sented radically democratizing impulses. Ponver was to devolve 
on the people, for they were the repository of authentic concern 
Ibr the nation. Alniosi all major and minor nationalities in the 
Soviet L'nion. including the Cireat Russian, expressed a painful 
hel iet t hat their nations were in danger and that the communists 
had led them to the precipice. 

Thus, paradoxically and against the expectations of the 
communists and most Western observers, new nations have 
emerged in the Soviet Union, nations stronger and more coher- 
ent than the historic ethnic communities out of which they have 
been constructed. From people living primarilv in \illages and 
speaking related dialects, nationalities developed that lia\e a 
firmer presence in towns and cities, read and write a stan- 
dardized national language, and share a sense of solidarity and 
common interests. We might isolate at least seven fundamental 
trends over the last seven decades that provide the context in 
which the explosion of ethnic nationalism occurred. 

First, the Soviet experience, particularly in Transcaucasia 
and (leniral Asia, has included a process of nation-building, 
\vhi( h occurred as certain ethnic and religious groups became 
demographicalU more coherent, gained new instruments and 
institutions with which to express and defend themselves, and 
began to articulate their understanding through a specifically 
nationalist discourse. Political nationalism had been relatively 
weak at the time of the Russian Revolution, concentrated largely 
in the urban intelligentsia, but by the 19808 nationalisis had 
successfully elaborated a new way of looking at tlic world widi 
extraordinarv power to mobilize the population. 

1 he Soviet policv oi korenizaisiia (the promotion ot national 
and national cadres in the governance of national 
areas), even after the Stalinist emphasb on rapid industrializa- 
tion undercut it, increased the language capabilities and the 
potitidzatkm of the non-Russians in the national republics. The 



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68 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

creation ot national working classes, newly urbanized popula- 
tions, national intelligentsias, and ethnic political elites contrib- 
uted to the more complete elaboration of nationhood. 

Rebted to this fim ttend was the territorialiiation of cth- 
nidty. Formerly, many ethnic and religious communities main- 
tained their greatest loyalty to and identity with either the village 
orlocalilv in which they lived or. in ihc case of manv Muslims, the 
world Islamic community (the umma). Supranalunial <md subna- 
tional lo\ allies competed with the more specifically national." For 
certain ethnicities, most clearly those of Central Asia, the estab- 
lishment of territorial administrative units on the basis of nation- 
ality in the early 1920s was unprecedented in their history and 
provided clear political and territorial identity as alternatives to 
earlier religious and tribal solidarity. Following Stalin's own defi- 
nition of nation, Soviet authorities promoted an idea of nation 
fixed to territory. Rather than simply idcniitMiig nationalities 
with it'lit^ious or ethnic culture, thev linked them to special 
territories, and gave privileges to titular nationalities in a kind of 
affirmative action policy favoring some peoples over others. 
Cosmopolitanism declined, except in parti of the Russian Soviet 
Federated SnriaKsl Republic (RSFSR), and many formerly muhi- 
national regions and cities graduatty became more ethnically 
homogeneous. Tbilisi, a dty that Armenians and Russians had 
dominated both demographically and politically before the Rev- 
uiuiion, first achieved a C Georgian majority in the 19()()s. Baku 
steadily became Azerbaijani in the Soviet period; uliimatelv, in a 
paroxysm ot national tervor, Azerbaijanis fmally drove the large 
Armenian minority, along with many Rusiians and Jews, from 
the dty in Janiuuy 1990. Yerevan, which as a smaD town in the 
late nineteenth oenoury still contained a laige Mtislim popula- 
tion, grew into a nearly purely Armenian dty through the in- 
migration of Armenians from other parts of the Soviet Union 
and the Armenian diaspora. 

Third, relations beiuceii the center and the ethnic periph- 
eries were basically imperial, that is, inequitable and based on a 
subordinate relationship to the Russian center. As Russian was 
closely identified with Soviet, with proletarian, and with progress 
(and all the incumbent privileges), ethnidty determined a cer- 



GopyiiL)h;ea iriaiciial 



SUNY □ 69 



tain degree of advaiuage and disadvantage. In nianv ways, from 
the early 1930s, ethnicity became far more important than class 
as a marker in Soviet sodety of social position, access to poiver 
and infonnation, mobility, and so forth. By 1974, the goivem- 
ment had diminated dass designations, so key to iodal piomo- 
tkm in the eariy Soviet period, from the internal passport that 
Soviet citizens were required to carry. But ethnicity remained as 
a fundamental determinant of official identity, which at one and 
the same lime made people eligible for promotion and access to 
privileges (if, for example, they were members of the utular 
nationality of a given republic) and for discrimination (if they 
were not). 

While native cadres may have governed in Azerbaijan or 

Uzbekistan (particularly after the 1920s, when native commu- 
nists were few), Moscow largely determined policies, and local 
interests were subordinated to all-Union goals. I he government 
treated non-Russian republics as objects of central policy rather 
than subjects capable of independent decision making, thereby 
fundamentally altering their naticmal destiny. In Kazakhstan, 
for example, the imposition of collectivization of agriculture 
resulted in the loss of 40 percent of the population through 
either death or migration. Moscow forcibly settled a nomadic 
population on the land, fundamentally changing its ancient way 
of life. Industrial and agricultural development, particularly 
Khrushchev's Virgin Lands program of the 1950s, resulted in 
the settlement of non-Kazakhs in the republic, and by 1979 
Kazakhs made up only 33 percent of the area's population. 
Moreover, Kazakhstan became a test area for atomic weapons 
and proving ground for up-and-coming party leaders like 
Leonid Brezhnev, who served as party chief in 1955-1956.^ 

Fourth, even as Moscow was strengthening ethniciiv in 
nianv ways, it was limiting and even undermining it in others. 
Official So\ iet policy spoke for years of sblizhenie (rapproche- 
ment) and sltianie (mei^r) of Soviet peoples and of the creation 
of a single Soviet culture. Mobility, aoculturatkm of political and 
intdlectiial elites, the preference for Russian sclioding, and the 
generalized effects of modernization all created anxiety about 
assimilation and loss of culture. A deep contradiction developed 



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70 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



during the Soviet years between the pressures resulting from 
modcmirarion and state policies promoting assimflation, on the 

flti^ hand, and rt*^ M»ttm nf AnwMtMfcMo anA »ti#» "WnatinMHyii, 

tkm** of ethnic groups, on the other. Str onger , more coherent, 
and more ethnically conickius natiom faced an imoertain fut^ 

in a political system in which they had little say over their fate. 

The contradictory Soviet policies, combined with different 
historic levels of development and proximitv to the dominant 
nation, had wide-ranging effects among various peoples. Some 
nationalities suffered extraordinarily from Russification, nota- 
bly the Beionisiians (no Beiorussian achoob fim avaiiabie in the 
republic's cttiet); others, like the Armenians and Geoigians, felt 
little effect, though they oftben complained bitterly about the 
impositions of a bilingualist policy. The in-migration of Russians 
and other Slavs weakened several nationalities — notably the Ka- 
zakhs, Estonians, and Latvians — though other nationalities — the 
Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians, for example — ^in- 
creased their percentages in the republics' population. Estonians 
and Georgians vigorously resisted learning Russian and de- 
fended native language use, while hundreds of thousands of 
Ukrainians lost the ability to communicate with ease in the lan- 
guage of their grandparents. 

Fifth, for all the transformative effects of Soviet-style mod- 
ernization, traditional cultures have persisted. What Gregory 
Massell calls "the old iniities based on kinship, custom, and 
belief have managed to survive even as Moscow has removed 
traditional leaderships, officially undermined religion, and fun- 
damentally changed the social environment'* In Central Asia, 
the lack of a native proletariat and clearly ^l iyt^ a i n f dais li»T^ 
led the regime in the 1920s to attempt to use women as a 'Arro- 
gate proletariat," an improvised "class" wedge to force cleavages 
in traditional Muslim societies. The leadership encouraged 
women to take off their veils, seek work outside the household, 
and challenge the patriarchal authority of their fathers and 
brothers. The experiment, which was extremely cosdy in human 
life, espedaliy among communist cadres and their supporters, 
was, at least in the short run, a feihure, as women who had given 
up the veil returned to the andent practice. "Bnr the moat part. 



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SUNY □ 71 



women may be said to have failed to function as a social class, a 
stratum with a sense of shared identity, with a distinct, dearly 
perceived aunmunity of experience, interest, purpose, and 
acdon.**' 

The local, traditional sodocultural systems of the prerevolu- 
tionary period, segmented and smaU in scale, were resistant to 

torccd change from outside and provided places of retreat from 
Soviet interventions. In Georgia, for example, "the sense of 
poweriessness of villagers towards the state encourages them to 
turn inwards/*^ Kinship networks and the mistrust of outsiders 
combine to encourage the use of nnaiGdak, informal meant of 
settling conflicts. Socialization stiU takes place in the £unily, and 
women, as the guardians of the Georgian traditioii, teach their 
children both the values of the culture and a wariness toward the 
larger Soviet world.' Patronage networks, so central in Trans- 
caucasia to an individual's power and prestige, arc carefullv 
maintained and have been adapted to the requirements of an 
economy of shortages.^ 

Sixth, the very nature of Soviet modemizatioo created 
sharp divisiaiis not only between nationalities but also within 
nationaKtifs. Soviet economic and social change has been ex- 
tremely uneven, and the result has been the coexistence of mo- 
bile, better-educated, more modern urban populations with less 
mobile, less educated, traditional societies in the countryside. A 
lack of resources is partly responsible, making the full transfor- 
mation of all parts of Soviet society economicaUy too cosdy, but 
Soviet policies also have been a factor, whether consciously or 
unconsciously. Faced with a choice between only implementing 
large-scale economic change and simultaneously carrying out a 
cultural revolution, the Stalinist regime retreated from the more 
radical cultural practices of the 192()s and tolerated "distinct!) 
uneven development in political, economic, and socio-cultural 
spheres — indeed [displayed] a willingness to leave pockets of 
antecedent life-styles relatively undisturbed, if necessary, for an 
indefinite period of time."^ In her ethnography of a Georgian 
village, Tamara Dragadze demmistrates that even coOectiviza- 
tikm did little to change traditional settlement patterns or redis- 
tribute wealth in the villages of Ratcha. Soviet practices actually 



72 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

fostered rather than undercut family solidarity, "^viet law re- 
enforces the age-old tradition whereby a son lives next to hit 
parents, with nearby houses belonging to his brothers, paternal 
undes and first cousins. . . . Throughout the country, the fiunily 
provides more support and demands greater loyalty than any 
other institution. The government has refrained from inter- 
fering in this, except for campaigning against nepotism and 
overspending at tamilv celebrations."'* 

Seventh, the pohtical leadership of the Communist Party, 
even as it proclaimed the full resolution of the "national ques- 
tion** in the Soviet Unioa* £uled to deal effecdvely with the 
problems of a multinational empire and in turn created new 
problems. Bolshevism had long reduced problems of luttionality 
and ethnic culture to economics, failing to appreciate the inde- 
pendent power of ethnic culture. Though granting that nation- 
ality had to he acconniiodatcd before the full victory of 
communism, Bolshevism was consistendy suspicious of national 
expression. Over time, and even at a given moment, Bolshevik 
policy was profoundly inconsistent, on the one hand pushing for 
nativiiation and the flourishing (ruitu^ of national cultures, 
while on the other promoting the ideological goab of jfmmar 
(obliteration of rational peculiarities), shbxhttue, and diknue. The 
regime retained full power to decide what was permissible "pa- 
ti iotic" expression and what was pernicious nationalism, and the 
boundaries between the two shifted constantly.'* 

In the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years, the arena of allow- 
able national expression expanded considerably, and republican 
leaderships foiged their om ties between their populations 
through the manipulation of eduiic symbols. At the same time, 
the loosening of control from the center afler Stalin's death 
p)ennittcd regional and ethnic communist parties to operate 
increasinglv independently of Moscow. The rise of ethnic 
"mafias" centered in national communist parties fostered cor- 
ruption and threatened the overall development of the Soviet 
economy. The regime itself had become an obstacle to the 
growth both of the economy and of sodety. 

One can aigue that nationalism has been a growing pres- 
ence in all parts of the world in our century, and that the very 



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SUNY □ 73 



processes of urbanization and industrialization, the spread of 
mass education, and greater access to print and other mecUa aid 
the consolidation of ethnolingtustic groups; nevertheless, na- 
tion-building in die USSR has created a particularly folatik set 
of problems. A number of conscious^ secular, politkaUy mo- 
bilized nationaHties now exist where they had not preiiousiy 
existed, and with their greater coherence and consciousness, 
nationalist leaders have l)een able to command mass followings 
that had earlier eluded them. Rather than undermining nadon- 
alism, the processes of industrialization, urbanization, and state- 
building in the Soviet Union have provided the social and 
cultural base for a fierce nationalist opposition to Communist 
Vsaty rule. When the top party leadership decided to radically 
reform the political system, it, at one and the same time, began a 
process of delegitimizing the Soviet system and giving political 
voice to the nationalist aliernative. 



CURRENT COMPLEXITIES AND GORBACHEV'S 
DILEMMAS 

When Gorbachev came to power in March 1985, the Soviet state 

was already in a profoundly weakened condition. The USSR had 

experienced not only years of political and economic stagnation, 
but a frustrating absence of able and stable leadership in the first 
half of the i980s. Weakness in the center had enabled the local 
ethnic and regional mafias within the party-state apparatus to 
increase their power. Moreover, the USSR was internationally 
isolated, bogged down in a draining war in A^hanistan, and 
fixing an aggressively hostile American president. To restart the 
Soviet economic engine and restore the country's position inter- 
nationallv, Gorbachev needed first to build a political base for 
his program of reform, not least of all in the non-Russian repub- 
lics. "Pi obably the most concentrated opposition to Gorbachev's 
leadersiiip and his policies/' writes Martha Brill Olcott, "has 
come from the party and state bureaucrades in the national 
repuDUcs. 

Gorbadiev was caught between, on the one hand, nationality 
leadershipi that opposed his reforms, and, on the other, inteflec- 



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74 a THE RISE OF NATIONS 



tualand popular forces, most of which, once they overcame their 
suspicioaof the Kremlin, were interested in the general liberaliz- 
ing thrust of Moscow's new policies. In Tianscaucana and Cen- 
tral Asia, a series of puiges (1985-1988) eKminaied the top 
leaders in nearly every republic, not always without resistance. In 
Kazakhstan, the removal of longtime party chief Dinmukhamed 
Kunaev and his replacement by a Russian, Gennadii Kolbin, 
brouiijht denionsiraioi s into the streets in December 1986. Pro- 
longed pressure from the center on the Armenian party did not 
achieve the desired removal of Karen Demirchian from the post 
of first secretary until the Karahakh crisis exploded and Moscow 
could more direcdy intervene. But these interventions hardly 
touched the political control over the southern repuUics by 
locally based mafias. When the "democratic'' forces began to act, 
as w ith the Karabakh movement, the emergence of mass nation- 
alist popular f ronts burst asunder the ver\ bounds of the old 
politics and rapidly undermined the power of local communist 
parties, even those whose leaderships Moscow had renewed. 
With the general democratization of political practices, the dele- 
girimization of Communist Rurty rule in general, and the grow- 
ing reluctance and inefficacy of the center tt> use force to impose 
its win (the Tbilisi syndrome), nationalist movements gradually 
pushed the old political classes from power. 

Since 1989, nationalists and their allies have been attempt- 
ing to consdtuie themselves as a new political class, more suc- 
cessfully in some republics than in others. In Armenia, the 
Fw-Armenian Natimiai Movement (HHSh) took hold of the 
reins of government in August 1990, successfully negotiated 
with IVesident Gorbachev to bring order to the republic, and 
dedared Armenia sovereign and independent. In Azerbaijan, 
which has been under "Soviet occupation" since January 1990, 
the Conmiunisi Pari\, propped up bv the Soviet armv, has reas- 
serted itself and displaced the Azerbaijani Popular Front. The 
two prindpai political forces eye each other suspiciously, and 
each promotes itself as the legitimate representative of Azerbai- 
jani nationhood. In Georgia, the religious natimuiKsts around 
Zviad Gamsakhurdia won the November 1990 elections and aim 
to lead the country u> fuU independence, but the political move- 



SUNY Q 75 



ment remains extraordinarily fissiparous. In Central Asia, the 
old communist parties still have considerable power, particularly 
in Turkmenistan, and have appropriated much of the program 
o£ the national frcmts. 

the growing weakness of the center and the new inde- 
pendence of the republics (and of ethnic minorities within re- 
publics), Gorbachev is faced with an irresolvable dilemma, "a 
cruel choice" — as Paul Cioblc succinctly puts it — "whether to 
pursue his democratization programs at the <fxpense of control 
over the p>eriphery or to maintain control at the cost of his 
broader policy agenda." ^ ' And all tliis against the badiground of 
an aooderating eooncmiic meltdown. 

Allied to this d il e mma b the conflict b e t ween the leadership 
of the Soviet army, which wants to preserve the army as a disci- 
plined multinational instrument of state policy, and the popular 
and ethnic aspirations for a decentrali/cd. nationalized niilit.iry 
force that could not be used to repress national movements. At 
the September 1989 Central Committee plenum on nation- 
alities, Defense Minister Dmitrii Yazov strongly condemned 
"certain negative phenomena that have arisen in a number of 
republics [that] hint begun to penetrate into soldienT barracks 
and sailors' quarters,** and complained that "the label of 'occupy- 
ing forces' is pinned on Soviet fighting men." He expressed 
horror at the "incieasingly open calls to split our Army into 
national segments" and called for "effective concern for the 
study of the Russian langtiage in the Union republics. . . . Last 
year, however, the number of inductees with practically no com- 
mand of the Russian language exceeded 125,000. This is 12 
times more than 20 years ago. An alarming trend.**'^ 

Not only do TVansrancasians and Central Asians want mili- 
tary units in their republics to be under local authority, not only 
do they not want their young men and women to serve outside 
the republic, but Russians, as in the Stavropol demonstrations in 
January 1990, have begun to resist sending their sons and 
daughters to settle ethnic conflicts in other republics. Central 
Aaiant and TVapfT^i?ftaiTT believe that they are especialiy d«u 
crimlnatrd against within the anned forces, the im|«^ 
of condesc e nsion and harassment {dedouhekma) from officers 



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76 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



and teliow soldiers.'^ In Armenia and Azerbaijan, popular mili- 
tias have formed to defend the republics (or particular politkal 
interests) in what they cxxisider the absence of sufficient protec- 
tion from Soviet forces.** The army itself has signaled itt unhap- 
piness with being used as a police force to settle internal sochd 
and ethnic conflicts. 

Faced b\ stronger, more coherent non-Russian nations than 
have ever existed in the Soviet period — or, indeed, than existed 
in the tsarist period — Gorbachev has been unable to iind a politi- 
cal language powerful enough to substitute for the various na- 
tionalist discourses. His last-ditch argument has been (as early in 
1990, during the crisis over Lithuanian independence) that na- 
tionalism, republican sovereignty, or secessi o n would most ex- 
tremely undermine the reform movement and the president 
himselt. As the realit\ of republictin independence grows dav by 
dav, as Moscow proves incapable of reestablishing its aiithoritv, 
the \ ai ious nationalisms have become the only effective ideologi- 
cal and political choice for the Soviet peoples. At issue is no 
longer where they came from or how they grew so powerful, but 
how they shall be dealt with in a partnership of equality and 
respect For the foreseeable future, nationalism will be the dcmii- 
nant discourse for non-Russians and for a significant number of 
Russians, as well. Communists will either accommodate them- 
selves to it, as Boris Yeltsin has been trying to do, or be out oi the 
game. 

In the summer and fall of 1990, one ever more frequendy 
heard people talk either of proceeding boldly along the demo- 
aratic psth, even if this meant the breakup of the Soviet Union, or 
of retreating to a more authoritarian ahemative, the forceful 
preservation of the Union by a military takeover. The physical 
and moral forces were simply not there for a co m pelle d return to 
anvthing resembling Brezhnev's stable, stagnant Soviet I'nion. 
(Gorbachev accomplished his enormous success in dismantling 
the Communist Party's monopoly on fKJwer by maintaining a 
broad political coalition, taking hesitant steps toward democracy, 
and making tactical retreats to prevent reaction from the conser- 
vatives in the apparatus. But by mid-1990, critics dted his poli- 
cies of compromise and half-measures as the cause for the 



SUNY □ 77 



political and etonoinit breakdown. As the year tame to an end, 
the Soviet president undertook stronger measures to relieve the 
food shortages, placate the restive army leaders, and push 
through his veraoo of a new Union treaty with the republics. 
And in January 1991 , tanks rolled into Lithuania in an attempt 
to force the lot .il leaders to give up their drive for iiule})endeiRe. 
Af ter decades of neglecting the non-Russian peoj^les of the 
and t reat ing the Soviet Union as if it were little more than 
an ethnically Russian state. Western sovietologtstt and journalists 
now show signs of another form of myopia by not looking more 
critically at the current nationalism. Many Western social sden- 

tisls, journalists, and pundits, following the lead of the national- 
ists themselves, argue that ethnic ties are so powerful that other 
claims to identity and cohesion, such as class, gender, or genera- 
tion, need not be taken seriously. Yet some students of individual 
natkmalist movements have noted the fracturing of those mofve- 
ments and the reproduction of divisions within ethnic societies 
that make it problematic to speak of 'the Georgians" or 'the 
l^zbeks." Class, gender, regional, urban-rural, and generational 
dif ferences are asserting themselves and being newly articulated 
as challenges to the more inclusive nationalist discourses within 
the republics. 

Moreover, the intensity of nationalism at a given moment is 

contingent on specific economic, sodal, and {political conjunc- 
tures. Though nationalism is not reducible to economics, the 
relati()nship between economic hardships and inec^uities, on the 
one band, and ethnic hostilities, on the other, has been brutally 
demonstrated in Karabakh, the feighana Valley, Moldova, and 
elsewhere. The chrome economk crisis in the USSR has helped 
to erode support for the Soviet system, for socialism, and for 
Communist Rurty rule; it has also buttressed natkmalist argu- 
ments that the non-Russian republics can do better on their own. 
Independence seems to be the answer both to cultural grievances 
and to more mundane material problems of everyday life. Yet, 
with independence from the USSR, the old enemy will be elimi- 
nated, and social and cultural cleavages within each nationality 
wiU become more visible. 



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78 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

Already in some republics it is clear that the moment of the 
nationalUl intelligentsia, those brave former Hisiidcnt« or newly 
coined patriott who fim manned the barricade 
to an end as odier social groups, some tar leas educated and 
urbanized, arise to take over these movements. In Azerbaijan, 
for example, the initial founders of the Fopular Fhmt lost out by 
the ciici of 1989 to others who spoke a more militant language of 
hosiilitv, not cniv toward Armenians, but also against people of 
privilege — intellectuals, Baku city dwellers, the apparatus — all of 
whom were linked in some nefarious ways. The intellectuals later 
excused themselves from any responsibility in the massacres in 
Baku by blaming them on those who had displaced them and on 
emigrants from Armenia.^^ 

In Armenia, the intelligentsia appears to be victorious at the 
moment, having successfully disarmed the paramilitary oppo- 
nents of the HHSh. hut it is far from united. In Georgia, the 
nationalists suffer trom an even more extreme fractiousness 
(reportedly, over 100 political parties exist there). Two major 
coalitions — the Roundtable of Gamsakhurdia and the National 
Congress led by Giorgi Chanturia— drde each odier like tired 
wrestlers. In Central Asia, where distinct intellectual elites sepa- 
rate from or in opposition to the older political establishments 
had not long existed, informal groups and popular fronts ap- 
peared later than in the Caucasus and the Baltic.''^ Despite being 
discredited through the public exposure of corruption, most 
dramatically in Uzbekistan, where it was linked to the Brezhnev 
£unily, the old apparatus remains firmly in power in most of the 
republics of the region. 

1NT£R£THN1C CONf UCTS AND DIASPORAS 

Wiiliin c'.ich Soviet republic live ethnic minorities that have been 
putting forth cultural and political demands. In Transcaucasia, 
the most volatile conflicts have been between the Armenians 
living in NKAO and the Azerbaijanis, who dominate the repub- 
lic. Armenians make up the overwhelming majority of the popu- 
lation of NKAO and desire merger with the neighboring 
Armenian republic Azerbaijanis represent about a quarter of 



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SUNY □ 79 



the p()j)ulaii()n of the region and hold that Rarabakh is part of 
their national patrimony. As a result of the fierce righting 
around this issue, hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis have 
fled irom the Armenian republk. Armeniaiu in Azerbaijan be- 
gan to emignoe aftier the F^niary 1988 luUings of Anneniam 
Sumgait, but their final removal occurred in J anuary 1990» when 
mobs turned on the Armenians of Baku. 

The growing power of the nationalists frightened the Ab- 
khazian minority in the western part of C^eorgia and the Osetins 
in the northeast. Abkhazians, numbering fewer than 100,000, 
make up only 17 percent of the Abkhaz autonomous republic's 
population, but they had been accorded cultural and political 
privileges in the last few decades. Georgians, who make up the 
largest ethnicity in the autonomous republic (44 percent), re- 
sented the advantages that Abkhazians enjoyed, and some of the 
more extreme nationalists called for the abolition ot Abkhaz 
autonomy. Similar conflicts arose in South Osetia, where the 
Osetins make up 66 percent of the autonomous region. In 1989, 
the Osetins unilaterally raised the status of their region to auton- 
omous republic and in September 1990, they declared the 
South Osetin Soviet Democratic Republic to be independent of 
Georgia and a part of the USSR. 

Almost all the major and many of the minor nationalities of 
the Soviet South have diaspora populations both within and 
outside the USSR. Fhe borders of the national states in the Soviet 
Union, particularly in Central Asia, did not (and could not) 
coincide with the mixed ethnic populations of the region. Large 
numben of Uzbeks were left in Kiighizia, Tsgiks in Uzbekistan 
(particularly in dties), and soon. Of the 6 miDkm Volga or Kazan 
Tatars in the Soviet Union, only 1.8 million live in the Tatar 
republic. In Georgia, Armenians live compactly in Akhaltsikhe 
and Akhalkalaki, and are more dispersed in 1 bilisi and Ab- 
khazia. A large Armenian community of well-educated and well- 
placed professionals lived in Baku until 1 990, not to mention that 
75 percent of the population of N K AO was (and probably still is) 
Armenian. Geat^aaas, known as lngik>s, live in Azerbaijan, and 
hundreds of thousands of Azerbayanis live in Georgia and lived 
in Armenia untfl the Karabakh conflict made their situation 



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80 □ TH£ iUS£ OF NATIONS 



precarious. Each of these populations has experienced eiiher 
oonflia and violence or a rising sense of insecurity and vid- 
nerability. 

The killings of Meskhetian l^irlu by Uziwks in the 

Valley (June 1989), and the violence in Novyi Uzhen (Uzbe- 
kistan) directed at Lezgins from the North Caucasus (June 
1989), along the Tajik- Kirghiz border (late summer 1989), and 
in Osh between Kirghiz and Uzbeks (June 1990) brutally blurred 
the vision of Muslim unity among the SOnxld million Soviet 
Muslims. In each of these cases, as fvell as in the instances of 
attacks on Armenians and other "outsiders," the context of vio- 
lence appears to be high levels of unemployment, lack of decent 
housing, and pressure on the land, in a world in which ethnicity 
defines privilege and aooess, economic disoonientt crystallize 
around ethnic divisions. 

One of the limit lines dividing Soviet Muslims, Am* example, 
cuts the Turkic-speaking peoples off from the Iranian-speaking 
Tajiks. Tajikistan, which was carved out of part of the former 
Bukharan khanate (later Bukharan People's Soviet Republic) in 
1924 (the rest going to the new Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic), 
is 62 percent Tayik, 23^ percent Uzbek, and 7.6 percent Rus- 
sian. One-quarter of aD Soviet Tajiks live outside the republic, 
with nearly a million Tajiks living in Uzbekistan (4.7 percent of 
the population) alone. Relations between Tajiks and Uzbeks have 
never been without tension. Tajiks make up a large part of the 
urban population of Samarkand and Bukhara and pride them- 
selves on their intellectual traditions, which go back to pre-Soviet 
times, when Persian was the principal language of intellectual 
and religk>us exchange in Central Aria. Younger Tagiki in partic- 
ular are more resistant to Tlurlic cultiure and deoMmstrate inter- 
est in closer cultural ties with Iran. Particularly grating is the 
absence of adequate l ajik educational institutions in Uzbekistan 
while Uzbeks in Tajikistan have their own schools.'^ When ethnic 
violence broke out in Tajikistan in February 1990, however, the 
crowds turned on Armrnians, whom they thought were being 
settled in Dushambe after the pogroms in Baku. Here, economic 
and sodal problems— shortages of apartments, p re fer ences 



Copynghieci mateiidl 



SUNY □ 81 



osiensibK given to outsiders — provided the tinder tor an 
explosion displaced onto ethnic grounds. 

While the Anoaenian diaspora is the most far-flung, ranging 
from neighboring Iran and Tlirkcy (laigely in Istanbul) to Los 
Angeles and Fresno, the Azerbaijanis have the distinction that 
the great majority of their ethnic community resides across the 
Arax River in Iran (in 1989, some 6.8 million Azerbaijanis lived 
in Soviet Azerbaijan, roughlv 8 million in Iran, and another 
400,000 in lurke\ ). Cieorgians have a small community ol com- 
patriots near the Black Sea in Turkey, and most of the Central 
Asian peoples have laige numbers of conationak living across 
the border (see Table 2 in Appendix I). 

The most dramatic attempt to link up with compatriots on 
the other side of the border occurred at the very end of 1989, 
when Soviet Azerbaijanis in Nakhichevan tore down border 
posts and fences and spontaneouslv opened up the border. At ter 
some initial attempts to restore the old order, Soviet troops did 
not intervene until the January invasion of the republic. The 
initiative for reestablishing ties with southern Azerbayan (north- 
em Iran), which had been separated from the north since the 
1 820s, came almost completely from the Soviet side. The Soviet 
Azerbaijani intelligentsia had long harbored desires, reflected in 
the so-called literature of longing, for uniiv with southern Azer- 
baijan, and leading writers had been inxolved in the short-lived 
attempt to establish an independent republic in the region aiter 
World War 11.'^ 

But the Iranian side has not shared Soviet Azerbaijanis' 
enthusiann for unity. AH Akbar Raftanjani, the president of Iran, 
visited Baku in June 1989, and Sheikh ul-Isam ADkhshukur 
l^hazade, the spiritual leader of Soviet Shiite Muslims, traveled 
to Iran, where he concluded an agreement with Iranian clerics to 
train Soviet religious students in Iranian madrassahs; neverthe- 
less, the Iranian government remained wary of upsetting the 
fragile relations with the Soviet Union, particularly at a time of 
international isolation. Pkeventing the formation of a unified 
Azerbayan must be a concern for the Iranian government, and is 
analogous to Iran's opposition to the creation of a Kurdish 
national state. Azerbaijani intellectuab from Baku have ex- 



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82 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



pressed much more iiuerest in ties with Turkey, whose people 
are their linguistic brethren, than with Iran, with whose popula- 
tioa they share the Shiite faith. While Islamk tymbols, green 
flag^ even poitndts of Khomeuii, certainly have appeared 
streets of Baku, the movement in Azerbaijan has had a predomi- 
nantly nationalist, rather than Islamic, character, fixusing most 
powertullv on a sense of Azerbaijan as an ethnic territorial na- 
tion." Islam and nation pull in diiiereiu directions — one toward 
the universal Muslim connnunity (the umrna), the other toward a 
specific territory defined by ethnicity. At times they can also be 
melded into a single nationalism, as in Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere. 
But here, rather than Islam's having been the impulse behind 
Azerbayani nationalism, the ''Armenian threat** in the context of 
economic decline, unemployment, popular political impotence, 
and a discredited ruling elite brought the crowds out to defend 
the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. The rhetoric directed 
against the Armenian claims to Kaiabakh has been about tbe 
dismembering ot the homeland, and Azerbaijanis now see 
Karabakh as the heartland of Azerbaijan. 

The disintegration of the Soviet Union presents Iran %vith 
more dangers than opportimities. Internally, the latter must 
condnue to manage resident Azerbaijanis, who for decades un- 
der the Milavis and more recently under the mullahs have not 
been permitted to have their own schools. Though this has 
appcU enilv retarded the development and spread of the kinds of 
ethni( nationalist or Pan- Turkic consciousness the population in 
the north has experienced, the potential to become a self-con- 
scious and mobilized nationaUty could suddenly be actualized.^ 
As the largest minority in Iran, the Azerbaijanis are a relatively 
well-integrated, relatively prosperous part of Iranian sodety. Up 
to now, they have understood that theocratic Iran dcab firmly 
with any se paratist ambitions, or even mUd dissension, like that of 
the A/ci l)<iijani Avatollah Kazim Shariat Madari, who was con- 
fined to house arrest altei Khomeini came to power. 

The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict has resonated in the 
Turkish press and political circles. I he harshest voices against 
Armenians and in favor of their "Turkic brothers** in Azerbaijan 
have come from the political and clerical right, for enmple, the 



SUNY □ 83 

newspaper Terjuman. Shortly after the invasion of Azerbaijan, 
The New York Times reported pro-Azerbaijani demonstrations, 
calling for tougher attitudes toward the Soviet Union, in the 
TVirkish town of Igdir, near the Armenian border, as wdl as in 
Istanbul and Ankara.^ Once the shock over "Black January^ 
subsided, cooler voices could also be heard. In September, a 
reporter from Milliyet, who had been graciously received in 
Armenia, wrote a series of articles advocating better relations 
with the Armenians. Whik many Armenians in the diaspora fear 
that an independent Armenia, sec adrift by the Russians, win fidl 
victim to Azerbaijani aggression or to a new Turkish dream of 
ftin- l urkic unification, the Turkish government's sights seem to 
be set on Europe, not on Yerevan. While no influential Turkish 
politician is willing to suggest that Turkey ought to acknowledge 
the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians in 1915, many are 
aware that an attack on Armenia would only confirm the image 
of the "Terrible Turk," so fixed in the European mind. Ever 
since the early postwar crises that froze the lines of the Cold War 
alliances. Turkev, like Iran, has learned to live with its Soviet 
neighbor in relative tranquillity. The current situation is fraught 
with uncertainty and may threaten Turkey's campaign for mem- 
bership in the European Community. 

THE VIEW FROM WASHINGTON 

Americans might grow nostalgic in the coming years for the old 
Soviet Union and its policies, which in a general way were at least 
consistent and predictable. For 45 years, the Soviet Union had 
not moved its troops beyond its positions in 1945, with the sin^ 
exception of the intervention into Afghanistan in 1979. Rnr 
nearly half a century, the countries of Eastern Europe could be 
discounted as independent actors — again with notable excep- 
tions, like Ceaucescu's Romania — and subsumed under an inte- 
grated policy toward the Soviet bloc The situation dearly is 
much more complicated today, as more and more new players 
enter the international arena. The goals of American pdicy 
during the Cold War, from rollback to potyoentrism in Eastern 



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84 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



Europe, appear to have been realized, though hardly in any 
imaginable scenario of those years. 

With multiple centers of dedsioa making emerging in East- 
ern Europe and the Soviet Union, some analysts have warned 
that bold moves by the United States at thk time ivould be 
counterproductive. Americans might profitably, cautiously, 
*'simplv sii on their hands and watch while the drama unlolds. 
The Soviet Union, af ter all, will for some time be a wcakt-r slate 
than it has been since the C>old War, and one may argue thai the 
chaos in and collapse of the Soviet empire serve American inter- 
ests well. In any case, it is doubtful whether any American 
initiative would have much efifect on the prootutg of radical 
disintegration now taking place within what is left of the USSR. 

It might app>ear that this passive approach would minimize 
risks loi the United States; if one accepts, however, that long- 
term chaos, instability, and unpredictability would not be in 
America's interest, then disintegration of the Soviet Union may 
be undesirable from Washington's point of view. Since recon- 
struction of the okl empire is no longer possible without an 
abrupt turn away from f^asnost and dmnoknUixaitiia, the United 
States might do best to devise a policy that would encourage 
continued openness and democratization but also preserve 
some, however minimal, central state authority. In place ot the 
Soviet federation, the United States might use its intluence in 
whatever ways possible to promote a loose confederation of 
sovereign republics, tied together in a voluntary agreement, that 
wouki at least pro¥ideacentral authority r e t pn iMih irfiy defense 
(and nuclear weapons), be available as a third-party mediator 
between rival republks, and act as arbitrator in intercthnic con- 
flicts b etwe e n dominant nationalities and nunoritiet within 
republics. 

Regretiabh, manv of the republics, includini? the RSFSR, 
are rejecting such a proposal, put forth by President Gorbachev. 
Day by day, this solution appears less viable as the economic 
collapse loosens the fragile ties between the republics and the 
center. Yet, the alternative to some kind of oonfedteratkm may be 
prolonged dvil and ethnic wars. The United States oouU provide 
aid and support, much of it at a substate levd, to bolster the 



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SUNY □ 83 

failing economy and the Ciorbachev presidency. An agency for 
devek>pmg democracy and enterprise in the former Soviet 
Union, sponsored and funded by the U^. government, could 
manage aid programs of a nonmilitary nature. Given that 70 
years of Soviet socialism has engendered support for ivelfarist 
and protectionist state programs among the Soviet people, this 
agency should be prepared to encourage not only private enter- 
prise, but a range of collective, cooperative, joint state-private, 

j and Slate enterprises. It might stress aid in noncontroversial 

areas that are popular with the nationalist movements and over- 
ride particular ethnic interests, such as ecology. Sociologist and 
People's Deputy to the USSR Congress Liudmilla Harutiunian 
has advocated "Incentives for those wishing to remain fsuthliil to 
the existing ties of cooperation.** As an example, she mentioned 
that the cleanup of Chernobyl and its effects should be declared 
an all-Union responsibility, for it is far bevond the resources of, 
for example, Belorussia.^^ This would support both the market 
economy and the Gorbachev presidency. 

The United States has unique resources to exploit in its 

I engagement with post-Soviet society. Besides possessing en<Mr- 

mous wealth and developed technology, and offering an exam- 
ple of electoral politics, the United States is home to diaspora 
populations from the USSR, notably Armenians, Baltic peoples, 
Jews, and Ukrainians. Many of these peoples are interested in 
helping their compatriots in the homeland ; some, like the Arme- 
nian relief organizations set up to aid Armenia after the earth- 
quake of December 1988, are already deeply involved in helping 
their cotiationals. Diasporas can be mobilized and funded to 
develop moniioted projects, for both economic de v elop m ent 
and democratic political evolution. 

The United States can ill afford to either allow the complete 
disintegration of the Soviet Union, which has already been char- 
acterized as Lebanonization, or wait until a new, brutal central 
authority, whether military or Russian imperialist or fascist, re- 
creates by force a post-Soviet empire. Its interests in economic 
development as a prerequisite for stability and further demo- 
cratic political development can best be realiised if some central 
authority, however weak compared with the M Soviet state, is 

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86 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



preserved. In many ways, the post-Soviet confederation could 
resemble the West European ecxmomk and political union. Both 
wcmki be kiose, yet integnued, ecxsnomk bkio 
eign states. Exactly what prerogatives would be surrendered to 
the center will be the subject of negotiations in both parts of 
Europe for many years, or perhaps decades, to come. 

A large, more democratic, multinational state or integrated 
system of states will present a unique set of problems and oppor- 
tuniues for the United States, just as the greater economic and 
political luiity of Western Europe will. The creation of the Euro- 
pean Community and the end of the Gold War will inevitably 
transform the American military and economic role in Europe. 
The end of communism as we have known it also means the end 
of aniicommunism as we have known it. One might reasonably 
hope that Gorbachev s example oi revolutionizing international 
relations through "^new thinking** will prove mntagious. 



NOTES 

sun mdgbtcd to BcMsdict AiidciBoii« Iwtt/ptttd CMHMnnflMti.* 
R^baimtt m Ikt Origin and Spread efNtOmmlim (London: Verso. 198S). On 

fSic "construaedness" of nationality, sec also Emcst Gellner, T%mf^ 

and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964); Tom Nairn, The 
Break-up of Britain (London: New Left Books, 1977); and Geoff Eley, 
"Nationalism and Social History," Social Hutory 6, no. 1 (January 19ttl), 

pp. «3-l()7. 

2. Alexandre Bennigsen, "Several Nations or One Ptople," Survey, no. 108 
(1979). pp. 51 fr.; Michael Ry\«lun, Moscow's Muslim Chaikngi:SmfietC4ntr^ 
Asm (Annonk. N.Y.: If. E. Shvpe^ 1962). p. 1 18. BennigMn concluded, I 
believe wroogty. that for Soviet MuiSms, the natkwal-"^ 
national Soviet nrpiihliri mm the weakett loyalty, while the luprana- 
finnil aflfgiiiKy to the MMniccoimnMnity of Central 
was the strongest 

S. On Kazakhstan, see Martha BriU Okoct, Tht KauMs (Stanfofd. Cahf.: 

Hoover Institutkm Press, 1987). 

4. Gregory J. Massell. The Surrogate ProUtariat: Moslem Women and Rei nlution- 
ary Stratei^es m Sui-wt Central Asia, 1919—1929 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 
University Press, 1974), p. 83. 

5. Ibid., p. 397. 

6. Tamara Dragadze, Rural Families m Sauitt Georgia: A Case Study in RaUha 
Frovmu (London and New Yorli: Routiedfe, 1968). p. 199. 

7. Ibid., pp. 1S7-1S8. 



SUNY □ 87 



8. Gerald Mars and Yochanan Altman, "The Cultural Bases of Soviet Geor- 
gia't Second Ecooomf,*' Sauitt SUidm 35, no. 4 (October 1983)» pp. 546- 
56a 

9. Mmfil. Tht SmngaU FnlHariat, p. 409. 

10. TVmiaraDragMlie, "Sillily life in Georgia," 

11. Nfassell. The SnrrogaU ProUtariat, p. 60. 

12. Martb^ Brill Olcott. "Gorbachev's Nationalities Pblicy and Central Asia." in 
Rajan Menon and Daniel N. Nelson, eds., Umitskt Soviet Pawn {ixauDgUXi^ 
Mass.: Lexini^ton Books. 10S<M. pp. 69-70. 

13. Paul Goblc. Mostovss Nationaliiy Problems in Report on the USSR 2, 
no. 2 O 'nuary 12, 1990). p. 13. 

14. Prauda, September 22, 1989; CumtU Digest of the Saoiet Press 61. no. 40 
(November 1, 198^, p. 17; and Stephen Foye. **Defenie Ifinitter Vnov: 
IHendorlbeof IfifiuvyRefornisr 1, no. 44 (Nom- 
ber S, 1909), pp. 16-17. 

15. Jamet Critchlow, "Uzbdt Army Recruits Believed Murdered to Avenge 
Ferghana KiUings," Report on the USSR 1, no. 44 (November 3, 1989). pp. 
23-2.'). 

16. In August and September 1990. these paramilitary units were cither 
disarmed or uitegraied into the state torces under the general supervision 
of liie newly elected nonconimunist Armenian government. 

17. InBioitaoooattis,theperpetnttoriofdiekiUingsareandtobeAaeibai^^ 
endgmitt from Armenia. See Elizabeth Ailer. *XSorbndiev's Dilemma in 
A a gfaa ijan ,'' Report on the USSR 2, no. 5 (Bebruary 2, 1990), pp. 14-16. 
Fuller writes: 'XVcriror difdosed not long ago that up to half a million 
Azerbaijanis are unemployed. In Baku — a citv of 1.7 million — 68,000 
families do not have proper accommodation, and 2(M).()00 people live in 
shantN towns l^nmnstroiki].) It is this dispossessed underclass that was 
among the mam perpetrators ot tlie anti-.-\rmeman pogroms earlier this 
month, according to woiid chess cham|Mon Gary Kasparov, hinuelf a 
native of Baku** (p. 15). BiH Keller pkfted up dua view of KmieAaeibaijani 
inldieGbnIi in In remarkable (and diituibin|^ pMoe, "Did Moteow Indte 
Azerbaijanii? Some See a Pk>c**N«w York Tiwm, February 19, 1990. p. A6; 
Keller also reports rumors of KremMn provocation. 

18. Bess Brown. "The Role of Public Groups in Perestmika in Central Afia«** 
Report on the USSR 2. no. 4 ( januarv 26. 1990). pp. 20-25. 

19. tden Naby, Tajiks Reemphasi/e Iranian Heritage as Ethnic Pressures 
Mount in Central Asia," Report on the USSR 2, no. 7 (February 16, 1990), 
pp. 20-22; and the fioOowing artkin in R^art om ike USSR 2, no. 8 
(Bebruary 2S, 199C0H[aniesCriidiloir.'n^SclidarDeaaibet a Source 
of Ethnic Discontent,** pp. 19-20; Suzanne Crow, "Infionnal Graupa in 
Tajikistan— Will Thev Havea Eofe?** pp. 20-21; and Ben Bimm. *UnM 
in Tajikistan." pp. 2H-:^I. 

20. Da\iti B. Nissman, The Sin-irt i'Tium and Imnuin Azerbaijan: The Use of 
Satumalism for Political Penetration (Boulder, Colu., and London: Weslview 
Press, 1987). 

21. Anthony Hyman, ''Soviet-Iranian Relations: The End of Rapproche- 
mentr Jlipor<«ill«C/5Sli2,no.4(January26. 1990). ppw 17-18. 



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88 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



22. For a reading thai emphasizes the growing ftin-Turkic feelings in Tabriz, 
tec Amhooy Hyman, **Soviet-Iranian Relations and the T«vo Azerbaijans, ' 
Ripmt m Hf USSR 2. no. 2 (January 12, 1990), pp. 15-16w 

2S. Ahn GoNdl. "IMs at Kilf AmI Soviet Movci," TV Nnr Ymk Tima, 
January 26, 1990, p. A7. 

24. Olcott, "Gorbachev's Nationalities Policy and Central Asia." pp. 87-88. 

25. "Union Treaty Through the Labyrinth," Mmem Ata, November 8ft- 
December 2, 1^, pp. 8-9. 



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5 

THE SOVIET "NATIONALITY FRONT": 
SOME IMPUGATIONS FOR 
FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY 

Jeremy R. Azxael 

Untfl recently, U.S. policymakm and policy planners took it for 

granted that the Soviet Union would enter the 21st century as a 
unified countrv. The Baltic states might eventually gain their 
political indejx'ndence. but the rest of the Soviet Union, it was 
assumed, would stay intact. The great uncertainty was not 
whethir the USSR, but whither. Would Gorbachev and his coi- 
leaguet succeed in transforming the Soviet Union into a **nor- 
mal" country— that is, a country with a functioning economy, a 
dvU society, a democratic regime, and a "dviUzed" foreign pol- 
icy? Or would conservative opposition, bureaucratic resistance, 
and social inertia prove impossible to overcome? In the former 
case, U.S. -Soviet relations would cease to be essentiallv adver- 
sarial and might even become extremely dose. In the latter, the 
Soviet challenge to U.S. interests would persist, albeit in some- 
what less militant and less intimidating form. 

As a resuk of fost-paoed developments on the "nationality 
front,** the realization is growing in Wuhington, as elsewhere, 
that this presumed alternative has been overtaken by events. 
Instead of normalizing or backsliding, the Soviet Union seems to 
be disintegrating before our verv eyes. Rising national self-con- 
sciousness and self-assert iveness have completely shattered the 
myth that the peoples oi the Soviet Union have drawn signifi- 
candy closer during the past 70 years, let alone merged — to use 
the Soviet term--into a single, supranational Soviet people. In 
many cases, in fact, it seems dear that Sovietizatkm actually 
impeded what might otherwise have been a more or less rapid 
process of ethnopolitical integration. In any event, an upsurge of 

89 



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90 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

grass-roots nationalism has combined with a rapid breakdown of 
the governmental infrastructure to create a situation that invites 
comparison with nothing so much as the Ottoman empire on the 
eveof its collapse.* like the sultanic Porte at the turn of the 20th 
century, the Kremlin today seems to be not just relaxing its grip, 
but losing it. 

Gorbachev continues to insist that the adoption ot a new all- 
Union treaty that grants more power to the Union republics can 
arrest and reverse the centrifugal forces that are pulling the 
Soviet Union apart and still preserve a federal structure. His 
Gonstandy reitorated ooosthutional formula is *'strong republics 
and a strong center,** somdboiif combined in a moiie perfect ai^ 
politically "consolidated** Union. However, this formida is merdy 
one of many indications that Gorbachev has become part of the 
problem (in this case, the nationality problem), not the solution. 
If Gorbachev had offered the sorts of concessions to national 
aspirations in 1986 or 1987 that he was willing to offer by 1990, 
he might have been able to stem the tide. As it is, however, his 
promises of greater communal autonomy within a still central- 
ized system fall fur short of what neariy all of the formerly 
''captive nations" of the USSR are demanding and many have in 
fact already achieved. If any viable solution except dinolution 
can be found, it will almost certainly have to involve a qualitative 
reconfiguration of center-periphery relations, not just a quan- 
titative shift in the existing balance of power. By trying to hold 
the line, Gorbachev is only prolonging and aggravatnig what 
seems to have become, insofar as the survival of the Soviet Union 
is concerned, a terminal ethnopolitical crisis. 

From this perspective, the principal uncertainty facing the 
U.S. policy community is obviously no longer whether the Soviet 
Union wiU evdve into a normal country. It is what the effect on 
U.S. interests will be as the newly self-assertive peoples of the 
USSR and the central authorities from whom they are in the 
process of emancipating themselves continue to work (and fight) 
out what have already become completely new relationships both 
with each other and with the outside world. To reduce this 
unontainty, U.S. policymakers and policy planners have bq^ 
to ask themselves (and their analytical support stafB) a host of 



GopyiiQli;ea iriaiciial 



AZRAEL □ 91 



novel questions. For purposes ot illustration, ilsuttices to cite the 
ibilowing, security-oriented, examples: 

• How confident can we be that the Kremlin will continue to 
be able to deliver on its international commitments? At a 
time when the government of Russia is challenging the 
Kremlin's right to dispose of ''Russian" diamonds, gold, and 
oil without Russia's consent, how farfetched is it to envision a 
challenge to the Kremlin's agreement to dismantir "Rus- 
sian'* missiles, to suspend the sale of ''Russian*' anns, or to 
permit the verification of what b heing produced in "Rus- 
sian*' factories? 

• How certain is it that the Kremlin will be able to maintain 
exclusive control of Soviet nuclear weapons and other 

weapons of mass destruction? At a time when Soviet arsenals 
are hemorrhaging conventional weapons, what credible 
guarantees against leakage from putatively more secure 
facilities are possible? How certain are we that the Soviet 
high command would be able to distinguish a launch of 
nuclear weapcms by nationalist forces inside the Soviet 
Union from a foreign attack? Are there any dicumstanoes 
under which the high command might want to blur the 
difference? 

• How would the implementation of republic sovereignty af- 
fect Soviet military capabilities? How much is the Rus«an 
government Kkely to spend on the Soviet armed forces of its 

own volition? How likely is it to agree to the emplovment of 
•*its" conscripts outside "its ' borders? What happens mil- 
itarily if the Ukraine acts on its expressed intention to be- 
come a nuclear-free zone? 

• How would various Soviet republics' achievement of inde- 
pendence — or even sovereigntv, which, as thev define it, 
would give their laws precedence over those of the center — 
affect the correlation of forces in and stability of the various 
regions and international subsystems of which they would 
becomea part? How wouki the emergence of independent 
or quasi-independent Central Asian republics or of an inde- 



92 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 

pendent or quasi-independent "West Turkestan" affect the 
security situation in scNithwestern and northeastern Asia? 
How would the emergence of an independent Azerbaijan 
(or northern Azerbayan) affea the seciurity situation in and 
around the Fmian Gulf? How serious is the threat of a 
Balkanization of the entire Eurasian continent? 

PRonrEcriNG u^. interests 

1 he fact that questions such as these are now being raised in 
Washington, and raised with increasing urgency, is a dear indi- 
cation o[ the policy community's recognition that current and 
emergent developments oo the Soviet nationality front could 
have momentous implications for U.S. interests. To date, how- 
ever, Washington has made almost no effort to influence the way 
in which those dcNclopnienls uiitolcl. Although actions we have 
taken on other "fronts" have affected what is happening on 
the nationality front, nearly all the effects have been collateral 
and unintended. Except where Soviet Jewry is concerned, in 
fact, Washington seems to have gone out of its way to keep 
ethnopoKtical issues off its Soviet affairs agenda. 

llie greatest inhibition against changing this hands-of f pol- 
icy is Washington's fear that a more activist stance would make 
it harder to elicit the Kremlin*s continued cooperation in liqui- 
dating the remnants of the Cold War and in managing the transi- 
tion to a new world order. At a time when delicate negotiations are 
under way on such issues as the withdrawal of Soviet troops from 
Germany and Eastern Europe, the reduction of strategic arms, 
and Soviet partidpatkm in roolving the Itoian Gulf crisis, this is 
certainly a justifiable concern. All things considered, however, it 
seems f^ too alarmist %vith respect to the Kremlin's likely reac- 
tions to U.S. diplomatic incurnons on the nationality front and 
£ar too sanguine about the risks of continued noninterference. 

The first point to consider in this connection is that the 
Kremlin itself has already evinced a willingness to discuss some 
of the most sensitive aspects of its nationality problem, including 
the ethnopolitical threat to its exclusive control of Soviet nuclear 
arms. In addition, it has indicated that it is prepared to permit 



Copy 



AZRAEL □ 9S 



direct coniacis between foreign governments And the govern- 
ments oi the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Quite apart 
from what the Kremlin has already agreed to, more<wer, it very 
tikely woukl pitt up with a good deal more before dou^ 
that might jeopardize its chances of acquiring desperately 
needed Western economic assistance. 

This is not to deny that the Kremlin might feel compelled to 
retaliate against certain provocations on the nationalitv front in 
ways that could threaten U.S. interests. Overreaching bv the 
United States could certainly lead the Kremlin to be somewhat 
less responsive to VJS. security concerns and perhaps even to 
slow itt by-now ir re v er si ble retreat fix>m its residual positioos of 
strength in foreign countries. The Kremlin is already under 
intense pressure from hawks who are vigorously lobbying for a 
less dovish Soviet foreign policy. If these hawks could make a 
convincing case tor the pro|)osition (which thev have .iheaclv 
adNtUiced) that the I'nited States is bound and deternnned to 
dismantle not only the Kremlin's external empire, butitsmiernal 
empire — encompassing what are now Soviet republics — as well, 
they might become even more influential. Nevertheless, it is hard 
to envision anything the United States might do that would make 
sudi a case seem credible to nonbelievers. 

No one in the U.S. policy community today would even 
consider denouncing the KremHn as the c enter of an "evil em- 
pire." Nor would Washington adopt a policy of linkage that 
makes the Kremlin's access to U.S. markets (including credit 
markets) contingent on its agreement to wholesale decoloniza- 
tion. Absent sudi ammunition, however, Soviet hawks are un- 
likely to perstiade anyone that the United States is trying to make 
the nationality front the latest battleground in a continuing Cold 
War. In Gonse<|uence, it is hard to see why we should allow the 
threat posed by the existence of the hawks to continue to justify 
our observance of a sel(-imposed, sell-denying ordinance 
agamsi actions on behalt of the ethnopolitical outcomes that 
would serve our interests. Given the extreme volatility of the 
nationality front and the multitude of competing claims on 
scarce American resources, there are obviously strict limits on 
what we can hope to achieve. At the very least, however, it seems 



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94 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



sensible to take a number of relatively low-cost, risk-lree steps 
that might appreciably reduce the likelihood of what would 
undeniably be highly adverse outcomes, induding some out- 
comes that the Kremlin is as eager as everyone else to avoid. 

Some of these steps— and the outcomes they could help to 
avert-— are discussed below. 

Nuclear Prolijeratwn. One outc onit- that wc clearly are extremely 
eager to avert is the fragmentation of control over the Soviet 
nuclear arsenal and, more particularly, over strategic warheads 
and missiles. According to press reports, Washington has que^ 
ried the Kremlin about the reliability of its nudear security 
arrangements and received what are described as satisfactory 
assurances that all is weD. Given the growing ideological and 
eihnopoliiical tensions within the Soviet armed forces and the 
KGB, as well as in the broader society, however, it is difficult to 
take any such assurances very seriously. Moreover, even it no 
dear and present danger of a security breakdown cxbts today, 
tomorrow oould well be another story. In fact, there are a 
number of far from incredible scenarios under which existing 
safeguards might £ul, induding some in which nudear arms 
might end up in the hands of groups or governments (including 
foreign as well as Soviet groups or governments) that are quite 
hostile to the United States. 

To reduce this risk, the U.S. government has every right and 
reason to demand much firmer assurances than it has received to 
date that the Kremlin is doing everything possible to prevent the 
capture, or "liberation," potentially usable (or recydable) nu- 
dear weapons. Among other channels, we should use our bur- 
geoning high-level military exchanges with the USSR €or this 
purpose. U.S. participants in these cxch<inges should voice our 
concerns urgently and with absolute candor. In the process, they 
should leave their Soviet interlocutors with no doubt that failure 
to address and alleviate these concerns will have a seriously 
adverse effect on U.S.-Soviet relations. At the same time, they 
should make it dear that we are willing to consider making 
certain changes in our strategic posture to minimise the risks that 
the Soviet high command would lUfioiiiiiedly peixxm 



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AZRA£L □ 95 



fKiciKc-building process that might require the unilaieral dis- 
armament, dismantling, or relocation of a considerable number 
of Soviet nudear weapons. The complex negodadons that would 
have to ensue coukl conceivably be folded into accelerated Stra- 
tegic Anns Reductkm Talks II. However, one could also nudce a 
strong case for conducting such negotiations as a resumption of 
the less highly publicized risk reduction talks that led to the 
creation of the so-called Risk Reduction Center, w hich is specifi- 
callv charged with handling a variety of safeguard issues and is 
an institution whose mandate we should anyway try to broaden 
in the light of present drcumstances. 

Russian Fascism. Another horrific outcome of the struggles be- 
ing waged on the nationality front would be the emergence of a 

jingoist, neofascist Russia (or rump, Russian-led, Soviet Union). 
At a minimum, this would mean that men whose values and 
aspirations are deeply antithetical to our own controlled a large 
and strategically located part of the earth's surface and a huge, 
nuclear-armed military force. Furthermore, the probability is 
very high that the empowerment of these men would be the 
prelude to an aggressive anschbus campaign to protect or restore 
the rights of the Russian residents or former residents of non- 
Russian territories. This campaign, in turn, would almost cer- 
tainly precipitate a bloodv internal war — a war that could e.isilv 
spill across Soviet (or ex-Soviet) borders and have highly desta- 
bilizing effects in Eastern Europe, southwestern Asia, and possi- 
bly other regions. In consequence, the United States has a very 
strong interest in enluuidng the prestige and ensuring the suc- 
cess of the liberal and democratic leaders who at least for the 
moment have deariy won the confklence of a large part of the 
Russian people. 

Belated recognition of this interest is presumablv at least 
partially responsible for the recent cessation of derogator\ com- 
ments about Boris Yeltsin bv administration insiders, as well as 
for the generally more respectful treatment that leading Russian 
democrats have recendy begun to receive from formerly stand- 
offish U.S. officials. Given the growing militancy of rif^t-wing 
efforts to discredit Russia's demcxxatic officeholders and to sab- 



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96 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



otage their policies, however, this is clearly too little, especially at 
a time when Gorbachev seems more ciianclined than ever to 
foi^e an alliance with the democrats and may well be considering 
a crackdown s^iainst them. What is called ftnr is a much stronger 
inxlication by Washington that it cares deeply about the outcome 
of the struggle that is under way and is prepared to curtail U.S. 
aid and assistance to the Kremlin if any effort is made to dislodge 
democraiicallv elected officials. 

Looking further down the pike, it would also serve our 
interests if a sizable portion of the technical assistance we are 
sending to the Soviet Union was clearly earmarked for pro- 
grams sponsored or approved by the governments of Moscow, 
Leningrad, Sventtovsk, and other democratkaDy led Russian 
dties, or by the Fknesidium ci the Supreme Soviet of the Russian 
Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. This would send a clear 
signal that we are ready to put our money where our mouth is (or 
should be). It would also make it easier for the democratic recip- 
ients to deliver something tangible to their understandably im- 
patient constituents, with all the demonstration effects this 
would produce. 

IsUmk f^mdawietUaliswi. Still another highly undeshraMe out- 
come from a U.S. point of view would be an upsurge of Ishunic 
fundamentalism among the Soviet (or ex-Soviet) Muslims of 
Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Since much of the information we 
have on the alleged growth of Islamic lundamentalism in the 
contemporary USSR comes from So\ iet publicists with a clear 
interest in persuading us to condone the Kremlin's repeated use 
of military force against Kaiakh, Aierbaijani, Uzbek, and other 
Muslim protesters, estimating the likelihood such an outcome 
is difficult. However, information from more trustworthy 
sources, including intuitively credible information about the 
lessons many Soviet Muslims have drawn from the ability of fun- 
damentalist forces to drive seemingly omnipotent infidels suc- 
cessively out of Iran and Afghanistan, suggests real cause for 
concern. Furthermore, all signs indicate that the already fairly 
widespread prosdytizing of the £aithfui by fundamentalist true 
believers will become even more extensive with the further ero- 



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AZRAEL □ 97 



sion of tciiiial controls. It is by no means impossible, theretorc, 
thai the Muslims oi the USSR could be natural allies oi some oi 
America*! moststubboniiy aggressive advenariei (e.g., Iran and 
Libya) at they reemeige as independent or quan-independent 
acton on the international scene. 

On its own, the United States can do very little, if anything, 
to avert this prosj>ect. On the contrary, U.S. efforts to prevent 
the spread of liuidamentalism would almost certainly backfire if, 
as is likelv, ihey were perceived as such. However, the L'nited 
States is not imp>otent. It is in a position to encourage and 
support such efforts on the part of several antifundamentalist 
Muslim countries, particulariy Turkey. With the exception of 
2 million Tajiks, almost all of the Musfims of the USSR are of 
TVirkic origin, speak Hirkic languages, and have had positive 
historical associations with Turks and with Turkey- Hence, in all 
likelihood, ihev would be hii^hlv receptive to Turkish proposals 
to open consulates, information centers, trade offices, and other 
such installations in their midst, and to expand academic, cul- 
tural, scientific, and technical exchanges.'*^ Thanks to such out- 
reach, the government of Turkey would be in a very good 
position to provide Soviet Muslims with the most convincing 
available proof that a Muslim country can become part of the 
West and successfully modernize itself without undermining its 
Muslim identity. Bv vigorouslv encouraging and generously 
supporting such outreach, in turn, the U.S. government could 
help ensui e that Islamic f undamentalists do not win over Soviet 
Musiinu largely by default. 

BalkamraiimL A fourth-^and, finr present purposes, final---out- 
Gonie that oouM pose a significam threat to U.S. interests would 

be the fragmentation of the USSR into a number of highly 
ethnocentric successor states in which "resident aliens'* experi- 
ence svstematic persecution, and the "redress of national griev- 
ances" and "rectification of national boundaries" constitute the 
highest political priorities. I he bloody pogroms and border 
clashes that have already taken place in the Caucasus and Central 
Asia dearly indicate the kinds of explosive instability such Bal- 
kanization could create. It is also indicative — and perhaps even 



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98 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



more disturbing in terms of U.S. interests — that the prospect of 
mdependenoe has led the governments or national liberation 
fronts of the Western bonloiands to l e ass e i t a vmety of long- 
standing territorial daims not only against Russia but against 
each other and, in some cases, against their East European 
neighbors. Given the intensity of the passions invested in many 
of these disputes, big-time trouble could lie ahead once the 
disputing parties acquire their own armed forces. This process is 
already under way in some republics and will most certainly 
continue and accelerate even in the case of those republics diat 
opt for soveieignty rather than independence (assuming Russia 
provides such an option by agreeing to link its sovereignty with 
theirs). 

The United States can take a number of steps in the near 
term to reduce the danger of esralaiing conflict among the Soviet 
Union's non-Russian successor states, and between and among 
them and their neighbors. These indude the fiollowing: 

• letting the Kremlin on notice that a continuation of its 
efforts to exacerbate interethnic hostilities could advendy 
af!ect U.S.~Soviet relations. These efforts are hard to docu- 
ment conclusively, but a good deal of evidence suggests that 
the KGB has had a hand in a number of outbreaks of 
commiuiai violence in the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well 
as in the emergence of the so-called interfront movements 
in the Baltic states and several other xenophobically nation- 
alist organizations throughout the USSR. In addition, in a 
number of instances, the RGB appears to have gone out 
its way to try to torpedo efforts by communal leaders to talk 
out their differences and build bridges between their re- 
spective constituencies before national antagonisms got out 
of hand. Absent a smoking gun, the United States should 
talk sofUy on this subfect, but it should not hesitate to Speak 
in a way that conveys our strong opposition to the continued 
use of divide-and-rule tactics at a time when we want concil- 
iation to be high on every(Mie*s agenda. 

• Establishing an official VJS. presence in all of the non- 



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AZRAEL □ 99 



Russian republics and making an all-out ef fort to contact all 
important segments of the local populations. Our knowl- 
edge of what is actually happening on the ground in most of 
the non*Riisiian republics is extremely limited. As a result* 
we are often at a kiss about what to expea next or what, if 
anything, we might usefully do about it. The prompt open- 
ing of miniconsulates of the sort that Washington is consid- 
ering would be a useful first step, but the United States 
should take additional steps as quickly as possible, prefera- 
bly through arrangements made direcdy with republican 
rather than central authorities. 

• Encouraging and supporting the efforts of communal 
leaders to open channels of communication w ith each other 
and doing everything possible to facilitate bridge-building 
contacts and exchanges across communal lines. In addition 
to on-site contacts and exchanges, Washington can organize 
or help organize roundtable discussions, seminars, and the 
Uke on neutral ground, including some in which American 
participants and other outsiders mav be able to play useful 
roles as mediators and peacemakers in exploring partic- 
ularly contentious issues. 

• Sponsoring and supporting studies to identif y and explore 
the f easibility of cross-border projects that pn^mise to bring 
significant benefit to all of the participants. Once these 
Studies are completed, the United States should offer to 
provide or solicit technical and other assistance for coopem- 
thw efforts to implement projects that seem likely to hawe a 
particularly high yield in terms of interethnic peacekeeping. 

• Clearly conveying to everyone concerned that, all other 
things being equal, U.S. technical assistance and eoonomic 
aid b more likdy to be forthcoming for cro8s4)order proj- 
ects than for others. 

• Making all relevant parties aware that the United States will 
not proncte technical assistance amd eoonomic aid to com- 
munities that fail to respect the human and oimmunal 
rights of national minorities within their jurisdictions. 



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100 □ THE RISE OF NATIONS 



SHORT-TERM FOCUS: PREPARING TO MEET THE 
CHALLENGE 

Needless to sav, there is absolutely no guarantee that these and 
similar steps the United States can prudently take to prevent the 
centrifugal forces that are tearing the USSR apart from produc- 
ing worst-case outcomes will actually achieve their intended pur- 
pote. In fact, it vmiki not be at all surprising if devdopments 
foUowed Murphy's law and went completely sour, despite our 
best efforts. This seems particularly Ukely, since almost all of 
those efforts involve lead times that are likely to be very long 
when measured against the accelerating timetable of events. 
What this suggests, in turn, is that we may eventually have to 
consider much more drastic, emergency measures to deal with 
the consequences of our inability to secure more fiivorable out- 
coines in the time available. Therefore, it seems none too early to 
begin at least a certain amount of planning against very undenr- 
aUe contingencies. 

An essay such as this is obviously not an appropriate place to 
undertake this mind-boggling task. To indicate where the pro- 
cess might end. however, it may not be inappropriate to point out 
that, among others, we should probably be planning tor situa- 
tions in which the United States cannot effectively protect its 
interests without deploying, and possibly even employing, mili- 
tary force, either unilaterally or as part of a larger United Na- 
tions or multilateral force. Possible cases in point include the 
acquisition or threatened acquisition of Soviet nudear weapons 
by hostile and adventurist groups or regimes, the outbreak or 
threatened oullyreak of large-scale hostilities along or across 
internationallv sensitive Soviet (or ex-Soviet) borders, the initia- 
tion of gcnocidal or potentiallv genocidal attacks on U.S.— linked 
ethnic groups (e.g., Jews or Armenians), and/or the outbreak ot 
a Russian civil war pitting an embattled democratic regime 
against insurgent neofasdsts. Although the force requirements 
to deal with these situations would vary gready, depending on 
the partkiilarities of the scenario, the need to consider U.S. force 
requirements in thinking seriously about prospective develop- 
ments on the Soviet nationality front speaks doquendy for itself. 



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AZRAEL □ 101 



(iiven such iminiidating prospects, it is not surprising that 
some oi those who have begun to contemplate them have also 
begun to evince a certain nostalgia for the status quo ante of the 
cariy Gorbachev years or even before. In a few cases, in £Kt, 
nostalgia has taken hyperbolic form. The British historian £. J. 
Hobsbowm, for example, has written **in melancholy retrospect" 
that Brezhnev and his predecessors should be credited with "the 
great achicxcnieni" ot saving the citi/ens of their multinational 
empire from ' the disastrous effects of nation<tlism." This, how- 
ever, is dearly giving credit to those who are most to Uame £ar 
creating and fueling what eventually became an cxplosioo wait- 
ing to happen. 

This explosion may or may not be about to occur. Even if it 
cannot be defused, however, it will not vindicate Hobsbawm*s 
argument that the emancipation of the "captive nations** of the 
USSR is incompatible with the civilized "restructuring of the 
world in the 21st ceniurv."^ All it will prove is that the conse- 
quences of decades of captivity cannot be undone in short order. 
One of the biggest challenges facing U.S. policymakers today is 
to do everything they can to undo these consequences. As they 
try to meet this diallenge, misplaced nostalgia, not to mention 
fafalistir melancholia, can only get in the way. 

NOTES 

Tfu vifius expressed are those <^ the author alotie, and do not rejlecl the views oj HAAD or 
any of kt ehmb. 

1. See Mkfaad MmdeflMUun. "Shaky Empiret. Then and ^kllv^ Time, Ocuy 

her 29. 1090. p 93: see also the writings of RofeMW CharieiRMrilMlkltt 

the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute. 

2. See ( .r.iham Fuller. "The Emergence of Central Am," Fmwign Foiicy, 78 
(Spring 1990), csp. p. 

3. See Lnt J . Hobsbawui, \ations and Nationalism iiince 1 780: Programme, Myth, 
Reahty (New York: Cambridge University Pless. 1990). 



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APPENDIX I: NATIONALITIES IN THE 

POPULATION OF THE USSR 



TABLE 1. ETHNIC GOMPOSITION OF THE FIFTEEN SOVIET REPUBUGS 

(Percent) 

Republic Nationality % Republic i\aUonalUy % 



Armenia 


Armenian 


89.7 




Azerbaijani 


5.5 




Russian 


2.3 




Kurd 


1.7 


Azerbaijan 


. ... 

Azerbaijani 


78.1 






7 Q 




Ai iiicilun 


7.9 


iielorussia 


Belorussian 


79.4 




Russian 


1 i.y 










Ukrainian 


2.4 




Icwish 


1.4 


Estonia 


Estonian 


64.7 




Rusnan 


27.9 




Ukiainian 


2.5 




Belorussian 


1.6 




Finnish 


1.2 


Georgia 




68.8 




Armenian 


9.0 




Russian 


7.4 




Azerbaijani 


5.1 




Osetin 


3.3 




Abkhazian 


1.7 


Kazakhstan 


Russian 


40.8 




Kazakh 


36.0 




Ukrainian 


6.1 




Tatar 


2.1 


Kirgiiizia 


Kirghiz 


40.7 




Russian 


22.0 




Uzbek 


10.S 




Ukrainian 


2.6 




Tatar 


1.7 



Latvia L<uvian 53.7 

Russian 32.8 

Belorussian 4.5 

Ukrainian 2.7 

Foiish 2.5 

Lithuania Lithuanian 80.1 

Russian 8.(3 

Polish 7.7 

Belorussian 1.5 

Nfoldova Moldovan 6S.9 

Ukrainian 14.2 

Russian 12.8 

Gagauzi 3.5 

Jewish 2.0 

Bulgarian 2.0 

Russia Russian 82.6 

Tatar S.6 

Ukrainian 2.7 

Chuvash 1.2 

Plus more 
than 100 other 
nationalities 

Taiikistan Tajik 58.8 

Uibek 22.9 

Rusnan 10.4 

Tatar 2.1 

Turkmenistan Turkmen 68.4 

Ruaian 12.6 

Uifaek 83 

Kazakh 2.9 



103 



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104 □ AFF£NDIXI 



1ABL£ 1. CONTlNLtD 







% 


— -«»-'- 


NaUmmlkf 


% 




Uknuniui 


7S^ 


Uzbeiustui 


Uibek 


6S.7 




RUMHUI 


21.1 




Rinrian 


10.8 




Jewish 


IS 




Iter 


4.2 




Belorussian 


0.8 




Ksakh 


4.0 




Moldovan 


0.6 




Tajik 


3.9 




fblish 


0.5 




Ksrakalpak 


1.9 



TiMH^ Maidi 12. 1980. 



TABLE 2. NUMBERS OF SOVIET CENTtAL ASIANS UVING IN THE USSR 

AND ABBOAD, 1980 AND 1989 



Karakalpak 
Kazakh 



Tayik 

Turkmen 

U^ur 
Uzbek 



USSR (1989) 

423,000 
8,138.000 

23S1.000 

4.217.000 
2.718.000 

262.000 
16.686.000 



Abroad (1980) 



2,000 (Alghaimtan) 

800,000 (China) 
3.000 (Aighanistan) 

97,000 (China) 
25.000 (AfghaniMaD) 



300,000 (.Afghanisian) 
400,000 (Iran) 

5.000,000 (China) 

18.000 (China) 
lUMNMKW (A^hanviin) 



bf Ranid Grnor Sony fimn the feDowing: Ann Sbediy, "Ethnic 
I Aocount for Hwof the Sov iet Pbpu la t i( )n I ncrease.** Report on the USSR 
2. no. 3 (January 19. 1990). pp. 16-18; and .Aziide-Avsc Rorlich. "Soviet Central 
Asians Look Towards Xinjiang," Report on the USSR 1. no. 50 (December 15. 
196B). pp* 21-23. 



Copyrighted material 



APPENDIX 1 □ 1U5 
SOVIET POPULATION TRENDS, 1979-1989* 

□ Riissiam repivsented 50.8 penxnt of the Soviet populate 
in 1989, down from 52.4 percent in 1979. 

□ Slavs lepresciilcd ()9.74 pei ceni of the Soviet population in 
1989, down from 72.19 percent in 1979 and 73.97 percent 
in 1970. 

□ Russians have been ini^i ating out of the southern Soviet 
re}jubli( s and have de( lined absolutelv in ninnber in Ar- 
menia. Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and 
Uzbekistan. This trend began in the 1960s in Transcaucasia 
and in the 1970t in Central Asia; the opposite trend is 
apparent in Latvia, where Slavic in-migratkm in the 1980s 
exceeded the increase of the indigenous populations. The 
proportion of Russians has also increased significantly in 
Belorussia, Lithuania, Moldova, and the Ukraine. 

□ The Muslim and Caucasian peoples, as well as the Mol- 
dovans, have increased their share of the overall Soviet 
population. Central Asian Muslims plus Azerfoaijanis make 

up 14.39 percent of the Soviet population: Armenians and 
Georgians together. 4 percent; Moldovaiis LI 7 percent; 
and Baltic peoples only 1.94 percent. 

□ IVaditionally Muslim peoples, who now number 54.8 mfl- 
lion (exduding Osetins, Abkhazians, Ajars, and a few other 

small i^roups). make up 19.2 percent of the Soviet popula- 
tion. .-\s I able inditates, thev had the largest proportional 
population increase, while Baltic and Slavic peoples had the 
lowest (below the average increase for the Soviet population 
as a whole). 

□ The population of lurkic-speaking peoples, the second 
largest linguistic gr(^up after the Slavs, numbers 49.5 million 
( 1 7.3 percent of the Son iet population) and increased some- 
what slower than the Muslim population in general (at a rate 
of 24.5 percent). The five Turkic Muslim peoples that have 
republics of their own decreased their rate of population 
growth in the 1980s, though it still remains high. 



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106 □ APPENDIX I 



TABLt 3. PKRCtN l AC.K POPL LAI ION INC RLASL OF VARIOUS 
NATiONAUriES IN TH£ USSR, 1979-1989 



Poptihtim 

Naikmality increase (%) 


Tajik 


45.5 


Uzbek 


34.0 


Turkmen 


34.0 


Kirghiz 


32.8 


Kazakh 


M.1 


Azerbayani 


UJO 


Moidovan 


13.0 


Georgian 


11.6 


Armenian 




Soviet popiilatioa 




as a w hule 


9.0 


Lithuanian 


7.6 


Bclonmian 


6.0 


RuMiaii 


5.6 


Ukrainian 


4.2 


Latvian 


1.4 




0.7 



Sm ute: Ann Shcchy. Ttuiwan Share of Soviet Populatioo Domi to 50.8 Itaxent," Reptrt 
m Hr USSR 1. no. 42 (October 20, 1989). p. 2. 



□ The Soviet population as a wh<^ grew at a slower annual 
rate in the 198Qs than it did in the 19708; for the Tajiks, 
Moldovans, Bekmissians, and Latvians, groivth was fiuter in 
the 1980s. The sharp drop in the Armenian growth rate is 

probably due to the losses suffered in the earthquake <rf" 

December 7, 1988, and emigration to the United States. 

□ Nationalitiw that do not have their own republic and that 
dedined in number in the 19708 continued to dedine in the 
19808 (Mordvins, Kardians, and Finns); the Jewish popula- 
tion also dedined (by 20 percent), though here emigration 
was a prindpal factor. Some small nationalities — ^Meskhe- 
dans, Crimean Tatars, Krymchaks (Crimean Jews) — reaj>- 
peared in the latest census, while others — like the V'eps — 
reversed their dechnes. 

□ Use of one's nadve language remains high overalL It is 



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APPENDIX I □ 107 

increasing among Armenians and Estonians; decreasing 
slightly among Belorussians, Ukrainians, and Moldovans; 
and holding fairly steady among the rest, 

NOTE 

1. The Soviet popuhdon trends are from: Ann Sheeliy, '*Riuiisn Share of 
Soviet FDpulatioD Down to 50^ Feroent " Rtport on fir USSR 1, no. 42 

(October 20, 1989), pp. 1-5; , "Ethnic Mutfims AaaausA for Half of 

the Soviet Population Increase,** Rtpmrt m Ike USSR 2, no. S (January 19, 
1990), pp. 15-18. 



Copyrighted material 



APPENDIX II: SYMPOSIUM ON SOVIET 
NATIONALITIES AND AMERICAN 
FOREIGN POUCY 

OrganiZi'd by the Council on I-'otrign Rt'latn)ns in cooperation with 
the Xatiotiality and Siberian Studies Program of 
CoUtmbia Unkmitfs Harriman InstUuti 

October 25-26, 1990 

Michad Manddbaum, Group Director— Cotmo/ on Fonign 

Relations 

Jcrcinv R. Azracl, Author — RAXD 

Sergei M.iksudov, Author — HarL>ard L niversity 

Alexander J. Motyi, Author — Columbia University 

Ronald Grigor Suny, Author — Umuersiiy cf Mkkigim 

Wilttam Taubman, Author—- AM^mf CoUege 

Thereta F. Weber, Rapporteur— Couna/ on Fanign RtkOkms 

Audrey Mclnemey, Rapporteur— CoMndl an Fonign RdaAam 

Hanac — Yale L'niirrsity 
Aurcl Braun — i'niversily of To? onto 
Robert C-uUen — Soviet- American Trade 
James Davis — Coktmbia UniversUy 

Wilham M. Dmmut-Cohnel, US, Air Fanx, VisUmg MHilmy 

FiUaw, CmmcU on Fonign Rglaiions 
Eric Edelman — U.S, DepartmnU of Defense 
Felkre Gaer — Internatknud League for Human Rights 

Mark Ciarrison — Bnrwn University 

Wallace C. Ciregsou — Colontl. U.S. Mamie Corps, VisUing MiUtary 

Felloii, Council on Foreign Relations 
Michael Halt/el — Woodrau^ Wiison Intermtumal Center for Schoiars 
Feter Hauriohner— Department ef State 

109 



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110 □ APP£ND1X11 



Grey Hodnett — U.S. Central Intelligence Agency 

Henry Huttenbach — City College of New York 

Edward Kline--Czdk^ /"^i^l^^ Cmponiion 

James Klurfeld— Newiday 

Ivo Lederer— 512/ IrUenuUkmal 

WiOiain Lam — MetropoUkm Museum cf Art 

Margaret Osmer-McQuade — Council on Foreign Relations 

Jenik Radon — Radon and Ishizumi 

Jaan Rebane — Institute Philosophy, Sociology and Law, Tallin, 

Estonia 

Cynthia Roberts — Hunter College 
Michael Rywkin-^ CoUege efNew York 
Sophia Shizar — ^Rrobleiiis of Gommiuusm 
Alexander Vershbow— C/^. Departmeni ef State 



Copynghiecl mateiidl 



INDEX 



Abkhazians, 12, 29 
Alexander III, Tsar, 2h 
All- Union treaty. 59. 90 
Angola, hi 

Armenia. 9; diaspora populations, 
79; ethnic conflicts. 2. 64. 78-79: 
independence movement follow- 
ing civil war. 29- .SO: intelli- 
gentsia's loss of influence, 78; mi- 
litias. 13: 1917 nationalist move- 
ment. 38j political efforts of na- 
tionalists, 74; purges of top 
leaders, 74; Turkey and, 82-8H 

Arms control. L 57. 60-61. 94-95 

Astrakhan. 2Q 

Autixracv, Tsarist empire and, 

20-22 ' 

Azerbaijan: diaspora populations, 
79, 81-83: ethnic conflicts, 2, 64. 
78-79; independence movement 
following civil war, 29-30; intel- 
ligentsia's loss of influence, IS; 
Iranian Azerbaijanis and, 81-82: 
militias. 76; 1917 nationalist 
movement. ^ political efforts of 
nationalists, 24 

Baku. 68 

Balkanization of Soviet areas, possi- 
ble. 97-98 

Baltic republics. See Estonia: Latvia; 
Lithuania 

Basmachis, 28, 3Q 

Belorussia, 32, 49-50: Western 
states' interest in. 54-58 

Bessarabia, 32 

Bolshevik jxjlicy on nationalities, 72 
Borders, sanctity of, 1 1 
Brezhnev, Leonid I., 35, 36, fi9 
Budenny, Gen. Scmyon, 



Bukhara, 3Q 
Bukovina, 32 
Bulgaria, 48, 53 

Catherine II, the Great, 4, 21, 2fi 
Chanturia. Giorgi. 28 
China. People's Republic of. 48 
Civil war in 1990s, possible, 12-13, 

Clausewitz. Karl von, 1 
Coexistence. 36—37 
Collectivization. 3L fi9 
Confederation of post-Soviet states, 

59,84 
Cossacks, 2J 

Crimean Tatars, 2. 21. 32. 35 
Crimean War. 23 
Custine, Marquis de, 22 
Czechoslovakia, 32, 35, 36. 48, 53- 
54. 56 

Decolonization process. 6-7 

Decommunization. 53, 6i 

Demirchian. Karen, 24 

Detotalization process, 44-45; chaos 
resulting from miscalculations, 
4r)-4M: Eastern Europe and, 48- 
49: economic problems and. 45- 
46; glasnost and, 45, 46; inde- 
pendence for republics and, 49— 
51 : political reforms and. 46, 42. 
See also State-building following 
detotalization 

Diaspora jxjpulations, 7-8. 79-80; 
Azerbaijan- 1 ran situation, 81-82; 
in United States, 85 

Dictatorship, Soviet empire and. 
30-31. 33 

Diplomatic relations between repub- 
lics and West, proposed, ^ 



111 



112 □ INDEX 



Disraeli, Benjamin, 23 
Dissidents, persecution of, 5D 
Dragadze, Tamara, 7J 

East Germany, 3S, 48, 5J 
Eastern Europe: detotalization 

process and, 48-49; overthrow of 

communist regimes, 1 
Economic aid for republics, 61-62 
Economic problems: detotalization 

process and, 45-46: nationalist 

movements and, 5-6, 72 
Emigration issue, 10 
Engels, Friedrich, 2J^=22 
Environmental issues, 44—45, 53 
Estonia, 2-3. 8] annexation of, 32j 

independence following civil war, 

29; Russification and, 70; U.S. 

policy toward, 9-10; Western 

states' interest in, 54-58 
Ethnic composition of republics, 

103-104 

Ethnic conflicts, 2, 64, 78-83; Bal- 
kanization and, 97-98; state- 
building following detotalization 
and, 52 

Ethnic culture, 49] nationalist move- 
ments and, 66-67 

Far Eastern Republic, 30 
Fascist-led Russia, possible, 95-96 
Finland, 38 

Foreign p>olicy-nationality policy 
relationship, 15-18; civil war pe- 
riod, 28-30; demise of empires 
and, 38, 40-41; Khrushchev- 
Brezhnev period, 36-37; stability 
concerns of West and, 40—41; 
Stalin's policies, 30-32. 34-35; in 
Tsarist empire, 22-27; World 
War II and, 32-33 

French empire, 6 

Gaddis, John Lewis, 23 
Galacia, 24 

Gamsakhurdia, Zviad, 74, 78 
Georgia, 3, 9; diaspora populations, 
79; ethnic conflicts, 79; indepen- 
dence, claim to, 10-11; indepen- 



dence movement following civil 
war, 29-30; intelligentsia's loss of 
influence, 78; minorities within, 
12; political efforts of nationalists, 
74-75; Russiflcation and, TOj tra- 
ditional cultures, persistence of, 
71 

German minority, 26, 36—37 
Glasnost, 45, 46 
Goble, Paul, 75 

Gorbachev, Mikhail S., 1—5, 44, 46, 
73-74; detotalization process, 
mishandling of, 45-48, 50; na- 
tionalities problem, mishandling 
of, 76-77. 90 

Grushevskii, M.S., 24 

Hapsburg empire, 7 
Harutiunian, Liudmilla, 83 
Havel, Vaclav, 36 
Hitler, Adolf, 33 
Hobsbawm, E.J., Hll 
Human rights, 40—41, 56 
Hungary, LL 32, 35, 48, 53-54. 56 

Ideology, Soviet empire and, 27—30. 
33 

Independence for republics: bor- 
ders issue, 1 1 ; claims of inde- 
pendence, 10—11; detotalization 
process and, 49—51; minorities 
within republics, 12; secession is- 
sue, 3; titular republics policy 
and, 49-50; U.S. policy on, 9-10 

Iran, 81-82 

Islamic fundamentalism, 96—97 
Ivan IV, the Terrible, Tsar, 20, 31 

Jackson- Vanik amendment of 1974, 
10 

Jelavich, Barbara, 23 

Jewish Antifascist Committee, 33 

Jewish question, 25, 34-35. 36-37 

Kazakhstan, 2, 9, 28; collectiviza- 
tion, impact of, 3L 69; 1917 
nationalist movement, 38; purges 
of top leaders, 74 

Kazan, 20 



Copyrighted material 



INDEX □ LU 



Khiva, 3D 

Khrushchev, Nikita S., 35, 36 
Kirghizia, 9, 38, 79 
Kliuchevskii, V.O., 18 
Kolbin, Gennadii, 24 
Konigsberg, 18, 32, 34 
Kristof, Ladis K.D., 18 
Kunaev, Dinmukhamed, 36^ 24 
Kuriles, 32 

Latvia, 2-3. 8i annexation of, 32] 
independence following civil war, 
29; 1917 nationalist movement, 
38; secession issue, 3] U.S. policy 
toward, 9-10; Western states' in- 
terest in, 54-58 

Lenin, Yi, 27, 28, 29 

Lithuania, 2-3, 8; annexation of, 
32; independence following civil 
war, 29] secession issue, 3; U.S. 
policy toward, 9-10; Western 
states' interest in, 54-58 

Lvov, 32 

Madari, Ayatollah Kazim Shariat, 

82 

Massell, Gregory, 70 

Military, proposed nationalization 

of, 7.5-76 
Milyukov, Paul, 18, 39 
Moldova, Western states' interest in, 

54-58 
Mongols, 15 
Mozambique, 51 
Mukachev, 32 

Muslims: ethnic conflict among, 
80-82; Islamic fundamentalism, 
96-97 

Mzhavanadze, Vasily P., 36 

Nagorno-Karabakh (NKAO), 2, 64, 
78-79 

Nationalist movements: assimilation 
concerns and, 69-70; civil war 
period, 28] crackdown on, 13, 
50-51, 76-77; demise of Tsarist 
and Soviet empires, relation to, 
37—41; economic factors, 5-6. 
71-72. 77; ethnic culture and, 



66-67; human rights and, 40- 
41; ideological vacuum filled by, 
76; imperial relationship and, 
68-69; intelligentsia's loss of in- 
fluence, 78] international legit- 
imacy of nationalism, 13-14; mili- 
tary reforms and, 75-76: move- 
ments of 1917 and 1991, compar- 
ison of, 38-39; nation-building 
and, 67-68; origins of, 65-66; 
overview of, 2-4; perestroika 
and, 49-5 1 ; persecution of dissi- 
dents and, 50] persistence of 
traditional cultures and, 70-71; 
political efforts of nationalists, 
74-75; purges of republic leaders 
and, 73-74; as revolution from 
below, 64—65; Soviet policy on na- 
tionalities and, 72] territorializa- 
tion of ethnicity and, 68] tradi- 
tional cultures and, 70-71; in 
Tsarist period, 22, 23-24; West- 
ern perspective on, 77 

Nation-building, 67-68 

Nicholas L Tsar, 22 

Nuclear-free zones, 60-61 

Nuclear proliferation, 94-95 

Olcott, Martha Brill, 73 
Orthodoxy, Tsarist empire and, 

19-20 
Osetins, 12, 79 
Ottoman empire, 7 

Pamyat society, 25 

Pan-Armenian National Movement 
(HHSh), 74, 78 

Pashazade, Sheikh ul-Isam 
Allkhshukur, 81 

Perestroika, 44] nationalist move- 
ments and, 49-51 

Peter L the Great, Tsar, 4. 26. 31 

Peter IV, Tsar, 21 

Pogroms, 25 

Poland, 8, IL 13, 28, 32, 35. 38, 
48, 53-54. 56, 62, 65] rebellions 
of 1800s, 22, 23-24 
Popular fronts, 52—53 
Population trends, 1 05- 1 07 



Copyrighted material 



114 □ INDEX 



Rafsanjani. AH Akbar. 

Rashidov. Sharaf, 36 

Reagan. Ronald, A 

Refugees from Soviet areas, 12, 45, 

55-56 
Religion, 49 

Romania. I L 32. 48. 56, 83 
Roosevelt, Franklin D.. IQ 
Rukh nationalist movement. 52 
Russian chauvinism, 411 
Russian nationalism: demise of 
empires and, 39; Soviet empire 
and, 31-37; Tsarist empire and, 
22-t>7 

Russian Soviet Federated Socialist 
Republic (RSFSR). 3, 10, 12, 34. 
39, 68, 84j nationalism in, 8=9 

Russification, 24, ID 

Russo-Japanese War, 24 

Sajudis nationalist movement, 52 

Sakhalin, 32 

Secession issue, 3, 8 

Shamil (Caucasian leader), 23 

Shelest, Pyotr, 35 

Shevardnadze, Eduard, 5Q 

Slavophilism, 23 

Solidarity movement, 53 

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 17. 18. 39 

Sovereignty for republics, 3 

Soviet empire, 15-17. 27: demise, 
factors affecting, 37-41; dictator- 
ship and, 30-31. 33: external 
zone, 35j ideology and, 27-30, 
33; imperial nature of, 17-18: 
peoples, impact on. 18—19; Rus- 
sian nationalism and, 31—37 

Soviet people, myth of, 89 

Stalin. Joseph, 2L 28, 30-31. 34 

State-building following detotaliza- 
tion: environmental issues, 55i 
ethnic conflicts and, 52; examples 
of, dJj national identity and, 5J- 
52: political instability, dangers 
of, 56—58; political leadership for, 
52-54; refugees and. 55-56; 
Western policy, recommendations 
for, 58-63; Western states, im- 
pact on, 54—55, 



Stolypin reforms. 24 
Supranational institutions, member- 
ship for republics in, 6Q 
Szporluk, Roman, 18 

Tajikistan, 9, M 
Tbilisi, 68, 24 

Territorialization of ethnicitv. 

Third World policies, Soviet, 1 
Time of Troubles, 20-21 
Traditional cultures, persistence of, 
7 0 - 7 1 

Transcaucasia, 4. 67, 7L 74-75. 28 

Tsarist empire, 15-17; autocracy 
and, 20-22: demise, factors af- 
fecting. 37-41; foreign policy, 
21-22; imperial nature of, 17— 
18; orthodoxy and, 19-20; {peo- 
ples, impact on, 18—19; as 
predating Russian nation, 18; 
Russian nationalism and, 22-27 

Turkey. 82-83. 92 

Turkmenistan, 5, 9, 25 

Tuva, 32 

Ukraine, 49-50; annexation of, 32; 
collectivization, impact of, 11; 
1917 nationalist movement, 38; 
Russification and, 70; secession is- 
sue, 8; Tsarist period, 24; West- 
ern states' interest in, 54-58 

Ulam, Adam, 36 

Union of the Russian People. 23 

United Nations (UN), 34, 54. 60. 
100 

U.S. foreign and security policy, 3- 
4; activist p)olicy, pros and cons 
of, 92—94; agency for developing 
democracy and enterprise in the 
former Soviet Union, 85; assump- 
tions of, 89; Balkanization, 
avoidance of, 97—98; Baltic inde- 
pendence, 9—10; civil war in 
1990s and, 12-13: "do nothing" 
approach, 62-63, 84; emigration 
issue, 10; fascist Russia, avoidance 
of, 95—96; Islamic fundamental- 



INDEX □ 11 



ism concerns, 96-97: Jewish 
question and. 2a, 34-35; military 
force, scenarios for, 100: nostalgia 
in, 101: nuclear proliferation con- 
cerns, 94-95; "policeman" role, 
57-58; questions to be answered, 
91-92; recognition of Soviet 
Union (1933), 3L recommenda- 
tions for, 58-63. 84-86. 98-99: 
refugees from Soviet areas and, 
12. 56; technical assistance. 26 



Uzbekistan, 9, m 
Uzhgorod, 32 

Wilson, Wood row, 29 

Witte, Sergei, 26-27 

World War L L IL 26, 28-29. 38 

World War II. 2, 31-33. 58, &1 

Yazov, Dmitrii, 15 

Yeltsin, Boris, 3, 9, 32, 76, 93 

Yerevan, 2, 68. 53 



ABOUT THE AUTHORS 



Jeremy R. Amd is a senior member of the International Policy 

Department of RAND. Before joining RAND, he served as a 
nicniber oi the Sccreiarv's Policy Planning Coinu il at the De- 
partment (^f Stale, ik'tueen 1961 and 1981, A/rael was on the 
faculty ot the University oi Chicago, where he was Professor of 
Political Science and Chairman oi the Committee on Slavic Area 
Studies. He is the author of numerous arddes and books on 
Soviet afiBun, including The KGB mKrmtinPclUia (1989), Smriet 
Naikmality PoUdes and PracHas (1978), and East-Wut RdaOam: 
CmitroUing A Long-Term Coirflkt (1977). 

Scq^ IfalniMkwr (Alexander Babyonyshev) is a Fellow at the 
Harvard Russian Research Center and teaches in the Slavic 
Department at Harvard University. He has also taught at Boston 

University and the I'niversity of Alberta in (Canada. Horn in the 
USSR, he emigrated to the United Slates in 1981. He is the 
author of Losses of Population in the i'SSR (1989) and L'nlieard 
Voices: Documents of Smolensk Archive (1987), and is the editor of 
On Sahharau (1981). 

Alexander J. Motyl is Associate Professor of Politic a! Science and 

Director of the Nationality and Siberian Studies Program of the 

W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet 

Union at Columbia University. He b the author of Sovietology, 

Raikmaiitf,NeilkmUity:C(nmngtoGf^w^ 

(1990), WmAeNon-Ritssiam Rebetf State, EthmeUf, mklStabUUym 

the USSR (1987), and numerous articles on Soviet affairs. 

PiwH Grigor Sony is Alex Manoogian Professor of Modem 
Armenian History at the University of Michigan. He is the au- 
thor of The Making efthe Georgian Nation (1988), Armema m the 
Tuentieth Century (1983), and The Baku Commune, 1917-1918: 
Clots emd NaUonalky in the Rntdan ReuokUiim (1972), as weU as 

117 



Copyrighted material 



118 □ ABOUT THE AUTHCAS 



editor of and contributor to a number of books including, Trans- 
caucasia, Nationalism and Social Change (1983). He is currently 
writing a study of Stalin and the fonnation of the nationalities 
issues in the Soviet Union. 

William Taubmanis fiertrand Sneli Professor oi Folitical Science 
at Amherst College and a Fellow at the Harvard Russian Re- 
search Center. He is the authoarci Statin's AmehcmiPidky (1982) 
and Goutmmg Soviet Ckks (1973), coauthor with Jane A. Taub- 
man of Moscow Spring ( 1989), and editor and translator of Sergei 
Khrushchev's book, Khrushchev on Khrushchev (1990). He is cur- 
rently working on his own biography of Nikila Khruslichev. 

Mlrhagl M a ndHlwim is Director of the Fnoject on East- West 
Relations at the Gouncfl on Foreign Relations and Christian A. 

Herter Professor of American Foreign Policy at the Paul H. Nitze 
School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins 
University. He is the author of a number of books including: The 
Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th 
Ctnturies (1988); with Seweryn fiialer, The Global Rivals (1988); 
and with Strobe Taibott, RMgan and Gorbachtv (1987). 



Copy 



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The Rise of Nations 



The Soviet Union is beginning to break apart. Against the backdrop of 
economic disintegration, every one of the fifteen republics has asserted its 
"sovereignty." The political turmoil caused by the rise of nationalism will 
have profound implications for the United States as the republics work out 
new relationships with each other, the Kremlin, and the world. In a series 
of essays, five respected experts on the Soviet Union, under the editorial 
direction of Michael Mandelbaum, describe how the country arrived at this 
critical juncture and assess what is likely to happen next. 



A very useful collection that asks the right questions about one of the central issues 
for the future of the Soviet Union. It provides an excellent basis for the discussion 
of American policy on this issue. 

— Seweryn Bialer, Director, Research Institute on 
International Change, Columbia University 

A timely and insightful study. 

— Robert G. Kaiser, Deputy Managing Editor, 
The Washington Post 

An excellent contribution to the debate in the United States and the world at large 
on the implications of the disintegration of the Soviet empire. The book is both 
informative and thought -provoking and should be required reading for all those 
interested in the historic events taking place in the Soviet Union and the likely 
impact they will have. 

— Dinnitri K. Simes, Senior Associate, Carnegie 
Endowment for International Peace 

An alarming analysis of the ethnic tensions now tearing at the Soviet Union 
coupled with a provocative call for a bolder American policy on behalf of reformist 
forces among Russians and minority nationalities. Important, insightful reading 
on the volatile trends confronting Moscow and Washington. 

— Hedrick Smith, author. The New Russians 




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