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Nationalism in the USSR: a historical and comparative perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Andrey Shcherbak Open the ORCID record for Andrey Shcherbak [Opens in a new window]
Andrey Shcherbak*
Affiliation:
Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), 55–2 Sedova str., St.-Petersburg 190068, Russia
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* Email: ascherbak@hse.ru
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Extract

The late 1980s and early 1990s were characterized by the sudden rise of nationalist movements in almost all Soviet ethnic regions. It is argued that the rise of political nationalism since the late 1980s can be explained by the development of cultural nationalism in the previous decades, as an unintended outcome of Communist nationalities policy. All ethnic regions are examined throughout the entire history of the USSR (49 regions, 1917–1991), using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. This paper aims to make at least three contributions to the field. First, it is a methodological contribution for studying nationalism: a “quantification of history” approach. Having constructed variables from historical data, I use conventional statistical methods such as SEM. Second, this paper contributes to the theoretical debate about the role of cultural autonomy in multiethnic states. Finally, the paper statistically proves that the break between early Soviet and Stalinist nationalities policy explains the entire Soviet nationalities policy.

Keywords

nationalismethnicitycultureUSSRSEM
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 866 - 885
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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