The fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics has come and gone in 1972, but the grave problems concerning the “national question” in this multi-national state have not withered away. On the contrary, they have become more acute; the “national question” is far from solved. no matter what the official line from the Kremlin tries to present. The dissatisfaction with Moscow's policies towards the non-Russian nationalities has assumed the form of anti-Kremlin dissent, or, rather, opposition. Voices in defense of national rights, traditions and languages are being heard in several non-Russian Republics. In Ukraine, the largest non-Russian Republic, this opposition is being forged into a new. twentieth century National Renaissance. One of the leading figures of this movement is Va1entyn Moroz. This paper is devoted to him.

On December 21, 1972, the Soviet Union celebrated what was called in the official press the “50th Anniversary” of the birth of the multinational Soviet state. Brezhnev spoke at the festive meeting and in his speech he underlined the unity, mutual understanding and independence of the people who make up the Soviet Union. As a demonstration of the equality of all nations within Soviet boundaries, leading Soviet literary periodicals, such as Novyi Mir, or Yunost' published more and more authors with non-Russian names. Indeed, these periodicals began to look like a Soviet Reader's Digest, publishing a “little bit from everywhere for everybody.” On the surface it was multinational literature all right, but upon a closer reading one was surprised by the uniformity of it. The Kazakh poet sang of the heroes of the Second World War in the same terms as the Lithuanian writer, and the Tadzhik kolkhoz life was depicted in the same glowing terms as in the poems from the Moldavian countryside. A little bit boring, perhaps, but still, judging by these publications, Brezhnev was telling the pure truth talking about the brotherly union of “our multinational” state. The press was also inundated with articles, essays, poems, etc. on this theme.

The present brief commentary is focused primarily on a topic which at first appearance might seem tangential, but which nevertheless is of central importance to a sociological study of dissent among the non-Russian people of the Soviet Union, who together make up approximately one-half of that country's total population. Ongoing sociological study of any phenomenon ideally is characterized by a data-theory cycle, where a conceptual or theoretical model or framework helps guide empirical research, and where the social reality manifest in observations or the data collected continually tests and refines the guiding model or framework. The ideal is, of course, rarely attained, a matter most noticeable and pronounced in the study of “Soviet minorities.”

Mr. Parming has sketched systematically the difficulties in applying the existing sociological methods for studying the nationalities in the U.S.S.R. He criticizes rightly the fragmentary nature of the current research results in this field and the absence of a common conceptual framework applied to the Soviet nationalities as a whole in the available publications. His recommendations, however, concerning some current American sociological methods and concepts and their applicability to the Soviet Union in this particular field, must be taken with caution and various reservations.

First, a comment on all three papers. The authors seem to confuse the terms dissent and dissenter with nationalism and nationalist. To me the two types of concepts are quite different. Nationalists are concerned with the establishment, exaltation, liberation or preservation of their own ethnic group–nation. Their intellectual position is basically amoral. I do not mean to imply that they have no morals, but that moral issues have little emphasis in their arguments and polemics. In contrast, the dissenters argue that some government action, law or policy is morally wrong and ought to be stopped or repealed. There may be similarities in the tactics adopted and issues espoused by these two groups. Still, scholars and especially behavioral scientists ought to keep the two types separate for analytical purposes. Of the three papers under discussion the one that “sins” the most in this respect is the one by Mr. Parming. And yet there the differentiation should have been the most explicit since the paper is trying to come to grips with the question from a theoretical point of view.