Introduction

The accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership, and the inauguration of an increasingly far-reaching program of reforms, precipitated the emergence of mass nationalism as a major political force. It unleashed an unprecedented tide of protests and demonstrations across the entire territory of the USSR in which national grievances, fueled by economic unrest, occupied a central place. It launched a process of political mobilization, and the creation of new socio-political movements, in which common nationality formed a crucial bond. It was accompanied by outbreaks of communal violence which left in their wake both loss of lives and hundreds of thousands of refugees. It precipitated violent clashes between local populations and local authorities and the use of military forces to reestablish control. And it decisively transformed the very nature of the “national question” in Soviet political life, not only bringing it to the top of the political agenda but altering the very premises of the discussion. The “national question,” in the form in which it had been inherited from the past, ceased to exist. Its place was taken by a major political struggle over the nature and future of the Soviet federal system, in which sharp cleavages extending to the very top of the Soviet leadership became entwined with the broader struggle over reform.