Table Of ContentConstructing Ethnopolitics in the Soviet Union:
Samizdat, Deprivation, and the Rise of
Ethnic Nationalism
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Constructing Ethnopolitics in
the Soviet Union: Samizdat,
Deprivation, and the Rise of
Ethnic Nationalism
Dina Zisserman-Brodsky
CONSTRUCTINGETHNOPOLITICSINTHESOVIETUNION
© Dina Zisserman-Brodsky,2003.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4039-6191-4
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quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2003 by
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European Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-52668-0 ISBN 978-1-4039-7362-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403973627
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zisserman-Brodsky,Dina.
Constructing ethnopolitics in the Soviet Union :samizdat,deprivation
and the rise of ethnic nationalism / by Dina Zisserman-Brodsky.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Soviet Union—Ethnic relations—Political aspects.2.Soviet Union—
Politics and government—1953–1985.3.Minorities—Soviet Union—
Political activity.4.Nationalism—Soviet Union.I.Title.
DK277.Z57 2003
323.1(cid:2)47(cid:2)0904—dc21 2003042037
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:July,2003
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my daughters, Rachel and Sofia
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
Chapter 1 Introduction: Theoretical Perspective and
Focus of Inquiry 1
The Theoretical Framework 1
Studies in Nationalism and Ethnic Dissent
in the USSR 9
Structuring the Material 16
Chapter 2 Soviet Nationality Policy: Theory and Practice 19
Ideology versus Pragmatism 19
Building the System of Ethnic Stratification 24
The “Sip of Freedom”: How Fatal? 27
Chapter 3 The Modernization Process and
Ethnonationalism 35
Syncretism of the Initial Period 37
Westernization, Democracy, and Patterns of
Political Orientation 39
Communist Ideology and the Soviet Regime 51
Dissident Groups: Mutual Relations 59
Chapter 4 Relative Deprivation and the Politicization of
Ethnic Groups 69
Political Deprivation 70
Status Deprivation and the Pattern of
Ethnic Domination 77
Economic Deprivation 87
Environmental Deprivation 88
Territorial Deprivation 90
viii ● Table of Contents
Cultural and Linguistic Deprivation 91
Religious Deprivation 100
Conservative Russian Samizdatand the Issue of
Relative Deprivation 101
The Discourse of Relative Deprivation:
Common Trends 106
Chapter 5 Ethnic Organizations, Programs, and Demands 111
The Ukrainian Movement 112
The Armenian Movement 119
The Georgian Movement 122
The Abkhazian Movement 126
The Lezghian Movement 126
The Adygei Movement 127
The Tatar–Bashkir Movement 127
The Baltic Movements 128
Movements of Dispersed Ethnic Groups 131
Russians: The Conservative and General
Democratic Movements 148
Chapter 6 Legitimizing Sources of Ethnic Politics 157
Political–Legal Legitimation 157
Historical Legitimation 162
Divine Legitimation 166
Chapter 7 The Problem of Orientation:
Ethnocentrism–Polycentrism 169
Russian Nationalism 170
Nationalism of Ethnic Minority Groups 175
Chapter 8 Samizdatand Ethnic Mobilization 185
Assessing the Parameters of Mobilization 185
Samizdatand Potentials for Violent Conflicts 191
Conclusion 195
Appendix: The Relevant Nationalities—Basic Facts 203
Sources for Appendix 219
List of Abbreviations 220
Notes and References 221
Selected Bibliography 265
Index 277
Preface
T here were two crucial events in the Russian history of the twentieth
century, which shocked the world: the 1917 October revolution
and the 1991 breakup of the USSR. While the former gave birth
to the discipline called Sovietology, the latter demonstrated the depth of
its crisis. “The contemporary Sovietology,” wrote A. Motyl, “represents an
awkward amalgam of data collection, policy analysis and journalism that is
divorced from scholarship, as sense impressions are from theory.”1
After a short period of self-blaming, Sovietology made an elegant slip into
the “Post-Soviet studies” leaving open the question whyandhowit happened
that the Soviet polity had become the Post-Soviet one. The comprehensive
examination of causes and driving forces of the collapse of the USSR seems
to be one of the most stimulating tasks for present and future generations of
scholars studying this area.
This book attempts to contribute to the filling of the epistemological gap.
It investigates the rise and development of ethnic dissent, samizdatand their
contribution to the reemergence of nationalism in the USSR. The book pres-
ents the first systematic comparative study of ethnonationalist ideologies
developed in the period from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s. Samizdat
publications were studied, and sometimes very carefully, by a number of
scholars, however, mainly as a valuable source of information about repres-
sions in the Soviet Union, discrimination of ethnic minorities, and opposi-
tion to the communist rule. Minimal attention was paid to alternative
ideologies suggested by those activities of various nationalist movements and
authors of samizdatpublications, who, as early as in the late 1960s, began to
formulate programs of ethnopolitics, which came to the fore in the late
1980s and were realized in the early 1990s. It became a common place in the
scholarly discourse that dissent in general and ethnic dissent in particular
played a minor, if any, role in the USSR’s collapse. The book argues that
dissident network (samizdatis considered its major component) has been the
most important and the only fully independent institution of civil society in
