The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939
TL;DR: A comprehensive survey and interpretation of the Soviet management of the nationalities question can be found in this article, which traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of dozens of official national languages, and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programs.
Abstract: The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms characteristic of the modern nation-state. In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government, seeking to defuse nationalist sentiment, created tens of thousands of national territories. It trained new national leaders, established national languages, and financed the production of national-language cultural products. This was a massive and fascinating historical experiment in governing a multiethnic state. Terry Martin provides a comprehensive survey and interpretation, based on newly available archival sources, of the Soviet management of the nationalities question. He traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of dozens of official national languages, and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programs. Martin examines the contradictions inherent in the Soviet nationality policy, which sought simultaneously to foster the growth of national consciousness among its minority populations while dictating the exact content of their cultures; to sponsor national liberation movements in neighboring countries, while eliminating all foreign influence on the Soviet Union's many diaspora nationalities. Martin explores the political logic of Stalin's policies as he responded to a perceived threat to Soviet unity in the 1930s by re-establishing the Russians as the state's leading nationality and deporting numerous "enemy nations."
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01 Jan 2004TL;DR: The politics of Commemoration in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia in 1848 in 1998: The politics of commemoration in Hungarian, Romania and Slovakia as mentioned in this paper, is a good starting point for this paper.
Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Ethnicity without Groups 2. Beyond "Identity" 3. Ethnicity as Cognition 4. Ethnic and Nationalist Violence 5. The Return of Assimilation? 6. "Civic" and "Ethnic" Nationalism 7. Ethnicity, Migration, and Statehood in Post-Cold War Europe 8. 1848 in 1998: The Politics of Commemoration in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia Notes References Index
2,707 citations
01 Jan 2004
1,003 citations
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26 Aug 2013TL;DR: Cederman et al. as mentioned in this paper argue that political and economic inequalities following group lines generate grievances that in turn can motivate civil war, and develop new indicators of political exclusion at the group level, and show that these exert strong effects on the risk of civil war.
Abstract: This book argues that political and economic inequalities following group lines generate grievances that in turn can motivate civil war. Lars-Erik Cederman, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug offer a theoretical approach that highlights ethnonationalism and how the relationship between group identities and inequalities are fundamental for successful mobilization to resort to violence. Although previous research highlighted grievances as a key motivation for political violence, contemporary research on civil war has largely dismissed grievances as irrelevant, emphasizing instead the role of opportunities. This book shows that the alleged non-results for grievances in previous research stemmed primarily from atheoretical measures, typically based on individual data. The authors develop new indicators of political and economic exclusion at the group level, and show that these exert strong effects on the risk of civil war. They provide new analyses of the effects of transnational ethnic links and the duration of civil wars, and extended case discussions illustrating causal mechanisms.
397 citations
TL;DR: The Second Congress of the Third International as mentioned in this paper was a seminal moment in the history of anti-imperialism in social history, with the aim of making the oppressed of the world a historical subject.
Abstract: Lenin spoke at the Second Congress of 1920 to multiple audiences. In continuity with the First International, he spoke in the utopian language of Bolshevism, of the successful revolutionary proletariat that had taken the state and was making its place in history without the intercession of bourgeois class rule. Recognizing the limits of socialism in one country surrounded by the military and economic might of “World imperialism,” however, Lenin also pressed for a broader, ongoing world-historic anti-imperialism in alliance with the oppressed of the East, who, it seemed, were neither sufficiently proletarianized, nor, as yet, subjects of history. There are many ways to situate this particular moment in Lenin's thought. One can see the budding conceits of Marxist social history, or “history from below,” in which millions in the East could become historical subjects under the sign of “anti-imperialism.” One can also see this gesture to those outside the pale as a flourish of the emergent Soviet empire, and as a projection of anxieties about Bolshevik control over a vast and varied Russian countryside with its own internal enemies. But Lenin also spoke to audiences who would make up the next, Third International, like the Indian Marxist M. N. Roy, who saw imperialism dividing the world into oppressed and oppressor nations. For this Third Worldist audience, looking increasingly to the new Soviet Union for material and military support for “national self-determination,” Lenin extends the historic mission of a future world socialism.
305 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the potential of national indifference as a category of analysis in the history of modern central and eastern Europe and explored the intersections between national indifference and transnational history, making indifference visible enables historians to better understand the limits of nationalization and thereby helps to challenge the nationalist narratives and categories that have traditionally dominated the historiography of eastern Europe.
Abstract: Since the birth of mass political movements, European nationalists have lamented the failure of their constituents to respond to the siren song of national awakening. This article explores the potential of national indifference as a category of analysis in the history of modern central and eastern Europe. Tara Zahra defines indifference, explores how forms of national indifference changed over time, probes the methodological challenges associated with historicizing indifference, and examines the intersections between national indifference and transnational history. Making indifference visible enables historians to better understand the limits of nationalization and thereby helps to challenge the nationalist narratives and categories that have traditionally dominated the historiography of eastern Europe.
230 citations