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A good and interesting take, as always. I think one of the most poorly understood dynamics in the post-Soviet RF is the "Great Russian" fear that the process of national dissolution would continue indefinitely. When Westerners talk about the nationalities in the USSR, they tend to focus on the western and southern rim—Ukraine, the Baltics, Georgia, the Central Asian states, etc. But there are also a ton of ethnic republics in the Middle Volga and Siberia that also had post-Soviet independence movements (Tatarstan, for example, has tried to break away from the RF many times over the past thirty years). I recently spent a year in the Mari El Republic (my wife is Mari), and while the nineties were really rough there as everywhere else in the former USSR, Mari people also had fond memories of the flourishing of their language and culture that a weakened Russian state allowed. One of Putin's first moves when he came to power was ensuring republics like Mari El were run by ethnic Russians, rather than national leaders. A big thing underpinning the resurgence of Great Russian chauvinism in the post-Soviet period was the anxiety that Russia would be reduced to a rump state, with its most resource-rich territories governed by sovereign Tatar, Nenets, Dagestani, Tuvan, etc. nations. Putin's monstrous invasion of Ukraine is of a piece with his domestic policy toward nationalities. So behind the current crisis of aggression lies an existential question about Russia: one of the reasons it's so consistently ruled by thugs is because it is a massive empire with millions of colonized people who would like to be independent. Only thugs can keep that project going, and if a nice liberal were ever able to take power, they would either have to let the country be cut up into pieces, or they'd have to draw the line somewhere (which would involve some thuggery). As you point out, Lenin tried to strike a very delicate balance around this question, but ultimately failed to resolve it. Anyway, sorry for writing such a long comment. I just found this a stimulating piece of writing.

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Very interesting. As a sentimental cosmopolitan myself -- believing that, in the long run, all humans should prize their common humanity over any local identity -- I have some sympathy with this instrumentalist approach to nationalism. The cosmopolitan goal is less important to me -- and certainly less urgent -- than the goals of self-determination and freedom from oppression. So, when nationalism can serve the interests of liberation from oppression, even a cosmopolitan can find reason to support it.

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founding
Mar 20, 2022Liked by John Ganz

Very interesting piece. The Soviet-era 'guided autonomy' sounds very similar to post-revolutionary China (maybe even adapted from it?) in which ethnic/cultural autonomy was given to 'national minorities' in the southwest and northwest, as well as smaller groups on the fringes the Han dominated centre. The parallel doesn't end there, as we have seen with the Uyghurs and Tibet. The post-communist centralizers seemingly can't abide having autonomous groups within the national framework. It's kind of ironic since both the USSR and the pre-Deng China were portrayed to us as these giant totalitarian regimes. Their capitalist successors, who were our big friends for awhile, are at least as, if not more, relentlessly controlling and imperial in their ambitions.

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Mar 20, 2022Liked by John Ganz

The history of Soviet nationality policy is my main area of scholarly expertise and I just wanted to say how well and (and concisely) you explained this! I always appreciate your historical pieces.

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Mar 20, 2022Liked by John Ganz

An excellent post as always. You insightfully diagnosed the complex situation facing the Bolsheviks/Lenin and gave a simultaneously nuanced and concise statement of their policy. However, I was bummed by your wrap up. "...probably doomed to fail"? Certainly there has been much tragedy--and more continuing today. But just because we have lived the failure doesn't mean that was the most likely outcome. I was also startled by your final judgment, "...as ill-conceived or impossible as Lenin's policy may have been...", because I did not see anything in the post leading to that conclusion. Anyway, thanks for the excellent piece.

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Mar 19, 2022·edited Mar 19, 2022Liked by John Ganz

I'm thinking about the parallels with 2016 as a reckoning with our, as fragile maybe, maybe even unsustainable, approach to similar type identity/ethnic and so on tensions. Bottom up legitimate, top down poisonous. Even in the most harmless of contexts that popped up in that period from my point of view, Scotland vs Westminster noble struggle, England vs Brussels disastrous win for sinister forces. Still look at most events and social dynamics we've been dealing with since with the same contradictory distinction and think it's a legitimate rational bias. Just unsure about the appeal/sustainability of the liberal intellectual edifice for the rest of the population.

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Great piece. Apart from these intellectual underpinnings (the Lenin vs. Stalin view of nationalism) I think it’s important to stress how the structure of the Soviet state itself defined every citizen’s relationship to it, including their identity as an ethnic minority. The centralized nature of the social and economic system - and the bureaucracies that administered those systems - placed every citizen and every minority in a web of relationships with Moscow, the Russian language and centralized Soviet institutions that are difficult to imagine for an outsider. Whether you were a Persian-speaking Tajik or a Romanian-speaking Moldovan thousands of miles apart, the everyday structure of your life as a Soviet citizen and the way you related to the institutions of the state were largely the same. As a career Soviet bureaucrat, Putin’s entire intellectual formation took shape in that environment and with that conception of how minorities related to the centralized state, and I think it very much underpins the attitudes we now see.

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