Nationalism and the Breakup of an Empire: Russia and Its Periphery

The Soviet polity is presently going through its most difficult transition ever. The Russian Center's point of view is that the crisis is an issue of imperialism: the decline and fall of the old Russian empire, the undoing of the pax Russica, the derangement of the Russian imperial consciousness. From the viewpoint of the former march-lands of the empire, the issue is nationalism. Since Mikhail Gorbachev launched his reform program under the rubric of perestroika and glasnost, the most dramatic changes taking place in the USSR have been in the area of ethnic and minority nationalism. The Soviet nationalities problem has become central to the nations of the world, as well as to all minority and national groups. The purpose of this book is to present a comprehensive analysis of the impact of nationalism on the break-up of the Soviet Union, measure the effects of this dissolution, and examine the remnants and revisions.

The authors conclude that the Russian Empire is at the end of its tether, but what will remain will still be a viable world power. The second conclusion is that the so-called center of the empire will be in Russia herself, much more than in the past, and that a new form of Russian nationalism is in the making, which could have aggressive and expansionist tendencies. Policymakers, Soviet-area specialists, and students will find this book provocative and useful.