Soviet Federal Project and the Collisions of Nation Building in the 1920-1930s

Abstract

The author examines the collisions of the Soviet nation-building which are actively debated in modern historiography. The source base for the research is the published materials, as well as the archival documents of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History and the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. There are analyzed some specific historical subjects and the contribution of modern historiography to the understanding of the current problems and the formulation of new ideas and approaches to the analysis of the designated set of issues including the tools of Soviet socio-political engineering, the role and significance of ethnopolitical elites in the creation of the USSR as a complex hierarchical structure. It is concluded that the contradictions in the implementation of ethnonational policy were directly related to the formation of the Soviet federation, which became a concession to the ethnopolitical movements of the early XX century; and managing diversity was the central task of the state as an alternative to previous political systems for culturally complex societies.

Keywords

• soviet federalism
• national policy
• nation-building
• governance
• early soviet period