Russian Minorities in the Former USSR

Abstract

The end of the Soviet Empire has brought out the importance of the nationalities problem and the contradictory results produced by the various formulas applied since 1922 for resolving it. Two characteristics conditioned the evolution of this problem in the Soviet Union: the choice of a territorial model which would give a important role to the Empire’s non-Russian peoples; and the contradiction between the theoretical base established by Lenin and Stalin for solving the problem and actual practice, which followed traditional channels. The result was a new territorial structure endowed with the external elements characteristic of a state but cancelled out by the superiority of a party and by a policy ofprotecting minorities deliberately designed to make the new national entities nonviable. The lack of an adequately institutionalized state was at the root, of the virtual disappearance, after the collapse of the Communist Party, of links between the center and the periphery, a situation that nationalism, where it existed, exploited to gain powerand that governing minorities, meaningless outside the framework created by the USSR, exploited to stay in power. The result was none other than the appearance of new ethnically heterogeneous states with imprecise borders, bereft of the systems of interethnic equilibriumthe Soviet administration had created, and willing to consolidate their independence and identity at the expense of minorities such as the Russians, which have been discriminated against at times and excluded from political and cultural life at others. This phenomenonhas reduced the chances for the new states’ integration on an international level, placed a burden on the incipient democratic systems and made for tense relations with Russia.