Synopses & Reviews
This collected volume, edited by Ron Suny and Terry Martin, shows how the Soviet state managed to create a multiethnic empire in its early years, from the end of the Russian Revolution to the end of World War II. Bringing together the newest research on a wide geographic range, from Russia to Central Asia, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars of Soviet history and politics.
Review
"A State of Nations gives a very useful overview of the actual situation of American studies on "empire and nation-making" from the late tsarist empire to the end of the Stalin era."--Journal of Modern History
"The volume of A State of Nations gives a very useful overview of the actual situation of American studies on "empire and nation-maiking" from the late tsarist empire to the end of the Stalin era. these innovative articles revise the image of Soviet nationality policies as a linear process, planned by the center, and show convincingly its contradictions and improvisations, the simultaneity and interdependence of nation creating and nation destroying."-The Journal of Modern History
"This outstanding collection contains some of the most exciting research now available on nationalism and nation-making in the Soviet Union. With its cutting-edge scholarship, original insights, and theoretical sophistication, A STATE OF NATIONS is sure to make an important contribution to the study of the Soviet multinational state."--Adrienne Edgar, University of California, Santa Barbara
Table of Contents
Contributors
Introduction, Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin
Part 1: Empire and Nations
1. The Empire Strikes Out: Imperial Russia, "National" Identity, and Theories of Empire, Ronald Grigor Suny
2. An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperalism, Terry Martin
Part II: The Revolutionary Conjuncture
3. Family, Fraternity, and Nation-Building in Russia, 1905-1925, Joshua Sanborn
4. To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia, Peter Holquist
5. Nationalizing the Revolution in Central Asia: The Transformation of Jadidism, 1917-1920, Adeeb Khalid
Part III: Forging "Nations"
6. Local Politics and the Birth of the Republic of Bashkortostan, 1919-1920, Daniel E. Schafer
7. Nationalizing Backwardness: Gender, Empire, and Uzbek Identity, Douglas Northrop
Part IV: Stalinism and the Empire of Nations
8. The Forge of the Kazakh Proletariat? The Turksib, Nativization, and Industrialization during Stalin's First Five-Year Plan, Matt Payne
9. Nation-Building or Russification? Obligatory Russian Instruction in the Soviet Non-Russian School, 1938-1953, Peter A. Blitstein
10. "...It Is Imperative to Advance Russian Nationalism as the First Priority": Debates within the Stalinist Ideological Establishment, 1941-1945, David Brandenberger
Index