The National Question and National Movements
The Positive Side of Soviet Federalism
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was preceded by the collapse of com-munist party rule. It was initiated by efforts of the party leadership under Mi-khail S. Gorbachev to fundamentally reform the Soviet system. The liberalisa-tion and democratisation of communist party rule unintentionally gave rise to strong national movements. These at first demanded only a reform of the Soviet federation, then national independence. They were largely successful. Without Soviet nationalities policy, which structured the ethnonational state and legal institutions for decades, the dissolution of the Soviet Union would not have been so peaceful, unlike the extremely bloody destruction of the centralized tsarist empire from 1917–1922.
(Osteuropa 1-3/2024, pp. 25–49)