Thirty Years of Nation-Building in the Post-Soviet States

Bibliographic Data

ID11047334
AuthorsPeter Rutland (0000-0002-0379-6302, Wesleyan University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume51
Issue1
Pages14-32
Publication date2023-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNationalities Papers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5992 • E-ISSN: 1465-3923
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/nps.2021.94
OpenAlexW4320732985
LanguageEN
Citations received11

This introduction to the special issue looks back at 30 years of nation-building in the post-Soviet states. Initial hopes that national self-determination would reinforce democratization proved misplaced. While that synergy worked well in the Baltic states, elsewhere authoritarian leaders embraced nationalism, while democracies like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine lost control of parts of their territory to secessionist movements backed by Russia. Each of the post-Soviet states promoted a national language (except for Belarus) and forged a new historical narrative for their “imagined community,” but in most cases they remained multi-ethnic and multi-lingual communities. In recognition of this persisting ethnic diversity, nation-building was accompanied by policies of ethnicity management. The international economic environment was rapidly changing due to globalization, posing new challenges for nation-builders. The gender dimension is important to the new national identities being forged in the post-Soviet space: the categories of race and class, less so. The article concludes with a review of the salient features of each of the newly-independent states

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Democratization · Ethnic group · Globalization · Nation-building · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European Politics and Security · Gender Studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Law

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