Rethinking early Soviet nationality policies within the poststructuralist context: Marxist legacy, Soviet nation-building, and contingency

Abstract

Early Soviet nationality policies determined the framework of the ethnicity regime of the Soviet state and largely continued within the same context until the collapse of the Soviet state. While reevaluating early nationality policies, this study argues that structural analysis is not sufficient to understand the social reality of the nationality policies in the Soviet context. Hence, there is an urgent need to add the conditional, unclear and unpredictable aspects to the structural analysis of Soviet nationality policies. By analyzing through the amorphous nationality legacy of the classical Marxist thought, which highly affected the contingent Bolshevik nationality policy orientation, this study shares the concept of Soviet nation-building against the conventional Cold War approach. While analyzing the foundational dynamics of the early Soviet nationality policies, this study attempts to further improve structural analysis through poststructuralist intervention taking into account contingent case study examples.