Red Nations The Nationalities Experience in and after the USSR [Hardcover]

This book surveys the experiences of non-Russian USSR citizens both during and following the collapse of the Soviet Union.This major survey of the experience of non-Russian peoples under Communism, and following its collapse, brings the Soviet Union's nationalities policies and their impact on non-Russians up to the present. It offers a major contribution to our understanding of the protracted break-up of the USSR and the post-Soviet nation-building process.This major survey of the experience of non-Russian peoples under Communism, and following its collapse, brings the Soviet Union's nationalities policies and their impact on non-Russians up to the present. It offers a major contribution to our understanding of the protracted break-up of the USSR and the post-Soviet nation-building process.Red Nations offers an illuminating and informative overview of how the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union experienced communist rule. It surveys the series of historical events that contributed to the break-up of the Soviet Union and evaluates their continuing resonance across post-soviet states today. Drawing from the latest research, Professor Smith offers comprehensive coverage of the revolutionary years, the early Soviet policies of developing nations, Stalin's purges and deportations of small nationalities, and the rise of independence movements. Through a single, unified narrative, this book illustrates how, in the post-Stalin period, many of the features of the modern nation state emerged. Both scholars and students will find this an indispensable contribution to the history of the dissolution of the USSR, the reconstruction of post-Soviet society, and its impact on non-Russian citizens from the years of the Russian Revolution through to the present day.1. Introduction: the prison-house of nations; 2. Dispersal and reunion: revolution and Civil War in the Borderlands; 3. Bolshevik nationality policies and the formation of the USSR; 4. Nation-building the Soviet way;l³*