Constructing Ethnopolitics the Soviet Union: Samizdat, Deprivation and Rise of Ethnic Nationalism

In this pathbreaking book, Zisserman-Brodsky presents the first systematic and comparative study of the development of ethnonationalist ideologies in the Soviet Union in the period from the late 1960s to the second half of 1980s. Dissident ethnic networks were a crucial independent institution in the Soviet Union. Voicing the discontent and resentment of the periphery at the policies of the center, or metropole, the dissident writings, known as samizdat, highlighted anger at deprivations imposed in the political, cultural, social, and economic spheres. Ethnic dissident writings drew on values both internal to the Soviet system and international as sources of legitimation; they met a divided reaction among Russians, with some privileging the unity of the Soviet Union and others sympathetic to the rhetoric of national rights. This focus on national, rather than individual rights, along with the appropriatior of ethnonationalism by political elites, helps explain developments opments since the fall of the Soviet Union, including the prevalence of authoritarian governments in newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. Zisserman-Brodsk explores various explanations of nationalism and its resurgence through a close and unprecedented examination dissident writings of diverse ethnic groups in the form Soviet Union, thereby bridging macro-theory with micro politics.