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The Role of the National Problem in the Disintegration of the Soviet Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2013

Chaim Shinar
Chaim Shinar*
Affiliation:
Marzouk ve Azar St. 21c, Kiryat Ono, 55218, Israel. E-mail: shinarch@012.net.il
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Abstract

‘The Soviet Union, like the United States, was a country established to serve and promote a political idea, not to be a state for nations. The United States was founded in order to be a modern democratic polity; the Soviet Union in order to promote Marxism-Leninism. The Soviet Union thus began as a ‘modern,’ post-imperialist state. The cement holding the state together was a compound of ideology, a hierarchical, disciplinary party, charismatic leadership, and external treats. [In the 80s] this cement was crumbling… [The Soviet] state had lost its raison d’être and the people turned to the traditional and conventional basis of the state – that is, the nation. But since this was a multinational state – and unlike the multiethnic United States, most peoples in the USSR have distinct languages and territories of their own – [they returned to them to establish independent states.]’1

Type
Focus: Nation
Information
European Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 56 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2013

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References

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