The western republics: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Baltics

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811446.021

19 - The western republics: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Baltics

from Part II - Russia and the Soviet Union: Themes and Trends

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Serhy Yekelchyk

Edited by

Ronald Grigor Suny

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Ronald Grigor Suny: Affiliation:
University of Chicago and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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Summary

The Soviet west, an arch of non-Russian republics extending from the Gulf ofFinland in the north to the Black Sea in the south and separating Russia properfrom other European states, came to the attention of scholars during the late1960s and early 1970s. While Western sovietologists have long studied eachindividual country in the region – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,Belorussia/ Belarus, Ukraine and Moldavia/Moldova – beforethe 1960s, they did not think of the Soviet west as an entity. But theregion’s prominence in the dissident movement during the 1960s suggestedthat the western fringe of the USSR might become a catalyst of nationalist unrestand, possibly, a channel for the spillover of democratic ideas from EasternEurope. The region was now seen as a place where the Soviet collapse mightbegin.

Yet, as North American scholars pioneered the use of the term ‘Sovietwest’, they soon discovered the difficulties of defining this region ineconomic or social terms – which was at the time considered a clue forunderstanding nationality perseverance there. In his lead article in the 1975collection The Soviet West: Interplay between Nationality and Social Organization, Ralph S. Clem proposed that the area was characterisedby ‘high to moderate levels of economic development with relation to otherareas of the USSR’, but had to qualify this generalisation by excluding therepublic of Moldavia, as well as some areas of Ukraine, Belorussia andLithuania.

Keywords

Russian Empire Soviet Moldovan Baltic government Belorussian nationalists Western republics Western Ukrainian politics

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Russia , pp. 522 - 548

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521811446.021 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2006

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