Nested Nationalism is a study of the politics and practices of managing national minority identifications, rights, and communities in the Soviet Union and the personal and political consequences of such efforts. Titular nationalities that had republics named after them in the USSR were comparatively privileged within the boundaries of "their" republics, but they still often chafed both at Moscow's influence over republican affairs and at broader Russian hegemony across the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, members of nontitular communities frequently complained that nationalist republican leaders sought to build titular nations on the back of minority assimilation and erasure. Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Moscow, Krista A. Goff argues that Soviet nationality policies produced recursive, nested relationships between majority and minority nationalisms and national identifications in the USSR.
Goff pays particular attention to how these asymmetries of power played out in minority communities, following them from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Dagestan, and Iran in pursuit of the national ideas, identifications, and histories that were layered across internal and international borders. What mechanisms supported cultural development and minority identifications in communities subjected to assimilationist politics? How did separatist movements coalesce among nontitular minority activists? And how does this historicization help us to understand the tenuous space occupied by minorities in nationalizing states across contemporary Eurasia? Ranging from the early days of Soviet power to post-Soviet ethnic conflicts, Nested Nationalism explains how Soviet-era experiences and policies continue to shape interethnic relationships and expectations today.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. Making Minorities and National Hierarchies
2. Territory, War, and Nation-Building in the South Caucasus
Interlude: After Stalin: Reform and Revenge
3. Defining the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic
4. The Vanishing Minority: Scholars, Politicians, and the Production of Soviet Assimilation Narratives
5. Minority Activism and Citizenship after Stalin
Conclusion
About the Author :
Krista A. Goff is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Miami and coeditor of Empire and Belonging in the Eurasian Borderlands. Follow her on X @krista_goff8.
Review :
This is a meticulous study of Soviet nationality policy, focusing on Azerbaijan, based on extensive archival research and oral history from 120 interviews.
(Choice) Across this book, Goff juggles a laudable range of detail with clarity and persuasion, reminding at each turn how much further one could go.
(Slavonic and East European Review) To find out how things worked in the republics, you have to go to Krista Goff's fascinating story of the Caucasus, the product of dauntingly difficult research in recalcitrant archives and with oral history informants inclined to look anxiously over their shoulders.
(London Review of Books) In this impressive first monograph, Krista Goff offers new insight into Soviet nation-building in the non-Russian republics, particularly in the Southern Caucasus. [T]he book offers rich, archivally grounded detail on a range of complex issues in the South Caucasus. Written in accessible prose and with clear argument, it will prove to be essential reading for scholars of Soviet nation-building and the South Caucasus.
(The Russian Review) [A] pioneering study, illuminating a hitherto unknown perspective on the history of the Soviet nationality policy, and the USSR generally. Moreover, it will serve future generations as an essential reference work on the history of Soviet Azerbaijan and the development of Soviet Azeri national consciousness, surpassing all other previous works on this subject. Enriched by lively and engaging prose, and a first-rate source base of archival materials and interviews, it makes for insightful and dynamic reading. A new classic in the field, it is a highly recommended work!
(The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review) A core value of the book lies not only in the originality of its thesis but also in the utilization of archival and oral history sources that are presented to us for the first time. It is a testament to Goff's investigative tenacity that the final product is an empirically rich and cogent work of scholarship.
(Canadian-American Slavic Studies) Krista A. Goff produces a groundbreaking work of historiography that examines Soviet nationality politics in the context of the "nontitular" ethnicities of the Caucasus, with particular attention given to minority groups in the Azerbaijan SSR. Nested Nationalism is an achievement in its own right.
(Ab Imperio)
