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The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture) Paperback – December 15, 2001

by Terry Martin (Author)

4.6 21 ratings

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"Terry Martin looks at the nationalities policy of the early Soviet period and offers an insightful, detailed analysis of a problem that Soviet leaders grappled with throughout the twentieth century. As he points out, it was a problem that eventually helped to usher in the end of the USSR."
― Amanda Wood Aucoin, New Zealand Slavonic Journal

The Soviet Union was the first of Europe's multiethnic states to confront the rising tide of nationalism by systematically promoting the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and establishing for them many of the institutional forms characteristic of the modern nation-state. In the 1920s, the Bolshevik government, seeking to defuse nationalist sentiment, created tens of thousands of national territories. It trained new national leaders, established national languages, and financed the production of national-language cultural products.This was a massive and fascinating historical experiment in governing a multiethnic state.

Terry Martin provides a comprehensive survey and interpretation, based on newly available archival sources, of the Soviet management of the nationalities question. He traces the conflicts and tensions created by the geographic definition of national territories, the establishment of dozens of official national languages, and the world's first mass "affirmative action" programs. Martin examines the contradictions inherent in the Soviet nationality policy, which sought simultaneously to foster the growth of national consciousness among its minority populations while dictating the exact content of their cultures; to sponsor national liberation movements in neighboring countries, while eliminating all foreign influence on the Soviet Union's many diaspora nationalities. Martin explores the political logic of Stalin's policies as he responded to a perceived threat to Soviet unity in the 1930s by re-establishing the Russians as the state's leading nationality and deporting numerous "enemy nations."

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Terry Martin's Affirmative Action Empire is an exceptional and unique book, indispensable for any student of ethnic politics in the Soviet Union and its successor states, notably the Russian Federation. It is unique both in its comprehensive, in-depth treatment of the evolution of the Soviet nationalities policy from its inception until the end of the 1930s and in its reliance on Soviet archival sources that have become accessible only recently.... A major contribution to the history of the Soviet Union and to the study of ethnicity.

-- Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, Harvard University ― Journal of Ukrainian Studies

The real virtue of Martin's book―and all of the best new Soviet scholarship―is not in the theoretical model it propounds, but in the power of its details, gleaned from previously unknown documents.... Martin is able, for the first time, to explain what it was that the Soviet Union's leaders actually intended their nationality policy to achieve.... Reading Martin's work,... one is struck, above all, by how much stranger the Soviet Union is beginning to seem, in retrospect, than we thought it was at the time, and how much more perverse.... Reading this history also gives us in the West an insight, however narrow, into the turmoil experienced in the non-Russian lands of the former Soviet Union during the last decade. Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Georgia: these are now 'free' and independent states. Yet how real is this freedom? Might it not be another illusion, foisted upon them by a still powerful, and still much wealthier, Russian republic.

― The New York Review of Books

Review

Terry Martin looks at the nationalities policy of the early Soviet period and offers an insightful, detailed analysis of a problem that Soviet leaders grappled with throughout the twentieth century. As he points out, it was a problem that eventually helped to usher in the end of the USSR.

-- Amanda Wood Aucoin, New Zealand Slavonic Journal

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cornell University Press; 1st edition (December 15, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 528 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0801486777
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0801486777
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #167,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #51 in Russian & Soviet Politics
- #64 in Nationalism (Books)
- #282 in Russian History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.6 21 ratings

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Matthew Lerner

Changed the understanding of Soviet nationality policy

Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2016

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Martin's book has changed the way scholars interpret the history of Soviet nationality policy. His contention that the initial goals were to promote nationality and develop the lesser ethnic groups of the Soviet Union, and the way the USSR backtracked on this after the results were not what they hoped for, runs counter to previous understandings of the topic.

The majority of the book consists of examining Ukraine in particular, with Belarus and Central Asia given notice as well. So while it doesn't look at the Soviet Union as a whole, it is possible to still extrapolate the arguments Martin puts forth for the other nationality groups involved. That said, Martin's extensive use of archival sources makes clear that while he focused on Ukraine, the ideas were brought forth to all parts of the USSR.

For anyone who is serious about understanding Soviet nationality policy, this is a key book to read, as it has laid the foundation for modern studies on the topic.

5 people found this helpful

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Yosemite

Outstanding scholarship on a woefully neglected subject

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2020

I bought this several years ago and just found myself referring back to it today. I was struck anew at what a stunningly fine bit of scholarship it is.

Drawn from copious research in primary sources, this book covers how Soviets confronted Communists' dilemma of nations and nationalism.

Marx claimed: “The working men have no country…National differences and antagonisms between peoples are vanishing gradually from day to day.” The problem in the early 20th century was that nationalism was not "vanishing;" it was ascendant. So the Soviets had to cook up their own ideology to deal with it. They theorized that it was a necessary stage on the way to internationalist utopia that people had to get through. The solution: promote and co-opt it with Multiculturalism on steroids. So they encouraged separate identities, separate languages, separate cultures, separate everything, with a little affirmative action for different groups thrown in. Wonder how that worked out?

The one fault I find in this book is that it doesn't really talk about the baleful consequences of Soviet multiculturalism and affirmative action, e.g. a dysfunctional military where soldiers and officers couldn't even communicate with each other; the Ukrainian holocaust (yes that was a consequence); multiple deadly ethnic conflicts that persist to this day between Ossetians, Abkhazians, Chechens, Tatars; and so on.

4 people found this helpful

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