Ethnic Issues And The Collapse Of The Soviet Union

The breakup of the Soviet Union is one of the most significant events in human history in the 20th century. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union has always been a subject of great concern to theorists and scholars alike in various countries and in particular what had caused its disintegration still remains a hot topic for debate in academic circles up to now. For many years scholars from Europe and America have been writing on and probing into the collapse of U.S.S.R.and addressing this issue from the perspective of the ethnic question is only one important approach for European and American academic circles in this regard. The present article provides an introduction to and analysis of the major viewpoints of European and American scholars in approaching how the Soviet Union broke up in light of the ethnic question.To begin with, the article outlines the research done by European and American scholars on the relevance of the Soviet Union's policy towards nationalities to its disintegration. Based on a review of the tsarist Russia's policy towards nationalities and its consequences, the paper examines the formation and evolution of the policy of the Soviet Union towards nationalities from its founding to its collapse. This paper holds that by pursuing a long-standing policy of external expansion and national oppression, tsarist Russia had not only fostered a deep-rooted Russia chauvinism but also brought about fierce national contraditions within its borders. Born out of such a "parent body", the Soviet Union had inherited a heavy ethnic legacy. Despite the fact that from Lenin to Gorbachev there had been foundamental differences between the Soviet Union's policy towards nationalities and that of tsarist Russia and its national relations had been greatly relaxed. However, in the entire period of the Soviet Union there had existed a relatively great number of mistakes with relation to its policy towards nationalities, and particularly towards the end of the Soviet Union when the national contradictions were becoming increasingly violent, Soviet leaders failed to come up with effective policies and measures to solve the ethnic problems. This triggered the full-scale eruption of national conflicts and eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.Based on an overall analysis, the article presents and analyzes the points of view in the academia in Europe and America from the perspectives of enhanced national self-consciousness, distorted federalism, confrontations of national economic interests, migration policy as well as the roles of the Russian Federation and Baltic States in the disintegration of the Union.The chapter, entitled "Enhanced national self-conscousness and the collapse of the Soviet Union", expounds the formation and evolution of national self-consciousness, national elite and the development of national self-consciousness, the relevance of religious issues and issues of national culture to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The chapter on "Distorted federalism and the collapse of the Soviet Union" analyzes how the federal system came into being and evolved, the roles the federal system and the legal status of the Soviet Union's former republics in the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The chapter of " The clashes of economic interests between different nationalities and the collapse of the Soviet Union" researches into the centralized modes of management and its consequences, the relations of clashes of economic interests between the Union and its former republics and the mistakes in economic reforms and their effects with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The chapter, titled "Dislocation policy of population and the collapse of the Soviet Union" offers an analysis of how the national dislocation in the period from 1930s to 1950s, the relations between Russians and ethnic minorities in the concentrated areas of nationality as well as the incident of "deportation" relate to the worsening national relations in the Soviet Union. The chapter with the title of "The Russian Federation and the...