Serhii Plokhy makes the provocative argument that the Soviet Union was much closer to assimilate Ukrainian identity than the Russian empire. It had more time to work on the Russification of Ukraine and Belarus. And the fictional world of international communism often worked as a powerful screen for brutal assimilation. When the project failed, it may have been for causes unrelated to the success or failure of Russification. History does not proceed in a linear way.
strongly disagree. Soviet policy varied over time, and there was indeed a significant language shift towards Russian as lingua franca, indispensable for mobility and social advancement in the wider Soviet space. But there was not a consistent policy of Russification. This argument ignores early Soviet policy of korenizatsiaa ("nativization") - see Harvard historian Terry Marin's brilliant book The Affirmative Action Empire. And it ignores the broader fact that the legacy of Soviet nationality policy was strong institutionalized support for both a sense of territorial nationhood and personal nationality for Ukrainians and all other Soviet nationalities with "their own" national republics, regardless of level of proficiency in Russian. See also my "Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Eurasia" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00993673
The point is though that the Soviet Union took a sharp Russian nationalist turn in WW2 and that survived afterwards. Especially under Brezhnev, who quite openly marginalised regional languages and cultures with his education policy, often leading to backlashes such as in the Caucasus. The relative pluralism and cultural radicalism of the early 20s was an aberration compared to the chauvinistic and culturally conservative turn the USSR took later on. Ukrainian territorial feeling was far more a consequence of the industrial and bureaucratic feudalism of the late USSR, which is why ardent communists in Ukraine became nationalists overnight to protect their fiefdom. The modern nationalism of the Ukrainians has its roots in pre-Soviet nationalism in the west, and the counterproductive effects of Putin's strategy since 2014 in the east.
During the war, yes. And yes, korennizatsia was a unique and fascinating early experiment in non-Russian nation-making that was soon abandoned. But there's no evidence for a strongly assimilationist Russian nationalism throughout the post-war period. Education continued to be provided in an astonishing variety of languages right up to the dissolution of the SU. A regime bent on assimilation could have done all kinds of things the SU did not do. And the ethnoterritorial federal structures, though of course hollow in their fictitious proclamations of sovereignty, were by no means inconsequential as incubators of a sense of territorial nationhood, coupled with the inscription of personal "nationality" into one's internal identity documents. The SU's unprecedented system of institutionalized multinationality -- at once territorial and personal -- did matter, as I argued in 1994 in the piece linked above, and as many others have argued as well.
You can draw connections between the slavophile movement and Russian communism, the desire to separate oneself from the West. It definitely held some appeal for Slavs that was not just rooted in Marxism.
But the USSR also reified modern-day Ukrainian borders which is viewed as the basis for their nation-state, so the argument is not exactly that compelling. It assimilated Ukraine in so far that the Soviets tried to create the "new Soviet man," but a similar case can be made for Kazakhs and other groups who also experienced this process.
Perhaps, but I fear this is taking the self-proclaimed terminology of Communist regimes far too literally, without the necessary irony. Xinjiang is an "autonomous province" of the Uighurs with its defined boundaries: and yet this supposed structure, with Marxist irony, is of course precisely the instrument whereby extirpation and Hannification is to be executed.
strongly disagree. Soviet policy varied over time, and there was indeed a significant language shift towards Russian as lingua franca, indispensable for mobility and social advancement in the wider Soviet space. But there was not a consistent policy of Russification. This argument ignores early Soviet policy of korenizatsiaa ("nativization") - see Harvard historian Terry Marin's brilliant book The Affirmative Action Empire. And it ignores the broader fact that the legacy of Soviet nationality policy was strong institutionalized support for both a sense of territorial nationhood and personal nationality for Ukrainians and all other Soviet nationalities with "their own" national republics, regardless of level of proficiency in Russian. See also my "Nationhood and the National Question in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Eurasia" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00993673
The point is though that the Soviet Union took a sharp Russian nationalist turn in WW2 and that survived afterwards. Especially under Brezhnev, who quite openly marginalised regional languages and cultures with his education policy, often leading to backlashes such as in the Caucasus. The relative pluralism and cultural radicalism of the early 20s was an aberration compared to the chauvinistic and culturally conservative turn the USSR took later on. Ukrainian territorial feeling was far more a consequence of the industrial and bureaucratic feudalism of the late USSR, which is why ardent communists in Ukraine became nationalists overnight to protect their fiefdom. The modern nationalism of the Ukrainians has its roots in pre-Soviet nationalism in the west, and the counterproductive effects of Putin's strategy since 2014 in the east.
During the war, yes. And yes, korennizatsia was a unique and fascinating early experiment in non-Russian nation-making that was soon abandoned. But there's no evidence for a strongly assimilationist Russian nationalism throughout the post-war period. Education continued to be provided in an astonishing variety of languages right up to the dissolution of the SU. A regime bent on assimilation could have done all kinds of things the SU did not do. And the ethnoterritorial federal structures, though of course hollow in their fictitious proclamations of sovereignty, were by no means inconsequential as incubators of a sense of territorial nationhood, coupled with the inscription of personal "nationality" into one's internal identity documents. The SU's unprecedented system of institutionalized multinationality -- at once territorial and personal -- did matter, as I argued in 1994 in the piece linked above, and as many others have argued as well.
You can draw connections between the slavophile movement and Russian communism, the desire to separate oneself from the West. It definitely held some appeal for Slavs that was not just rooted in Marxism.
But the USSR also reified modern-day Ukrainian borders which is viewed as the basis for their nation-state, so the argument is not exactly that compelling. It assimilated Ukraine in so far that the Soviets tried to create the "new Soviet man," but a similar case can be made for Kazakhs and other groups who also experienced this process.
Perhaps, but I fear this is taking the self-proclaimed terminology of Communist regimes far too literally, without the necessary irony. Xinjiang is an "autonomous province" of the Uighurs with its defined boundaries: and yet this supposed structure, with Marxist irony, is of course precisely the instrument whereby extirpation and Hannification is to be executed.