The resurgence of ethnic awareness and self-assertion on the part of competing nationalities in the Soviet Union has taken various forms and has been accelerated by a number of catalysts, differing in nature and degree from one area and nationality to another. But the common factor behind the ethno-political movements that are taking shape is that, as a result of the expectations raised by glasnost, emotions and desires long suppressed and kept underground have found articulation. The simple fact is, the Soviet state never succeeded in "building" a single "Soviet nationality," despite all that was written and spoken in earlier years about a new species, often referred to as homo Sovieticus.
Subsequently, aware that achieving such a nationality was completely unrealistic, Soviet leaders substituted for it the cruder goal of merging the whole of the Soviet population "in the great ocean of Russian language"; that is, everyone would be Russified to a greater or lesser extent.
That meant not merely that the paper rights and privileges awarded to the non-Russian half of the inhabitants of the USSR under the 1936 "Stalin constitution" would be nullified. In addition, educational and cultural institutions for non-Russians, even those residing in their "own" union republics, would be diminished to the point at which the non-Russians would have no choice but to work and communicate in Russian. Even more threatening to the nominally ruling nationalities of the 14 non-Russian union republics was that, under the guise of economic development, they were flooded by waves of Great Russian immigration, to the point where Kazakhs and Kirgiz became minorities in their "own" republics, and Letts were on the point of becoming so.
In 1988, Soviet sources estimated that at least 55 million individuals either were living outside their respective homelands (union republics, autonomous republics, national districts, and so on) or had no such homeland. That is to say, the juridical/administrative boundaries of these various territorial entities, supposedly based on ethnic and linguistic criteria, no longer bore relation (if they ever did) to the national components of the Soviet population. Approximately one-half of these 55 million persons were Great Russians sent into other union republics, essentially as colonizers. Highest on the list of nationalities threatened by this phenomenon were the nominal rulers of Latvia and Estonia.
It would be an oversimplification, however, to reduce the character of the Soviet nationality problem to a mere clash between Great Russians and others. There are several instances in which the lack of coincidence between ethnic and administrative borders has led to severe conflict between non-Russian nationalities. The outstanding example, of course, is the dispute between Armenians and Azeris over the Nagorno-Karabakh "Autonomous Oblast," which this magazine was the first to report in the American press [see "The Soviets' Achilles Heel: The Nationality Question," THE WORLD & I, February 1988].
Demographics
Thus, the first component of the nationality conflict is demographics. This factor has other dimensions than simply increasing geographical mobility. For instance, the differential in natural reproduction rates between "developed" and "developing" nationalities is startling. It may explain why,
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