Book Talk: Nested Nationalism

Krista Goff's latest book, 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 Goff argues that Soviet nationality policies produced recursive, nested relationships between majority and minority nationalisms and national identifications in the USSR. In this book talk, she will explain how Soviet-era experiences and policies continue to shape interethnic relationships and expectations today.

Send questions to our speaker by email to kennan@wilsoncenter.org, tweet @KennanInstitute, or write on our Facebook page.