Post-Nationalism: the Post-Soviet Space

Instructor: Jim von Geldern
Class: MWF 1:10 pm-2:10 pm
Room: Carnegie 404
E-mail: vongeldern@macalester.edu
Office: Humanities 207
Phone: x6568
Office hours: Monday, 12:00-1:00, Wednesday, 9:30-10:30, or by appointment

"No matter how many separate republics are created we shall not be frightened by it." (Lenin)

Course Description:

One of the great accomplishments of the Russian Revolution was the creation of a multi-national federation based on principles of ethnic and racial equality. Arising from a system of treaties between nations liberated in the aftermath of the First World War, the federation became a Soviet Union, dedicated to the dream of communism. Forged into an unbreakable and involuntary union under Iosif Stalin, the Soviet system used force, law, ideology, economic planning, and ethnic particularism to weave a web of interlocking relationships that survived for seventy years.

Many called the union an empire, ruled by a Russo-centric party from Moscow. Yet unique among empires, the Soviet Union fell apart when the imperial center broke away from its "colonies" in December 1991. We will examine the slow process of dissolution that was initiated, rather than completed, on that fateful day. When the bonds of union abruptly disappeared, so too did the economic and political framework under which all the Soviet societies had lived. The new and autonomous states that arose in their place showed all the signs of their parentage. Only gradually have these signs grown fainter. Focusing on governmental and legal institutions, we will examine the new societies that have grown on the foundations of the Soviet republics. Issues will include the creation of democratic governance and institutions in societies nurtured in dictatorship; the realignment of regions in the integrated Soviet space; the attempt to create nation-states in republics whose populations became heterogeneous under Soviet rule; the birth of civil societies based on human rights; and the tense relationship between between ethnic particularism and modern globalism. We will also study the fate of "diaspora" populations stranded outside their ethnic homelands by the breakup of the multi-national union; the local rebellions that have emerged to challenge the new states; the creation of new dictatorships based on native rule; and the contentious role of international organizations in the reorganization of the post-Soviet space.

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