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  3. Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923–1934
  • Cited by 31
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
February 2010
Print publication year:
1992
Online ISBN:
9780511562914
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511562914
Subjects:
Area Studies, Russian and East European Government, Politics and Policy, Twentieth Century European History, History, European Studies, Russian and East European History
Series:
Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies (84)
Information

Book description

In the early 1920s the Bolsheviks, who were overwhelmingly urban, proletarian, and Russian, believed that rapid industrialization would dissolve the non-Russian national identities and create a solid base of support for the new political order. By the end of the decade, however, the social changes initiated by rapid economic development strengthened national assertiveness. This book analyzes the precarious relationship between Soviet legitimacy-building and the consequences of rapid industrial development in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the most populous non-Russian republic in the USSR, during the 1920s and 1930s. The author shows how the interplay between industrialization, urbanization, and Soviet preferential policies produced a modern, urban Ukrainian identity. This, he argues, explains why the Stalinist leadership changed its course on the nationality question in the 1930s and gave precedence to the Russians in the USSR.

Reviews

"George Liber shows how the great social processes of urbanization and industrialization played out in a vital region. He reminds us not to compartmentalize the history of the empire but to see it an a series of variations in a shared multinational experience. He adds importantly to our understanding of the Soviet experience." Professor Jeffrey Brooks, The Johns Hopkins University

"...a good read, a rare page-turner among scholarly works. The monograph is exceedingly well documented....admirable for its consultation and grasp of existing statistical information, as well as its firm grounding in the Western secondary literature....a long-overdue achievement in the field of Soviet social history." Andrea Chandler, Canadian Slavonic Papers

"... a careful and lucid account that is never dull... the provision of a clearly demarcated conclusion to each chapter, though occasionally repetitive of the text, allows the reader to digest the considerable information that has been provided earlier... historians in both Ukraine and the West can begin their labours with Liber's excellent and concise study." The International History Review

"Works such as this restore the history of Ukraine and at the same time expand our knowledge of the former USSR in its formative period." Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Slavic Review

"This is an outstanding book that demonstrates the relationship between the Soviet policy of korenizatsiia (the rooting of socialism into non-Russian cultures) and nationalism....Liber's book is meritorious in its documentation of a crucial decade in Soviet history that helped construct the nations that eventually redefined world history in the early 1990s. The topic is of extreme importance to our understanding of nationalism. The argument and the data collection represent high standards of scholarship. For these reasons the book merits careful consideration." David D. Laitin, Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism

"Liber's book provides a clear picture of the changes that occurred in Soviet Ukraine in the years 1923-34....well documented with printed and archival sources....This book will be read with interest by those working in the fields of nationality and ethnicity, Soviet studies, and twentieth-century labor history." Theodore R. Weeks, Journal of Modern History

"Liber's stimulating, balanced, and well-researched narrative demonstrates this and poses further problems for future scholarship. It deserves to be widely read." Myroslav Shkandrij, Journal of Ukrainian Studies

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Contents

Contents
  • 2 - The Bolshevik response
    pp 26-46
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