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Rag Doll Nations and the Politics of Differentiation on Arbitrary Borders: Karelia and Moldova*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Mark Lawrence Schrad
Mark Lawrence Schrad*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. [email protected]
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Extract

“Tell a man today to go and build a state,” Samuel Finer once stated, “and he will try to establish a definite and defensible boundary and compel those who live inside it to obey him.” While at best an oversimplification, Finer's insight illuminates an interesting aspect of state-society relations. Who is it that builds the state? How and where do they establish territorial boundaries, and how are those who live within that territory compelled to obey? Generally speaking, these are the questions that will be addressed here. Of more immediate concern is the fate of peoples located in regions where arbitrary land boundaries fall. Are they made loyal to the state through coercion or by their own compulsions? More importantly, how are their identities shaped by the efforts of the state to differentiate them from their compatriots on the other side of the borders? How is the shift from ethnic to national identities undertaken? A parallel elaboration of the national histories of the populations of Karelia and Moldova will shed light on these questions. The histories of each group are marked by a myriad of attempts to differentiate the identity of each ethnic community from their compatriots beyond the state's borders. The results of such overt, state-initiated efforts to differentiate borderland populations by encouraging a national identity at the expense of the ethnic, has ranged from the mundane to the tragic—from uneventful assimilation to persecution and even genocide. As an illustration of the range of possibilities and processes, I maintain that the tragedies of Karelia and Moldova are not exceptional, but rather are a consequence of their geographical straddling of arbitrary borders, and the need for the state to promote a distinctive national identity for these populations to differentiate them socially from their compatriots beyond the frontier.

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Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2004 , pp. 457 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe 

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References

Notes

1. Samuel Finer, “State-Building, State Boundaries, and Border Control,” Social Science Information, August-October 1974, p. 79. This statement, and indeed this entire paper, unavoidably privileges notions of place of being over space of movement in describing the interactions of populations, identity, and the state. For more on the debate between the two, see: Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, “Population Displacement, State-Building, and Social Identity in the Lands of the Former Russian Empire, 1917–1923,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2003, pp. 51–100.Google Scholar

2. The “rag doll” metaphor is meant to symbolize the systematic abuse of the border-region population at the hands of the nationalizing state, and is in no way meant to trivialize the hardships associated with the reconstitution of identity, which may include war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.Google Scholar

3. Joel Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 15–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 17.Google Scholar

5. The essential role of extending social control is the foundation of Migdal's earlier theorization on the role of the state in relation to the society. Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 32–41.Google Scholar

6. Robert Gilpin underscores the traditional role of physical boundaries in political discourse in relation to territorial control: “The control and division of territory constitute the basic mechanism governing the distribution of scarce resources among the states in an international system.” Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 37. The emphasis in this article will be on contiguous land borders, rather than water borders, due primarily to the obvious notion that, while water resources may be of importance to certain populations, land borders more frequently divide sedentary populations from one another. See Harvey Starr and Benjamin A. Most, “The Substance and Study of Borders in International Relations Research,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1976, pp. 581–620.Google Scholar

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8. Recent accounts in this perennialist vein include: Samuel Huntington, Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1996); Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (New York: Random House, 2000). See also Anthony D. Smith's discussion of different “proto-national” ethnic groups or ethnie, which are defined as “named human populations with shared ancestry myths, histories and cultures, having an association with a specific territory and a sense of solidarity.” Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 32.Google Scholar

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19. Seen in this light, it should not be surprising that in judging individuals accused of treason or betrayal of the state, the first consequence is usually the revocation of citizenship.Google Scholar

20. Joel Migdal recognizes the threat or use of violence stands behind many state practices aimed at standardizing and differentiating the nation. Yet, he also notes the importance of practices of external actors in reinforcing and validating both boundaries and practices, including the role of international recognition of both state boundaries and the right of self-determination by multinational bodies, including the United Nations. Migdal, State in Society, p. 18. See also Peter Andreas, “Redrawing the Line: Borders and Security in the Twenty-First Century,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 2, 2003, pp. 78–111.Google Scholar

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22. A. I. Asiwaju, “The Conceptual Framework,” in A. I. Asiwaju, ed., Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations across Africa's International Boundaries, 1884–1984 (London: C. Hurst, 1984), p. 3; William Miles, Hausaland Divided: Colonialism and Independence in Nigeria and Niger (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 5.Google Scholar

23. In the Soviet context, see Francine Hirsch, “Toward an Empire of Nations: Border-Making and the Formation of Soviet National Identities,” Russian Review, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2000, p. 204; Ronald Grigor Suny and Terry Martin, eds, A State of Nations: Empire and Nation Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

24. Eric Helleiner actually outlines five different ways in which national currencies foster collective national identities, including the two mentioned above. Eric Helleiner, “National Currencies and National Identities,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 41, No. 10, 1998, pp. 1409–1436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. This follows Francine Hirsch's notion of Soviet “state-sponsored evolutionism.” Hirsch, “Toward an Empire of Nations,” pp. 203, 225. Also germane are the comparisons and contrasts exhibited in the remolding of Soviet class, rather than national, identity: Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia,” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 65, No. 4, 1993, pp. 745–770.Google Scholar

26. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1970–1914 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977), pp. 301–338.Google Scholar

27. Ibid.; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, p. 47.Google Scholar

28. In the case of modern Africa, Stephen Van Evera asserts that “Borders may bisect nationalities, or may follow national demographic divides. Nation-bisecting borders are more troublesome, because they have the same effect as demographic intermingling: they entrap parts of nations within the boundaries of states dominated by other ethnic groups, giving rise to expansionism by the truncated nation.” Stephen Van Evera, “Nationalism and the Causes of War,” in Charles Kupchan, ed., Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 146–147.Google Scholar

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32. Edward Thaden, “The Russian Government,” in Edward Thaden, ed., Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland, 1855–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 82; Sergeev, The Saga of the Karelo-Finnish Republic, p. 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33. David Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 40.Google Scholar

34. Most historical attention to Karelia and Finland at this time usually concerns the Allied expeditionary forces, comprising up to 23,500 American, British and French troops, which landed in Murmansk and Arkhangel'sk to protect these ports against German-Finnish attack, and secure the north-south railroad connecting Murmansk with Petrozavodsk and Petrograd. Many have argued that this Allied presence was an attempt to overthrow the Bolshevik regime. Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), pp. 656–670; George F. Kennan, Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), pp. 69–70. A Soviet version of these events is presented in: M. Kh. Kiuru, ed., Ocherki istorii Karel'skoi organizatsii KPSS (Petrozavodsk, KARELIA: Kareliya, 1974), pp. 98–119; Karel'skii Filial AN, Ocherki istorii Karelii, Vol. 2, pp. 76–148; Sergeyev, The Saga of the Karelo-Finnish Republic, pp. 10–12.Google Scholar

35. Nick Baron, “Regional'noe konstruirovanie Karel'skoi avtonomii,” Ab Imperio, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2002, pp. 279–308; John Hodgson, Communism in Finland: A History and Interpretation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 147. As a result, the number of Finns in Karelia rose from 990 to 2,500 by 1926: I. P. Pokrovskaya, Naseleniye Karelii (Petrozavodsk, KARELIA: Kareliya, 1978), pp. 65–68.Google Scholar

36. “Largely under the leadership of the Finnish Communist Party in exile, the Autonomous Republic was to be a powerful red beacon signaling the happiness of the non-Russian nationalities of the Soviet Union.” Michael Gelb, '‘Karelian Fever’: The Finnish Immigrant Community during Stalin's Purges,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 45, No. 6, 1993, p. 1091. Also: Alexis Pogorelskin, “Historical Preface,” in Lawrence Hokkanen, Sylvia Hokkanen and Anita Middleton, Karelia: A Finnish-American Couple in Stalin's Russia (St Cloud, MN: North Star Press, 1991), pp. x-xi; Arvo Tuominen, The Bells of the Kremlin (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983), p. 283.Google Scholar

37. Markku Kangaspuro, Neuvosto-Karjalan taistelu itsehallinnosta: Nationalismi ja suomalaiset punaiset Neuvostoliiton vallankäytössä vuosina 1920–1939 [The Soviet Karelian Struggle for Self-Government: Nationalism and the Finnish Reds in the Soviet Union's Exercise of Power] (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2000); see review by Toivo U. Raum, American Historical Review, Vol. 108, No. 1, 2003, p. 295.Google Scholar

38. A. I. Afanas'eva, ed., Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo v Sovetskoi Karelii, 1926–1941 (Petrozavodsk, KARELIA: Kareliya, 1986), p. 6; E. S. Gardin, Sovetskaya Kareliya v gody vosstanovitel'nogo perioda: 1921–1925 (Petrozavodsk, KARELIA: Kareliya, 1955), pp. 15–67.Google Scholar

39. Pekka Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” in Heikki Kirkinen et al., Istoriya Karel'skogo naroda , pp. 267–269. Robert Conquest, in his seminal work on Stalin's forced famines and repression, notes that “The ‘urban’ population of Karelia-Murmansk increased, in official figures, by 325,000 … between 1926 and 1939. Most of this certainly represents kulak labor in camp or special settlement.” Robert Conquest, Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 140; Nick Baron, “Soviet Karelia, 1920–1937: A Study of Space and Power in Stalinist Russia,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2001, pp. 230–235.Google Scholar

40. Evgenii I. Klement'ev and A.A. Kozhanov, Sel'skaua sreda i naseleniye Karelii, 1945–1960 gg.: Istoriko-sotsiolgicheskiye ocherki (Leningrad: Nauka, 1988), p. 29; Statisticheskoe upravlenie Karel'skoi ASSR, Narodnoe khozyaistvo Karel'skoi ASSR (Petrozavodsk, KARELIA: Kareliya, 1985), p. 8; Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 459. Gelb, “‘Karelian Fever’,” p. 1092; Anatole Mazour, Finland between East and West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 62.Google Scholar

41. Hokkanen et al., Karelia: A Finnish-American Couple in Stalin's Russia; May me Sevander, Of Soviet Bondage (Duluth, MN: Brooks Anderson), 1996.Google Scholar

42. Gelb, ‘“Karelian Fever,”’ p. 1092.Google Scholar

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45. “In this manner the Finns were all but eliminated from the government of Karelia, as well as the region's cultural infrastructure. Indeed, as the General Secretary of the Finnish party noted, after the ‘Great Hate,’ as the Ezhovshchina became known here, ‘not a single even slightly known Finn or Karelian remained in the government or the party leadership. All the posts were manned by Russians. The party secretaryship was assumed by the infamous [G.N.] Kupriyanov, who raged in his inaugural address, “I won't sleep peacefully a single night until the last Finn has been banished from Petrozavodsk.” Gelb, “‘Karelian Fever,’” p. 1100; Tuominen, Bells of the Kremlin, p. 299.Google Scholar

46. Hundreds of such archival materials have recently been made public by the Institute of Language, Literature and History of the Karelian Study Center of the Russian Academy of Science and the Government Archive of Social-Political Direction and Formulation of the Karelian Republic (Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk, Karel'skii Nauchnyi Tsentr, Institut Yazyka, Literatury i Istorii; Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Obshchestvenno-Politich-eskikh Dvizhenii i Formirovanii Respubliki Kareliya). V. G. Makurov, ed., Neizvestnaya Kareliya: Dokumenty spetsorganov o zhizni respubliki, 1921–1940 gg . (Petrozavodsk, Karelia: Karel'skii nauchnyi tsentr RAN, 1997). Kaganspuro, Neuvosto-Karjalan taistelu itsehallinnosta.Google Scholar

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48. Indeed, other foreign elements were persecuted, such as the Volga Germans, Koreans, and Greeks. Such a list of nationalities displaced or exiled from their native homelands (not necessarily on the periphery of the USSR) is no doubt extensive, and includes the Chechens, Ingush, Karachai, Balkars, Kalmyks, Kurds, and Crimean Tatars. See Irina Takala, “Natsional'nye operatsii OGPU/NKVD v Karelii,” in Timo Vihavainen and Irina Takala, eds, V sem'e edinnoi: natsional'naya politika partii bol'shevikov i ee osushchestvlenie na Severo-Zapadne Rossii v 1920–1950-e gody (Petrozavodsk, Karelia: Izdatel'stvo Petrozavodskogo Universiteta, 1998), pp. 161–206; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Nations in Exile,” in The Gulag Archipelago (Three) (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), pp. 387–388; Melanie Ilic, “The Great Terror in Leningrad: A Quantitative Analysis,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 8, 2000, p. 1521; Nick Baron, “Constructing Immigrant Identities in Stalinist Russia: Explorations in Theory and Practice,” Intergraph: Journal of Dialogic Anthropology, Vol. 1, No. 3, 2000.Google Scholar

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50. Paul Austin, “Soviet Karelian: The Language that Failed,” Slavic Review, Vol. 51, No. 1, 1992, pp. 22–23; Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” pp. 274–275.Google Scholar

51. Austin, “Soviet Karelian,” p. 23. The “Bubrikh monster,” as Michael Gelb dubbed Soviet Karelian language, was developed by an eccentric philologist at Leningrad State University, D. V. Bubrikh. This hybrid language was a “child of Marxist-Leninist linguistic science [that] combined a Karelian dialect with a huge admixture of Russian vocabulary and morphology.” Gelb, “‘Karelian Fever,’” p. 1101; Tuominen, Bells of the Kremlin , p. 305. The creation of the Karelian language is boasted of in Soviet writings: Sergeev, Saga of the Karelo-Finnish Republic, p. 32.Google Scholar

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53. A further political preparation was the unconstitutional transfer of northern Karelian territory to the less contentious Murmansk Province on 28 May 1938: “A comparable [to the liquidation of the Volga German ASSR] disregard for constitutional niceties was displayed on May 28, 1938, when the Kandalaksha region was transferred from the Karelo-Finnish Republic to the province of Murmansk of the RSFSR by the federal Presidium instead of by the authorities of the K-FSSR and the RSFSR. In both practice and substance, Soviet methods of altering areas of local government exhibit a flexibility which often savors of the arbitrary, and a variability which at times suggest experimental fumbling rather than adherence to established principle.” Frederick Schuman, Soviet Politics: At Home and Abroad (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 314. Also: John Morrison, “The Evolution of the Territorial-Administrative System of the USSR,” American Quarterly on the Soviet Union, October 1938, pp. 25–46.Google Scholar

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55. A. A. Grigor'ev and A. V. Ivanov, eds, Karel'skaya ASSR (Moscow: Geografgiz, 1956), p. 159; Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” pp. 280–281; Schuman, Soviet Politics, p. 390.Google Scholar

56. Harrison Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 243–250. Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” p. 282.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., pp. 286–290; Austin, “Soviet Karelian,” p. 21.Google Scholar

58. “It even seemed likely that during World War 2 Karelian males on the average suffered proportionately more than Soviet males.” Seppo Lallukka, “Assimilation of the Karelians in the Soviet Union: A Demographic Appraisal,” in Zvi Gitelman, ed., The Politics of Nationality and the Erosion of the USSR (New York: St Martin's Press, 1992), p. 106.Google Scholar

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60. Indeed, Stalin kept an option open for a communist putsch in Helsinki if the Finnish leadership stepped sufficiently out of line in its accomodationist policies, which came to be known as “Finlandization.” Vladislav Zubok and Konstantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 116–119.Google Scholar

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62. Ibid., p. 35.Google Scholar

63. The Chairman of the Presidium of the High Soviet of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, O. V. Kuusinen was quoted as follows: “Karel'skaya respublika yavlyaetsya dlya bratskoi sem'i Rossiiskoi Federatsii sobstvenno ne novym, a starym chlenom sem'i. Ved' nasha respublika vplot' do 1940 g. vkhodila v sostav RSFSR. Znachit, rech ‘idet teper’, po suti dela, o vosstanovlenii Karel'skoi Sovetskoi respubliki na polozhenii ravnopravnogo chlena bratskoi sem'i Rossiiskoi Federatsii.” Karel'skii Filial AN, Ocherki istorii Karelii, Vol. 2, pp. 451–452. Also: Kiuru, Ocherki istorii Karel'skoi organizatsii KPSS, p. 414. This “unconstitutional” maneuver alarmed both Kazakh and Baltic leaders about the political consequences of increased in-migration of ethnic Russians, and the ease with which arguments for political ethnic autonomy could be disregarded by Moscow—an assertion that is not a contemporary argument aided by hindsight, given the eventual political outcome with the demise of the USSR. Even by Soviet-era accounts, this unconstitutional demotion of status did indeed weigh heavily in the republics. Tonu Parming, “Population Processes and the Nationality Issue in the Soviet Baltic,” Soviet Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1980, pp. 405–406; Robert Conquest, The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 132; Roman Smal-Stocki, The Captive Nations: Nationalism of the Non-Russian Nations in the Soviet Union (New York: Bookman, 1960), pp. 72–73.Google Scholar

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65. Statisticheskoe upravlenie Karel'skoi ASSR, Narodnoe khozyaistvo Karel'skoi ASSR, p. 8. See also Phillip Roeder, “Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization,” World Politics, Vol. 43, No. 2, 1991, p. 224.Google Scholar

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67. This percentage of non-Russians speaking Russian as their native language was the third highest in the Soviet Union, eclipsed only by the non-Russian populations of the Jewish autonomous oblast' in the Russian Far East (58.3% of the Jewish population, which was itself only 8.8% of the oblast' population), and the Khanty-Mansi at 31.1% of the non-Russian population (which was itself only 13.8% of the total oblast' population). Robert Lewis, “The Mixing of Russians and Soviet Nationalities and Its Demographic Impact,” in Edward Allworth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 146–148.Google Scholar

68. Of rural marriages 35.6% were inter-ethnic, as opposed to 32.2% in the cities. A. A. Kozhanov, “Izmeneniya v etnicheskom sostave sel'skogo naseleniya Karel'skoi ASSR v poslevoennyi period (1945-1979 gg.),” in E.I Klement'yev and R.F. Nikol'skaya, eds, Etnokul'turnye protsessy v Karelii (Petrozavodsk, KARELIA: Karel'skii filial AN SSSR, 1986), pp. 5, 18.Google Scholar

69. Ibid., p. 20.Google Scholar

70. Lallukka, “Assimilation of the Karelians in the Soviet Union,” 102–103.Google Scholar

71. Ibid., p. 116. Similar findings are noted as problematic in analysis of the data from the 1979 Soviet census: Rasma Karklins, “A Note on ‘Nationality’ and ‘Native Tongue’ as Census Categories in 1979,” Soviet Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1980, p. 420.Google Scholar

72. When the popular Russian nationalist Boris Yeltsin was unable to secure a mandate to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1990 from either Moscow or his home district of Sverdlovsk, he was invited to attend as a member of the Karelian delegation. It was from this delegation that Yeltsin brazenly made demands for increased democratic participation in the governance of the country, which was a crucial moment that contributed to the eventual political demise of the USSR. Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St Martin's Press, 2000,) pp. 236–237, 243.Google Scholar

73. Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” p. 299. These figures are roughly consistent with the population estimates for the late 1990s: 74.3% Russians, 10.0% Karelians, 7.0% Belorussians, 3.6% Ukrainians, 2.3% Finns, and 0.8% Veps. Goskomstat Rossii, Regiony Rossii: Informatsionno-statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow: Goskomstat, 1997), Vol. 1, p. 7.Google Scholar

74. “Some signs of national awakening have recently become visible among the Karelian intellectuals but this, unfortunately, cannot remove the harsh demographic realities. The next few decades will show if the Karelians can survive as a nationality or whether only a population with some Karelian cultural background will remain—which, perhaps, would best be characterized by calling them Russians of Karelian descent.” Lallukka, “Assimilation of the Karelians in the Soviet Union,” p. 116.Google Scholar

75. Austin, “Soviet Karelian,” pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

76. Lallukka, “Assimilation of the Karelians in the Soviet Union,” p. 116; Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” p. 303.Google Scholar

77. Ibid., p. 304.Google Scholar

78. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism , p. 47. Also particularly instructive are the words of Anthony Smith: “Broadly speaking, ‘location’ and ‘sovereignty’ constitute for many observers the key to ethnic survival.” Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, pp. 93, 98.Google Scholar

79. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism , p. 99.Google Scholar

80. “Those who profess Christianity (Karelians, Mordvins, and Chuvash) have been most affected by the Russian policy of assimilation.” Ann Sheehy, “Russia's Republics: A Threat to Its Territorial Integrity?,” RFE/RL Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 20, 1993, p. 35.Google Scholar

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82. The region became the scene of eight separate wars between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, as Russian ambitions expanded southwards (1710-1711, 1736–1739, 1768–1774, 1787–1792, 1806–1811, 1828–1829, 1853–1856, 1877–1878). Charles King, The Moldovans (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 2000), p. 18. With that advance came both Russian landowners and the Russian Orthodox Church, which undermined Bessarabian Orthodoxy and its traditional loyalty to Constantinople. Jonathan Eyal and Graham Smith, “Moldova and the Moldovans,” in Graham Smith, ed., The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States (New York: Longman, 1996), p. 224.Google Scholar

83. There is a distinct danger in interpretation of this brief history: the purported Latin roots of the Romanian ethnic identity were only discovered in the mid-nineteenth century, with the Latinization efforts that influenced both language and the reading of the national history that accompanied the development of an independent Romanian state. Indeed, this brief history of Romanian statehood is a microcosm of the argument presented here about how integral the nationalization of ethnic identity is to political self-determination.Google Scholar

84. Nicholas Dima, Bessarabia and Bukovina , p. 16.Google Scholar

85. Charles King, “Moldovan Identity and the Politics of Pan-Romanianism,” Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2, 1994, p. 348. Really, one must wonder how many Siberias there were in pre-revolutionary Russia!Google Scholar

86. William Crowther uses similar terminology in his description of the Soviet-era Moldova: “Moldavia … stands out as a backwater within the Soviet system in its social and economic development.” William Crowther, “The Politics of Ethno-national Mobilization: Nationalism and Reform in Soviet Moldavia,” Russian Review , April 1991, p. 184. I. Sergeyev uses almost identical language in his description of Karelia: “Once again Karelia became a sleepy backwoods.” Sergeev, Saga of the Karelo-Finnish Republic, p.6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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90. Irina Blagodatskikh, “Moldova i Pridnestrov'e v poiskakh ‘svoei’ istorii,” in Karl Aimermakher and Gennadii Bordyugov, eds, Natsional'nye istorii v Sovetskom i postsovetskikh gosudarstvakh (Moscow: Airo-XX, 1999), p. 196; Ben Fowkes, The Disintegration of the Soviet Union: A Study in the Rise and Triumph of Nationalism (New York: St Martin's Press, 1997), p. 7.Google Scholar

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93. Artem Lazarev, Vossoedineniye moldavskogo naroda v edinoye Sovetskoye gosudarstvo (Kishinev, Moldova: Kartya moldovenyaske, 1965), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

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96. Again, reiterating the earlier point that national groups tend to see their “natural” borders beyond their actual borders.Google Scholar

97. Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire , p. 275; King, The Moldovans, p. 55. The development of cadres of communist party members from within the MASSR was likewise an important goal of Soviet policy. V. M. Mirenyuk, “Podgotovka kadrov srednei i vyshei kvalifikatsii v Moldavskoi ASSR (1926–1949 gg.),” in S. G. Syrtsova, ed., Kul'turnoe stroitel'stvo v Sovetskoi Moldavii (Kishinev, Moldova: Shtiintsa, 1974), p. 256.Google Scholar

98. The “imposition” of Cyrillic is a misnomer: the use of Cyrillic among the Moldovan populations did indeed have precedent in pre-revolutionary Moldovan linguistic development. King, The Moldovans , p. 65.Google Scholar

99. The parallels with the Karelian experiences were noted by many, including the Ukrainian Commissar for Enlightenment, V. P. Zatons'kyi, in 1931: “In the far north, there is a republic that is completely analogous to your own. There, 100,000 Karelians live inside the Soviet Union and around 400,000 in Finland. But it happens that a lot of ‘clever’ leaders, because of the underdeveloped nature of Karelian culture, decided that it was necessary to take the Finnish language and to build the Karelian Republic on that basis. Obviously, the Finnish language is related to Karelian, although perhaps not as closely as Romanian to your Moldovan language, but it is unknown and unintelligible to the Karelians. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, it turned out that they tried to build Karelian national culture on the basis of the Finnish language.” He would continue that minor linguistic differences could assume greater significance given the political Situation on the border, and that it would be a mistake to fennicize the Karelians or romanicize the Moldovans. Ibid., pp. 81–82.Google Scholar

100. Ibid., p. 80.Google Scholar

101. Ibid., p. 82.Google Scholar

102. For a discussion of the failure of Romanian reforms in Bessarabia and Bukovina, see P. Tolstoi, “Land Nationalization in the New Western Republics and Provinces” [1940], in Rudolf Schlesinger, ed., The Nationalities Problem and Soviet Administration: Selected Readings on the Development of Soviet Nationalities Policies (London: Routledge, 1998 [1956]), pp. 267–268.Google Scholar

103. “Latinizaria alfabetului moldovenesc—arma luptii di clas a proliteriatului si zidirii sotializmuli,” Octiabriu, Nos 5–6, 1932, p. 183. Quoted in King, The Moldovans, p. 83.Google Scholar

104. “Serinta norodului moldovenesc este implinita,” Moldova socialista , 6 June 1938, p. 1. Quoted in King, The Moldovans, p. 85.Google Scholar

105. Ibid., p. 88.Google Scholar

106. Smal-Stocki, Captive Nations , p. 65.Google Scholar

107. Dumitru Nimigeanu, Hell Moved Its Border (London: Blanford Press, 1960); Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War, p. 141. For the Soviet account, see the section “Likvidatsiya okkupatsionnogo rezhima, formirovaniya organov Sovetskoi vlasti,” in Lazarev, Vossoedineniye moldavskogo naroda v edinoye Sovetskoye gosudarstvo, pp. 36–59.Google Scholar

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111. A. M. Taran ed Golod v Moldove, 1946–1947: Sbornik dokumentov (Krishinev: Stiinta, 1993), p. 9; King, The Moldovans, p. 96.Google Scholar

112. Joseph Nogee and Robert Donaldson, Soviet Foreign Policy since World War II , 3rd edn (New York: Pergamon Press, 1988), p. 217. Contrary to some accounts, communist Romania was not a loose cannon in the Soviet bloc, but rather a staunch defender of communism with strong ties to Moscow.Google Scholar

113. Dima, Bessarabia and Bukovina , pp. 43–54; E. M. Sukhova, ed., Sovetskii Soyuz: Moldaviya (Moscow: Mysl', 1970), p. 81.Google Scholar

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115. King, The Moldovans , p. 100.Google Scholar

116. Ibid., p. 101.Google Scholar

117. Robert Lewis, “The Mixing of Russians and Soviet Nationalities and Its Demographic Impact,” in Edward All worth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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119. Lewis, “The Mixing of Russians and Soviet Nationalities and Its Demographic Impact,” p. 146; Michael Bruchis, Nations—Nationalities—People: A Study of the Nationalities Policy of the Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

120. Eyal and Smith, “Moldova and the Moldovans,” p. 232.Google Scholar

121. Steven D. Roper, “Regionalism in Moldova: The Case of Transnistria and Gagauzia,” in James Hughes and Gwendolyn Sasse, eds, Ethnicity and Territory in the Former Soviet Union (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 104; Nadia Diuk and Adrian Karatnycky, The Hidden Nations: The People Challenge in the Soviet Union (New York: William Morrow, 1990), pp. 244–245.Google Scholar

122. The national language of the Gagauz experienced many of the same oscillations in official linguistic policy as the Moldovan language. See Bruchis, Nations—Nationalities—People , p. 9.Google Scholar

123. Roper, “Regionalism in Moldova,” p. 106.Google Scholar

124. Eyal and Smith, “Moldova and the Moldovans,” p. 235. Whereas in Estonia the titular language was to be the language of daily use, “In Moldavia the demand was for institutionalization of the Moldavian dialect and use of the Latin, rather than the Cyrillic, alphabet. Both of these republics' demands had a clear anti-Russian bias, and evoked reactions from the large Russian minorities in the republics, who, as we have noted, often do not know the local language even after decades of residence in the republic.” Theodore Friedgut, “Nations of the USSR: From Mobilized Participation to Autonomous Diversity,” in Alexander Motyl, ed., The Post-Soviet Nations: Perspectives on the Demise of the USSR (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 205.Google Scholar

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126. Rudolph Mark, “Progress amid Crisis,” Transition, 15 February 1995, p. 57. Cited in Jack Matlock, Autopsy on an Empire (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 710.Google Scholar

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128. Blagodatskikh “Moldova i Pridnestrov'e v poiskakh ‘svoei’ istorii,” p. 193.Google Scholar

129. Eyal and Smith, “Moldova and the Moldovans,” p. 224.Google Scholar

130. Circa 1994. “Pericolul aservirii politice a vesnicelor adevaruri,” Plus-Minus , February 1994, p. 8. Quoted in King, “Moldovan Identity and the Politics of Pan-Romanianism,” pp. 355–356.Google Scholar

131. Blagodatskikh, “Moldova i Pridnestrov'e v poiskakh ‘svoei’ istorii,” p. 196.Google Scholar

132. “The geographic location of the Karelian lands in the area where the Russian and Swedish spheres of interest collided in the late Middle Ages had a great influence on ethnic development because a political boundary divided the nationality beginning from the armistice of 1323 in Noteborg (Orekhovets).” Lallukka, “Assimilation of the Karelians in the Soviet Union,” p. 111.Google Scholar

133. McAdam et al., Dynamics of Contention , p. 232.Google Scholar

134. Ronald Suny, Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 110–112, 124–126.Google Scholar

135. They would continue: “In this context, strong understandings of national identity as deeply rooted in the precommunist history of the region, frozen or repressed by a ruthlessly antinational regime, and returning with the collapse of communism are at best anachronistic, at worst simply scholarly rationalizations of nationalist rhetoric.” Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond Identity,” Theory and Society, Vol. 29, 2000, p. 26Google Scholar

136. Much of the literature on the wave of national liberation that accompanied the collapse of communism was written in terms of a nationalist “reawakening”—the return of nationalist development from where it left off in Eastern Europe in 1917. However, as Rogers Brubaker reminds us, “What ‘returns’ in the postcommunist present is not something from the precommunist past; it is something constituted in important ways by the communist past. In the Soviet case, many national identities were first invented, imagined, and institutionalized under communism.” Rogers Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism,” in John Hall, ed., The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 288.Google Scholar

137. Irina Takala, “Natsional'nye operatsii OGPU/NKVD v Karelii,” in Timo Vihavainen and Irina Takala, eds, V sem'e edinnoi: natsional'naya politika partii bol'shevikov i ee osushchestvlenie na Severo-Zapadne Rossii v 1920–1950-e gody (Petrozavodsk, Karelia: Izdatel'stvo Petrozavodskogo Universiteta, 1998), pp. 161–206. More to the point: “It was not Finnish nationality per se that was crucial in all of this. For one thing, the Ezhovshchina affected all sectors of Soviet society. Foreignness, or connections with ‘across the border’, intensified the effects of the Ezhovshchina on all aliens and Soviet citizens in contact with them, not just the Finns. Thus comparable repression befell other foreign colonies.” Gelb, “Karelian Fever”, p. 1102.Google Scholar

138. Sheehy, “Russia's Republics: A Threat to Its Territorial Integrity?” p. 35.Google Scholar

139. Baron and Gatrell, “Population Displacement, State-Building, and Social Identity,” p. 99.Google Scholar

140. “Clearly, Russian mixing with nationalities has intensified Russification processes.” Lewis, “The Mixing of Russians and Soviet Nationalities and Its Demographic Impact,” p. 156.Google Scholar

141. “The Finns in the USSR were particularly vulnerable since their language was an official Soviet language which also was the language of a foreign bourgeois state, while in other areas, such as Azerbaijan and Central Asia, separate Soviet languages had been created.” Austin, “Soviet Karelian,” p. 21.Google Scholar

142. Quoted in Uriel Weinreich, “The Russification of Soviet Minority Languages,” Problems of Communism, Vol. 2, No. 6, 1953, p. 52.Google Scholar

143. E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 54.Google Scholar

144. “One of the effects of the Russification of the western Soviet languages was an artificial widening of the differences between Eastern and Western Ukrainian, Eastern and Western Belorussian, Moldavian and Rumanian, Karelian and Finnish. This is quite consistent both with the isolationist and the Russian-nationalist strains in Soviet policy. But it is in basic contradiction to the communist myth about the freedom of form which their minority cultures are supposed to enjoy.” Weinreich, “The Russification of Soviet Minority Languages,” p. 55.Google Scholar

145. Touval, “Partitioned Groups and Inter-state Relations,” p. 232.Google Scholar

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147. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 25.Google Scholar

148. Ibid., p. 94.Google Scholar

149. Ibid., p. 126.Google Scholar

150. Ibid., p. 231.Google Scholar

151. Ibid., p. 227.Google Scholar

152. On various aspects of irredentist claims, see Saadia Touval, “Partitioned Groups and Inter-state Relations,” in A. I. Asiwaju, ed., Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations across Africa's International Boundaries, 1884–1984 (London: C. Hurst, 1984), p. 224. Also: “Classic theories of international relations assume fixed boundaries. But the boundaries of nations are defined by the cultural stocks of people, and these boundaries are forever ambiguous. This point provides a clue to a major source of inter-nationality violence. When ethnic entrepreneurs feel they are losing mediation rights over a nationality group they claim to represent, they have an incentive to punish ethnic brethren defined as apostates as well as ethnic others with whom those apostates are beginning to identify.” Laitin, Identity in Formation, p. 340.Google Scholar

153. Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” p. 307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

154. Ibid., p. 308.Google Scholar

155. Self-identified ethnic Russians comprise 74.3%, and the combination of Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians) comprises 84.9% of the population on Karelian territory. The corresponding numbers for the Russian Federation (RSFSR) at the time of the last census in 1989 are 81.5% and 85.3%—slightly higher than the corresponding numbers for Karelia alone. Karelian statistics: Goskomstat Rossii, Regiony Rossii , pp. 7–10; 1989 Soviet census figures: Goskomstat RSFSR, Natsional'nyi sostav naseleniya RSFSR (Moscow: Republic Information Publication Center, 1990), p. 7.Google Scholar

156. Eyal and Smith, “Moldova and the Moldovans,” p. 232.Google Scholar

157. Martin, Affirmative Action Empire, p. 274. See also Terry Martin, “Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 70, No. 4, 1998, pp. 829–831; Laitin, Identity in Formation, pp. 52–53. Both Martin and Laitin cite the use of the “Piedmont principle” in the case of Moldova, and to a lesser extent Ukraine and Belorussia, while ignoring similar processes in Karelia and Buryatia.Google Scholar

158. “The MASSR was part of the broader Soviet policy of using the logic of national liberation to draw border regions away from bourgeois states. In the 1920s, in addition to the MASSR, two other autonomous republics were set up in border regions that were especially contentious: the Karelian autonomous republic, established on the border with Finland in 1920 and upgraded, as the Karelo-Finnish republic, to the status of a union republic from 1940 to 1956; and the Buriat-Mongol autonomous republic, established on the border with Mongolia in 1923 but considerably reduced in size and renamed after 1937. Each of these territorial-administrative entities was the putative political instantiation of a nation separated by international frontiers. They were meant to place pressure on neighboring states—Finland, Romania, and Mongolia—for the relinquishment of all or part of their territory and were styled as the bridgeheads of Soviet influence in northern Europe, central Europe, and the Far East as a whole. In each of the ASSRs, the content of cultural policy at various times stressed the divisions between local populations and related groups across the international border and at other times underscored the basic commonalties of language and culture between the two. The focus, however, was largely the same: the effort to use nationalities policy and nation-building as tools of foreign policy, thus countering the claims of ‘bourgeois nationalists’ in neighboring states on their own terms.” King, The Moldovans , p. 55.Google Scholar

159. “To understand this dramatic shift from ethnic proliferation to ethnic cleansing, three further factors must be considered: Soviet xenophobia, the category of the border regions, and the politics surrounding immigration and emigration.” Martin, Affirmative Action Empire , p. 313.Google Scholar

160. “In the Baltic republics and those along the USSR's western or southern tiers, the possibility of special relations with kindred states and authorities outside the Soviet Union—Sweden, Finland, Turkey, Iran, the European Community, and NATO—offered political leverage and economic opportunity the Soviet Union itself was decreasingly capable of providing.” McAdam et al., Dynamics of Contention , p. 250. See also O. Akintola-Bello, “The Political Economy of Artificial Boundaries,” in A. I. Asiwaju and P. O. Adeniyi, eds, Borderlands in Africa (Lagos: University of Lagos Press, 1989), p. 336; Vaclav Lamser, “A Sociological Approach to Soviet Nationality Problems,” in Edward All worth, ed., Soviet Nationality Problems (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 207.Google Scholar

161. Laitin, Identity in Formation , p. 335.Google Scholar

162. By 1995, 61% of all private businesses in Karelia were joint ventures with Finnish entrepreneurs, since Karelia has found new markets for its timber and other industries. Nevalainen, “Kareliya posle 1917 goda,” p. 301. Indeed, Karelia consistently ranks among the highest regions of the Russian Federation in terms of hard-currency export earnings as well as general income indexes. Douglas Sutherland and Philip Hanson, “Structural Changes in the Economies of Russia's Regions,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 48, No. 3, 1996, pp. 382–383; Bert Van Selm, “Economic Performance in Russia's Regions,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 50, No. 4, 1998, p. 612. Perhaps as a result of these developments, Karelia has been a staunch defender of political and economic reform: consistently voting for progressive over anti-reformist parties in national elections. Darrell Slider, Vladimir Gimpel'son, and Sergei Chugrov, “Political Tendencies in Russia's Regions: Evidence from the 1993 Parliamentary Elections,” Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 3, 1994, pp. 718–722.Google Scholar

163. This body of work is exemplified by Benedict Anderson's discussion of the nation as, at root, an “imagined community.” Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism , 2nd edn (New York: Verso, 1991).Google Scholar

164. Furthermore, the ability of the state to manipulate such identities supports notions of state autonomy and capacity distinct from the society in which it is embedded. See Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back in: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds, Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 9–20.Google Scholar

165. Mark Beissinger and Crawford Young, eds, Beyond State Crisis? Postcolonial Africa and Post-Soviet Eurasia in Comparative Perspective (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002), p. 30.Google Scholar

166. On the homogenization and legibility of society, see James Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 32.Google Scholar

167. See Ron Aminzade and Doug McAdam, “Emotions and Contentious Politics,” in Ronald Aminzade, Jack Goldstone, Doug McAdam, Elizabeth Perry, William Sewell, Jr, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 43. More generally, see the discussion of particular emotional mechanisms in Roger D. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). One place to start an investigation along these lines would necessarily include Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries.Google Scholar