Customer Reviews

After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the Commonwealth of Independent States

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This book gives an fantastic insight to the recent ethnic wars that followed by the break-up of the Soviet Union. The book also gives us a sobering view that the breakaway republic conflicts against Russia will continue into the near future.

In this very readable book, Khazanov argues that the Soviet Union was essentially a continuation of the Russian Empire, retarding the north Eurasian continent's normal process of modernization. The failure of Soviet "nationalities' policy" directly contributed to the breakup in 1991 and continuing ethnic tensions in many regions. Drawing upon meticulous research, he shows how the after-effects of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union, where economy and polity were coupled in a centralized administration, make the transition to democratic politics and market economics a more difficult path than most analysts have predicted. Although one may not agree with his theory of nationalism and modernity, Khazanov synthesizes a wealth of data into a provocative discussion of the variable of ethnicity in local politics and national policy in Central Asia, Siberia, and the Caucusas. Many historians, political scientists, anthropologists, and others will find this book very useful.

Though some of the statistics used in the appendix were outdated when this book was publised, this book is well worth the cost and the time to read it. A different perspective is presented, made, at least in part, possible due to the amount of time and fieldwork that the author was able to use in writing this book. The point is well made that the situation in many of the former Soviet republics was far more complex at the time this book was written than many thought. This was true in 1995, and remains so today.

Written in 1995, a lot of the details are now outdated, especially political. However, the same trends and underlying causes remain, which makes this book an excellant one if one is seeking to understand the background for the regions discussed in this book.