Empire of Nations

Empire of Nations

Author: Francine Hirsch

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-10-03

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0801455944

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When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers—who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context—produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force," and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.


Peoples of the Soviet Union

Peoples of the Soviet Union

Author: James I. Clark

Publisher:

Published: 1989-01-01

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13: 9780817233648

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Describes the way of life, languages, and contributions to Soviet society of the people living in the Soviet Union's fifteen republics.


The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire

The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire

Author: Margus Kolga

Publisher: eBookIt.com

Published: 2013-07-19

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 994933098X

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The publisher of this book was a man who was born in 1938, in a free and democratic country (Estonia), with Estonian identity and citizenship. That all was amended in 1940 by Russian Empire as a result of the occupation of a sovereign country. The book was written with help of leading specialists of that time and with an attempt to stay neutral, almost as bystanders. The purpose was to describe cultures and ethnic groups of people who have suffered or have been eradicated under the power of "Russian Empire." Oppression of neighbors has taken place for over 500 years, and continues even today with Russian Federation changing daily into more totalitarian and dangerous state in an attempt to restore its former glory. Also Russian Federation is the only surviving colonial country in the world, from whose clutches have fled only a few nations, who gained sovereignty. Still this is not an complete view of the Empire, because the 84 nations covered in this book is only a third of more than 200 nations and cultures, whose fate is evanesce and disappearance into the larger Russian population by aggressive social politics. This relentless process is irreparable loss to world cultural heritage, diversity and democratic freedoms. On the other hand, it is also a loss to these nations economy, because the aggressor ravages and robs natural resources while destroying the environment. The idea of the book the author, publisher and financier a Thomas Niimann.


The Peoples of the Soviet Union

The Peoples of the Soviet Union

Author: Corliss Lamont

Publisher:

Published: 1946

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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"An over-all picture of the Soviet peoples in general and the concrete functioning of the unique Soviet minorities policy."--Pref."First edition." Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (p. 215-218) "Selected bibliography": pages 219-220.


The Peoples of the Soviet Union

The Peoples of the Soviet Union

Author: Viktor Ivanovich Kozlov

Publisher:

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13:

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A survey of the Soviet Union's ethnic map, this book explores the interplay between ethnic, nationalist and social factors in the USSR.


Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples

Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples

Author: Adrienne Edgar

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-05-15

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1501762958

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Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples examines the racialization of identities and its impact on mixed couples and families in Soviet Central Asia. In marked contrast to its Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union celebrated mixed marriages among its diverse ethnic groups as a sign of the unbreakable friendship of peoples and the imminent emergence of a single "Soviet people." Yet the official Soviet view of ethnic nationality became increasingly primordial and even racialized in the USSR's final decades. In this context, Adrienne Edgar argues, mixed families and individuals found it impossible to transcend ethnicity, fully embrace their complex identities, and become simply "Soviet." Looking back on their lives in the Soviet Union, ethnically mixed people often reported that the "official" nationality in their identity documents did not match their subjective feelings of identity, that they were unable to speak "their own" native language, and that their ambiguous physical appearance prevented them from claiming the nationality with which they most identified. In all these ways, mixed couples and families were acutely and painfully affected by the growth of ethnic primordialism and by the tensions between the national and supranational projects in the Soviet Union. Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples is based on more than eighty in-depth oral history interviews with members of mixed families in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, along with published and unpublished Soviet documents, scholarly and popular articles from the Soviet press, memoirs and films, and interviews with Soviet-era sociologists and ethnographers.