SOVIET DISUNION: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR

By Bohdan Nahaylo and Victor Swoboda

Soviet Disunion tells the story of how the USSR's numerous non-Russian nations had to struggle to preserve their national identities after the abandonment of the concessions and promises which they had extracted from Lenin and his associates guaranteeing them statehood, equality, and cultural autonomy within a socialist federal structure.

Drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence including Soviet and Western sources, samizdat writings and the testimony of exiled dissidents, Soviet Disunion traces the fate of the non-Russian nations from their conquest by the Bolsheviks, through the relatively liberal 1920s, the terror and destruction of the Stalin era and the war years, the brief thaw after Stalin's death, and the rough years of Russilication, centralization and political repression that followed under Krushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko.

The First Press (1990)