Nation‐building in the wake of empire: identifying patterns of minority policies in the aftermath of soviet collapse

Abstract

Data de publicació electrònica: 31-07-2025

The collapse of the USSR forced newly independent states to forge national identities while grappling with imperial legacies. This study investigates nation-building strategies in post-Soviet states during 1990–1999, using the Nation-Building Policies (NBP) dataset from the ETHNICGOODS project, which includes all socially and politically relevant minority groups. Employing cluster analysis, it identifies three typologies of nation-building policies: low, moderate and high inclusion. These typologies reveal varying levels of minority inclusion in language education, citizenship policies and constitutional measures. By examining short-term variations and using the year 2020 as a reference point, this study challenges the simplified view of post-Soviet nation-building as uniformly ‘nationalising’ and highlights significant regional and group-specific differences. Policy shifts reflect dynamic state-minority interactions influenced by geographic, cultural and political factors. The findings enhance understanding of diverse nation-building approaches and provide broader insights into contemporary minority relations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, contributing to comparative studies of nation- and state-building.

This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under Grant agreement No. 864333 (ETHNICGOODS).