ABSTRACT
The national-territorial delimitation of boundaries in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is far more important than a question of mere lines on the political map. National federalism possesses none of the consociational innovations developed in consensual systems of “power-sharing” among ethno-religious blocs subject to an explicit compact. Early in 1988, nationalist-inspired demonstrations in the Armenian and Azerbaidzhan republics of the USSR erupted in violence. Yet the popular appeal of nationalism was sufficiently strong to make it hazardous for the Bolsheviks to abandon the potential political constituencies that nationalism provided. Far from withering as Lenin anticipated, the administrative institutions of the national republics over the years of Soviet power gradually developed a sense of proprietary bureaucratic self-interest. The strategies of the national political and administrative elites, in combination with these shifting environmental factors, gave decisionmaking a federal character.
