ABSTRACT
Official histories defend Russia’s acquisition of non-Russian territories as positive by definition, because it allowed other nationalities to enjoy the benefits of socialism and communist rule. Dashdamirov’s analysis has a two-faced quality about it, demonstrating that party ideologists in the non-Russian regions recognized the potential politicization of the national problem well before glasnost'. The political socialization of Russians and non-Russians alike took on new immediacy in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and began a decade-long involvement there, committing massive numbers of troops of all nationalities. Soviet officials have had to confront growing problems of military desertion and draft evasion, not only on the part of Muslim troops asked to fire upon their ethnic kinsmen and co-religionists, but among Russian troops as well. A Central Committee resolution demanding the overhaul of internationalist education in Kazakhstan blamed the existence of political, social, and economic problems within the republic on the corrupt Party practices of the past.
