ABSTRACT
John Armstrong’s functional typology of Soviet nationalities is the best known and most enduring of theoretical constructs used in the study of Soviet nationalities politics. Armstrong well understood that it would be impossible to find a single analogy that would fit the variety of Soviet circumstances; any successful model of Soviet nationalities politics would have to include a multiplicity of analogies. Armstrong’s functional classification of Soviet nationalities placed undue emphasis on group attributes of modernization, deducing the strength of ethnic identities in part from the interplay between social mobilization and processes of assimilation. In line with Deutsch’s emphasis on demographic rather than attitudinal factors, Soviet nationalities are largely treated in Armstrong’s essay as relatively undifferentiated cultural identities. Attitudinal and behavioral differentiation among members of an ethnic group along class, regional, patrimonial, or other lines is largely unexplored by Armstrong, mirroring cultural-pluralist rather than instrumentalist assumptions about ethnic politics.
