ABSTRACT
A central element of the Soviet developmental strategy was the creation of political institutions that expanded the control of the regime over the processes of social mobilization associated with modernization. The new Soviet ethanopolitics is structured by the federalism of nominally autonomous ethnic homelands. Appreciating the strategic value of organizational weapons, political entrepreneurship, and mobilizational resources, the architects of the Soviet regime came to understand that federal institutions could expand their control over the politicization of ethnicity. Political entrepreneurs play a critical role in the mobilization of protest, the politicization of ethnicity, and in many cases even the creation of ethnic identities. Political entrepreneurs in ethnic communities have available to them two mobilizational strategies: primordial and instrumental. Over the past three decades three changes have transformed the Soviet developmental strategy into a source of ethnofederalism. With perestroika the homeland cadres press their agendas of ethnofederalism in a more complex environment.
