ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that conflicts of the type identified by Weiner are indeed real and widespread around the world, but they may have varying outcomes – both violent and nonviolent. While the situation in the Soviet Union was in many ways similar to what Weiner described in India, there was one major difference: with very few exceptions, confrontations in the USSR and its successor states did not become violent. The Soviet successor states embarked on a nationalizing policy built around the symbolic supremacy of the titular groups However, the new language laws were – not without reason – also perceived as weapons in the battle for status, jobs, and political power, and the titular group's claim to 'rootedness' represented the sharp edge of that weapon. The author discusses how the sons of the soil argument was employed in two post-Soviet political entities – Kazakhstan and Bashkortostan – in the 1990s.
