ABSTRACT
The explosions of ethnic nationalism and separatism in Gorbachev's Soviet Union seem to confirm the metaphor of empire as appropriate to the Soviet regime. The Soviet slogans that masked ethnic tensions and inequalities, the rhetoric of internationalism and Druzhba narodov, have been overwhelmed by the rainbow of national flags that proclaim the self-assertion of peoples whose identities had long been contained within prescribed formulae. As ethnic expression took bolder form and expanded out from ethnic intellectuals to include broader strata of the population, it metamorphosed into something both deeper and more inclusive than a simple cultural nationalism. To the east, in and around Baku, the peasantry was almost entirely Azerbaijani, and urban society was stratified roughly along ethnic and religious lines, with Muslim workers at the bottom, Armenian and Russian workers in the more skilled positions, and Christian and European industrialists and capitalists dominating the oil industry.
