TheUSSR

Introduction This chapter will outline the main features of minority nationalism in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.1 The relatively closed nature of the Communist political system makes it harder for nationalists in the USSR to make their grievances known than it is for nationalists considered in some other chapters of this book. Openly nationalist organisations cannot be created by the Soviet minorities, and the KGB makes life difficult for underground groups which seek to defend the rights of their nations. The low participation in such groups should not be taken to mean that they do not command wider support from their community as a whole, but neither should this support be taken for granted. In the west we are dependent for information on the nationalists themselves, often provided by emigre channels which may have an interest in exaggerating the level of support; and on Soviet sources, which until recently at least, have portrayed the masses of the minorities as happy with their situation in the Soviet Union. Even under the glasnost (openness, publicity, voicing of criticism) of 1986 on, when demonstrations have been covered in the Soviet press, the actual demands of the participants and the numbers involved have not always been accurately reported.