ABSTRACT
Moscow, at the same time as they were transformed domestically into governments and
societies mimicking the false voluntarism of Soviet institutions. The practice of perform-
ing sovereignty first emerged at the time of the Russian Civil War, when it was unclear
whether to incorporate territories of the former Tsarist Empire directly into the Russian
Soviet Socialist Republic or simply to bind them to Moscow through party controls.
Ukraine, Belorussia, and Transcaucasia, for example, were treated at first as formally inde-
pendent states bound by international treaty to Soviet Russia, though eventually these
republics formed the basis for creating the USSR in December 1922. As an alternative
to integration in a single state, the concept of ‘people’s republics’ was invented in the
early 1920s to deal with territories that had previously had a suzerainty relationship
with the Tsarist empire (Bukhara and Khiva) or when it was believed that formal indepen-
dence might help ward off interventions by foreign powers where Bolshevik power was
weak (such as in the Far Eastern People’s Republic vis-a`-vis the Japanese and the
Tuvan and Mongolian people’s republics vis-a`-vis the Chinese). ‘People’s republics’
were again used after the Second World War in East Europe when Soviet power had
been weakened. The form has been mimicked as well by post-Soviet Russia more recently
in Eastern Ukraine, where, for reasons of potential resistance and international reaction,
post-Soviet Russia has so far eschewed annexation.
