MOSCOW'S HANDLING OF THE NATIONAL QUESTIONS FROM THE SOVIET UNION TO RUSSIA (1986–1992): CRISIS, CONTINGENCY, AND CONTINUITY

This thesis investigates the Soviet Union’s – and then Russia’s – management of the national question in the years of territorial crisis and institutional transformation 1989-1993. It particularly looks at the key drivers of Moscow’s policies to manage ethnoterritorial issues and to avoid State disintegration. Through the unpacking of political debates and disagreements within the Moscow’s establishment, the research aims at showing how the Perestroika period constituted a formative moment in defining Moscow’s relations with the former territories of the Soviet Union and, thereby, Russia’s post-Soviet statehood that still unfold contemporary politics. The research builds on archival material that was collected in 2016-2017 in Russia (particularly at GARF, the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and the Yeltsin Presidential Center in Ekaterinburg), as well as at the Hoover Institution in July 2016. The files coming from the RSFSR/Russian Ministry of Regional Affairs in the years 1990-1993 that were collected at GARF, and which are at the core of chapters four, five and six, are of particular relevance and remain largely unpublished. The picture that emerges from primary documentary sources has been integrated by direct interviews with participants to the events carried out between 2015 and 2017 in Russia, the U.S., Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine.