The Dream That Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union Book

The first chapter provides a clear and succinct summary of the ideas of various theorists who have worked on the origins and causes of national identities and nationalism (Benedict Anderson, Miroslav Hroch, Karl Deutsch, Anthony Smith, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Renan). Suny emphasizes a consensus that nations do not just come into being naturally, but are actively fostered by intellectuals, political parties and/or the media. This chapter also includes some critique of the fact that very few sovietologists' have examined the rise of nationalism in the USSR in light of these theories.

The second chapter illustrates how class and ethnic loyalties can intersect, clash and coincide, using examples from the South Caucasus. It also includes an excellent overview of Imperial nationalities policy, rich with examples from all corners of the Empire, highlighting how policy varied greatly between different regions and different periods. There are also a series of case studies of individual ethnic groups (Belarusians, Lithuanians, Azeris, Ukrainians, Estonians, Georgians, Latvians, Finns and Armenians) and the formations of their national identities in the lead-up to and during the Revolution and Civil War, with a focus on the way that class solidarity and socialism competed and combined with ethno-national identity and nationalism. The central thesis here is that "the social and the ethnic are so closely intertwined that separation of the two can be artificial and misleading". Suny equally criticizes both the Soviet view of events in the ethnically non-Russian parts of the Empire as integral parts of a broad proletarian revolution as well as the nationalist (and Western) interpretation of the events in the non-Russian regions as nationalistic and wholly separate from the socialist revolution in Russia proper. This class angle makes the case studies interesting to those who are already familiar with the histories of the nations in question, but they are also written in such a way as to provide a good summary for those who have not studied a given nationality before.

The third chapter is perhaps the book's weakest. It attempts to provide an overview of Soviet nationalities policies and how these contributed to the strengthening of nationalism. While the central thesis - that both the discrimination against non-Russians (russification, deportation, etc.) and the concessions to ethnic interests (the formation of ethnically-based territorial units, affirmative action, language standardization and codification, etc.) contributed to the consolidation of national identity and nationalism - seems to me an astute one, the chapter's thematic rather than chronological organization makes it somewhat confusing and results in the same points being made repeatedly. An interesting point is made towards the end of the chapter, but not explored in great detail: the rise to power of "local ethnic mafias" during the early 1980s, when central power was weak.

The fourth chapter gives a detailed account of Gorbachev's attempts to reassert central control over the union republics by both countering and making concessions to nationalism and offers an explanation for why this led to the eventual collapse of the Union. Although this chapter contains a significant amount of repetition of points made in previous chapters, it does provide some interesting insight into events in the USSR's final years, and is definitely worth reading if you are not very familiar with the chronology of these events. Suny concludes that Gorbachev's key mistakes, which led to the collapse of the Union, were his decision to implement political and economic reform simultaneously and his hesitance in using force to control opposition. Suny suggests that these mistakes may have been due to Gorbachev having assumed that sovietized non-Russian elites were representative of the non-Russian masses, who had still been little affected by Soviet ideology.

The bulk of the examples used in this work are drawn from the South Caucasus, reflecting the author's primary area of expertise. A reasonable number of examples are also drawn from the Baltic States, Central Asia, Ukraine and Belarus. However, there is almost no mention of the smaller ethnicities located within Russia (Tatars, North Caucasians, indigenous Siberians…), nor of Moldova or, perhaps most bizarrely, of ethnic Russian nationalism.

In conclusion, despite certain shortcomings, this is certainly worth reading if you are interested in ethnic relations in the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet space, especially for its rigorous examination of the relevant theory in the first chapter and its excellent summary of the Russian Empire's nationalities policy in the second. The writing is clear and concise, and though perhaps a little dense at times, should be considered readable by anyone from undergraduate level upwards.