tional difficulties, Leonid Ilyich expressed a much more intolerant ideological position than Stalin: his attention was channeled towards the ‘forging of the Soviet People’, or its ‘crystallization’.1 Ironically, Stalin’s repressive attitude towards regional leaders had no or less ideological coverage: the nations developed in the same extent as their economy, but an eventual cultural dissolution inside a superior identity, a Soviet melting pot, was, at least for the time being, out of the question. Reversely, the ideology of the Brezhnev era was strikingly ‘orthodox’, but the political practice was more relaxed than during Stalin’s reign, even if the emphasis on Russian language was increased in comparison to the Khrushchev era, and ‘the circulation of the non-Russian periodicals was gradually restricted’. Moscow’s intolerant attitude caused, in the last years of Brezhnev’s leadership, serious ‘protests’ among ‘dissidents in the Baltic republics’ and also ‘demonstrations in Georgia and Estonia’.2 Ideologically, politically and economically, the Soviet Union’s advanced decay between the 60’s and the beginning of the 80’s is indisputable. Without being underlied by the same amount of political and military force as during Stalin’s regime, and already having experienced the limited liberties allowed by Khrushchev, the official ideology became farcical and social tensions in the periphery areas started to gather up. The Helsinki accords from 1975 impulsioned those tensions even further, but Brezhnev and his ‘gerontocracy’ managed, for the moment, to overcome them.3 To consider this period as the most lusterless from the Soviet Union’s history means to apply it a very truthful judgment. During the short Andropov-Chernenko interregnum (autumn 1982- spring 1985), the nationalities topic took a more Leninist turn. The former head of KGB, Iuri Andropov, believed that ‘Russian nationalism had been allowed to get out of hand’, and the party’s task was to remedy this state of affairs.4 His successor, Konstantin Chernenko, who became General Secretary in February 1984, simply did not possess the necessary amount of time to treat the problem of minorities in an adequate manner. The Soviet Union was confronted with difficulties which proved to be insurmountable in just a few years. Chernenko’s only mentionable statement regarding this issue appeared tow months later in Pravda, where he affirmed that ‘we do not see the relations between nationalities which have taken shape in our state as something congealed and inalterable, and no subject to the influence of new circumstances’.5 With other words, a cautious and pragmatic position. Unexpected consequences. Gorbachev’s tragedy
The more and harder to elude failures of the communist regime entailed a resurgence of the national feelings all along the Soviet Union, calked mainly upon the spiritual coordinates of the each Soviet republic, region or territory. They fortified the social convulsions and will eventually lead, in combination with other factors, to the dismembering of the USSR.6 When analyzing the topic in a more profound way, 1 Nahaylo, ‘Nationalities’, 76, 77. 2 Nahaylo, ‘Nationalities’, 78. 3 Hajda, ‘The Nationalities’, 327. 4 Nahaylo, ‘Nationalities’, 84. 5 Nahaylo, ‘Nationalities’, 85. 6 Vasile Buga, Apusul unui imperiu. URSS în epoca Gorbaciov, (Bucureşti, Institutul Naţional pentru Studiul Totalitarismului: 2007), 54-58; Leslie Holmes, Postcomunismul, translated by Ramona Lupaşcu, (Iaşi: Institutul European, 2004), 180-182; Jean François Soulet, Istoria comparată a statelor comuniste, translated by Marius Roman, (Iaşi, Polirom: 1998), 324-325.
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