New Thinking and the National Question

Abstract

The accession of Mikhail Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership, and the inauguration of an increasingly far-reaching programme of reforms, decisively transformed the very nature of the ‘National Question’ in Soviet political life. The Gorbachev era not only brought the issue to the top of the political agenda; it altered the very premises of the discussion. The ‘National Question’, in the form in which it had been inherited from the past, ceased to exist. Its place was taken by a major political struggle over the nature and future of the Soviet federation itself, in which sharp cleavages extending to the very top of the Soviet leadership became entwined with the broader struggle over reform.