Official Responses to Ethnic Unrest in the USSR, 1985–1991

The Soviet Union, like the large, multiethnic land empires in Europe that came to an end in the early 20th century (Habsburg, Imperial Russian, Ottoman), consisted of a central government ruling over far-flung regions in which particular ethnic and cultural groups were predominant. For many years, Soviet leaders were able to maintain the internal stability of the multiethnic Soviet state by relying on a mix of extreme coercion and occasional concessions to local demands. Soon after Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, he adopted sweeping political liberalization and democratization, including the first free elections ever held in the USSR. The loosening of political control in a state that had long been known for brutal repression had far-reaching consequences for social stability. The political opportunities that opened for ethnic groups in the Soviet Union to push for far-reaching change, including independence, created great difficulty for Gorbachev’s attempts to hold the Soviet Union together. Although he could have resorted to the use of large-scale violence as previous Soviet leaders had repeatedly done, he was deeply reluctant to cause mass bloodshed. His aversion to the use of mass repression was one of the key factors that precipitated the unraveling of the USSR. This article presents an in-depth analysis of Gorbachev’s responses to ethnic unrest in the Soviet Union from 1986 through 1991.