The “National Question” in the Soviet Union
The “National Question” in the Soviet Union

Author(s): Andrea Graziosi
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, History
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: Soviet Union;totalitarianism;
Summary/Abstract: As his works prove, and as those who knew him remember, Victor Zaslavsky was sensitive with regard to the “national question” in the USSR. Nor could it have been otherwise, given the part this question played in his life. After the war, his mother, a medical officer in Leningrad during the Nazi siege, endured persecution in the dark season of Stalinist “anti-cosmopolitanism.” And he too was barred from carrying out the studies he loved because he was a Jew. Later, his deep knowledge of the country and its diversity—made possible by his work as a mining technician, which he had been forced to pursue because of the barriers placed on his desired path—strengthened his awareness of the importance of the “national question” in the USSR. At the time, a large part of Europe’s left, as well as many specialists of Soviet history and society, preferred to underestimate this issue, or to ignore it altogether.

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