Lived Nationality: Policy and Practice in Soviet Georgia, 1945-1978
Journal: ScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania)
Year: 2015

This dissertation asks how nation-ness “happens” at the level of experience. Although the Soviet state was founded on principles of Marxism-Leninism, which sought ultimately to transcend national distinctions, the experience of the Soviet project constructed and consolidated rather than dissolved nationality among its multiethnic population. Existing scholarship on Soviet nationality policies has largely focused on the interwar era from Moscow’s perspective, when the state’s distinctive approach