From deportations to “frozen conflicts”: Russian nationalism, ethnic engineering and violence in the soviet and post-soviet space
Journal: Frontiers in Political Science
Year: 2026

This article examines how Soviet and post-Soviet forms of Russian nationalism used ethnic engineering – above all mass deportations and demographic reshuffling – to transform ethno-national diversity into a structural source of conflict. Building on a qualitative, historical-comparative design, the study combines close reading of Soviet constitutional and legal texts with secondary literature on deportations and “frozen conflicts” to trace mechanisms linking Stalin-era policies to contemporary w