Blurred lines : effects of the Soviet nationality policy on ethnic conflicts in the South Caucasus
Journal: Texas ScholarWorks (Texas Digital Library)
Year: 2016

This thesis will examine the ethnic conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Adjara, and how the Soviet nationality policy affected each of these conflicts in the following ways. First, the policy placed all of the ethnic groups in the Soviet Union into a strict hierarchy, creating power differentials between ethnic groups that had previously been on an equal footing under Imperial Russian rule. Second, some ethnic groups were divided across multiple union republics in order t