The National and the Social in Stalin’s Political Famines

The essay analyzes Stalin’s rational and successful, if murderous, manipulation of both nation-building and un-building in USSR, and his capacity to utilize at the same time social and national (cultural) categories. It calls for a fresh look at our interpretation of ‘nationalism’ and of nation-building (and un-building) processes. In particular, it stresses the necessity not to resort to binary, oppositional schemes as far as the ‘social’ and the ‘national’ are concerned. Though such opposition did exist, in most cases, and not just in borderlands and mixed territories, the two elements often interpenetrated themselves, producing a gamut of hybrids and variations that are essential to the understanding of twentieth-century history.