Nation‐building in the wake of empire: identifying patterns of minority policies in the aftermath of soviet collapse

Abstract

The collapse of the USSR forced newly independent states to forge national identities while grappling with imperial legacies. This study investigates nation-building strategies in post-Soviet states during 1990–1999, using the Nation-Building Policies (NBP) dataset from the ETHNICGOODS project, which includes all socially and politically relevant minority groups. Employing cluster analysis, it identifies three typologies of nation-building policies: low, moderate and high inclusion. These typologies reveal varying levels of minority inclusion in language education, citizenship policies and constitutional measures. By examining short-term variations and using the year 2020 as a reference point, this study challenges the simplified view of post-Soviet nation-building as uniformly ‘nationalising’ and highlights significant regional and group-specific differences. Policy shifts reflect dynamic state-minority interactions influenced by geographic, cultural and political factors. The findings enhance understanding of diverse nation-building approaches and provide broader insights into contemporary minority relations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus, contributing to comparative studies of nation- and state-building.