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- Title
The background of the Soviet Union's involvement in the establishment of the European minority rights regime in the late 1980s.
- Authors
Osipov, Alexander
- Abstract
The USSR played a significant role in the adoption of the first CSCE instruments pertinent to minority protection, particularly the 1990 Copenhagen Document. The author argues why this East-West encounter was possible and why the two blocs were able to speak a common language on 'nationalities' issues. The author demonstrates that the communist party leaders managed to put forward a renewed doctrine of nationalities policy that included such elements as framing the country as a union of self-determining 'peoples'; asymmetric federation; recognition of all ethnicities' right to 'develop' their cultures and languages; protection of 'nontitular' ethnicities and people's right to organize themselves for the maintenance of their cultures and languages. This approach appears to have much in common with the new European minority rights regime, particularly because the underlying principles were open to ad hoc interpretations and both systems provide the governments with broad margins of discretion. The similarity between the 'Western' and 'Eastern' approaches can be explained in a way that the both were operating in the framework of modernist social engineering. The combination of symbolic policy and weak institutionalization of instrumental measures allows explaining the viability of the established system in Eastern Europe and broader post-Soviet space.
- Subjects
CIVIL rights; MINORITIES; SOVIET Union politics &; government; HISTORY; TWENTIETH century; HISTORY of civil rights
- Publication
Journal on Ethnopolitics & Minority Issues in Europe, 2016, Vol 15, Issue 2, p59
- ISSN
1617-5247
- Publication type
Article