An Examination of the Influence of Soviet Educational Policies on the Evolution of Nationalism in the USSR

Abstract

The role nationalism played in the collapse of the USSR always attracted much heated debate among historians and its importance ranged from irrelevant to contributory. This essay includes not only the importance of nationalism in the fall of the USSR but also the influence of Soviet education on the evolution of nationalism. The essay systematically scrutinizes the educational policies, institutions, and major reforms from 1917 to 1991 and analyzes the effectiveness of education, including history (the major social science subject) and the use of language, in controlling the development of nationalism. The Soviet education was to a large degree failing in controlling the development of nationalist sentiment, because of that the effort to build a transnational proletarian union was upset by the rhetoric of Russian chauvinism and nationalism and volatile policies about the language used in education from Koreniztsiya to Russification sent a warning signal to national minorities in the Soviet Union from Baltic states to Central Asian republics. The nationalism contributed to significant separatism in Georgia and the Baltic states, but its role was insignificant in the deterioration of allegiance to the Union in key republics, such as Ukraine and Russia.