Where Have All the Natsmen Gone? Ethnic Minorities in the Post-Soviet Area

Research project financed by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) no. GACR 22-13347S.

Period: January 2022 – December 2024

Research team

University of Ostrava

Charles University in Prague

  • Doc. PhDr. Slavomír Horák, Ph.D. – co-investigator
  • RNDr. Libor Jelen, Ph.D. – member of the research team
  • Mgr. Martin Lepič, Ph.D. – member of the research team
  • Mgr. Evgeny Romanovskiy – doctoral student

Rationale of the project

It was Francine Hirsch, who famously dubbed the former Soviet Union as the Empire of Nations. Unlike other colonial powers, the Soviet Union presented itself not as an imperial state, but as a union of nations which joined it voluntarily in order to build a class-less society based on Marxist-Leninist principles. While in practice the Soviet Union was a totalitarian or post-totalitarian state ruled by the Communist Party, from the administrative point of view, the Soviet Union was based on an ethno-federal principle. Individual ethnic groups were seen as developing from mere nationalities or tribes to self-conscious nations, they were categorized according to their alleged level of development, and assigned their own hierarchically designed territorial units (autonomous republics, regions, or districts). In each of these units, a particular ethnic group was treated as a titular ethnic group, possessing more collective rights than ethnic minorities (in Russian etnicheskie menshinstva or, in short, natsmen) living in the respective entity.

When the Soviet Union broke apart in the early 1990s, individual Post-Soviet countries inherited the Soviet ethno-federal structure, the primordial Soviet notion of ethnicity, and complex inter-ethnic relations. Our project aims to fill two research gaps. First, the project intends to avoid the stereotype of the prevailing discourse on ethnic minorities in the Post-Soviet area, which typically emphasizes their conflict potential. Second, while research on minorities in the Post-Soviet area is typically realized by means of case studies, the proposed project has a character of systematic cross-regional comparison. The main concept of the project is ethnicity, which is understood as a discursive formation; therefore, the main objects of our interest are self-perceptions of minorities and their relations with ethnic majorities or states as such. The aim of the project is to explore how the situation of ethnic minorities has transformed since the breakup of the USSR, specifically, how their identities and current minority-majority relations have been affected by the legacy of the Soviet ethnic policy, by the influence of nationalizing policies of individual Post-Soviet states, and by the influence of external actors.

What we are doing

Our cases

The Russian invasion of Ukraine forced us to restructure our research, because conducting fieldwork in Ukraine, and in particular in Ukraine’s south, is not possible or safe at the moment. Also traveling to Russia for research purposes is not possible because of safety reasons. However, these are our current cases:

  1. Ethnic minorities with an autonomous status – we focus mainly on Karelians, Karakalpaks, and Gagauz.
  2. Ethnic overlaps and ethnic minorities with a kin state – we focus mainly on Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Georgia and Hungarians in Ukraine.
  3. Ethno-religious groups – we focus mainly on Yazidis in Armenia and Georgia, Ajarians in Georgia, Latgals in Latvia, and Kists in Georgia.
  4. Sub-ethnic and ethnographic groups – we focus mainly on Ajarians, Svans, Megrels, and Tush in Georgia, Latgals in Latvia, and Ruthenians (Rusyns) in Ukraine.

Fieldwork

The core of our work is collecting data using expert and elite interviews. We typically interview local experts, politicians, journalists, NGO staff, and representatives of individual minorities. These are fieldworks we have conducted so far:

  • Yezidis in Armenia and Georgia, Ajarians in Georgia (Vincenc Kopeček, June-July 2023).
  • Megrels in Georgia – Samegrelo and Tbilisi (Tomáš Hoch, October 2022).
  • Svans in Lower Svaneti, and Ajarians in Ajara and Tsalka, Georgia (Vincenc Kopeček, September-October 2022).
  • Tushs in Tusheti (Slavomír Horák, July-August 2022, July 2023)
  • Karakalpakstan (Slavomír Horák, January-February 2023).

Mobilities

  • Doctoral student Viktor Heinz spent one semester (October 2022-January 2023) on an Erasmus+ Credit Mobility at the Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia, under the supervision of Prof Gia Nodia. During his stay in Georgia, he also managed to conduct a fieldwork in Tsalka and Svaneti regions.
  • Evgeny Romanovskiy spent part of the semester (February-May 2023) on an Erasmus Mobility at University of Ulster, Belfast, where he consulted his dissertation.

Conferences

  • June 2023. Libor Jelen and Vincenc Kopeček presented preliminary findings from their fieldwork at the Seventh Annual Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies. Libor Jelen presented paper “Transformation of the position and identity of minorities after the collapse of the USSR - case studies of Karelians and Latgalians”, while Vincenc Kopeček in his contribution provocatively asked whether there are Ajarians in Ajara and problematized the concept of a sub-ethnic group in Georgian context.
  • September 2023. Slavomír Horák presented the partial results of his research in Karakalpakstan at European Association for Central Asian Studies Conference in Almaty with the topic “Karakalpak changing identity in the context of July 2022 events”.

Publications

  • Horák, Slavomír - Lepič, Martin. “Karakalpak changing identity in the context of July 2022 events”. Post-Soviet Affairs, 2024 (under review).

Updated: 10. 09. 2024