Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
Table 2 Percent
Ethnodemographic Trends, 1959-89
Titular Nation in the Homeland Titular Nation in the 'Ibtal Population
Republic 1959 p
19s9
Percentage
Point Change 1959 1989
Percentage
Point Change
Russia 85.8 A
sza -3.2 83.3 81.5 -1.8
Ukraine 86.3 _
841 '1:6, W 76.8 72.7 -4.1
Belarus 82.5 p
181 -3.7 81.1 77.9 -3.2
Moldova #51 _
8&4 -1.8 65.4 64.5 -0.9
Uzbekistan 83.8 _
843 0.9 62.1 71.4 9.3
l(azakhstan'fl” 77.2 p
soa 3.1 30.0 39.7 9.7
Kyrgyzstan_ 7_ 86.4 _
ssa 1.8 40.5 52.4 11.9
Tajikistan 75.2 _
vsz 0.1 53.1 62.3 9.2
Turkmenistan Q12 g
930 0.8 60.9 72.0 11.1
Georgia 965 '
95.1 -1.5 64.3 70.1 5.8
Azerbaijan 343 I
ssn 0.9 67.5 82.7 15.2
Armenia §§7 p
sen 11.0 88.0 sis 5.3
Lithuania 915 p
953 2.8 79.3 79.6 0.3
Landa
A
92.7 _
954 2.4 62.0 52.0 -10.0
Estonia 90.3 . 93.8 3.5 74.6 61.5 -13.1
Source: Robert Kaiser, The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, in press), tables
4.1 and 4.3.
In Georgia a slightly different interethnic dynamic
regarding social mobility and relative deprivation
developed. The Georgians in Abkhazia, who view this
tenitory as part of their homeland, were angered by
the preferential treatment accorded Abkhazians as part
of the indigenization program. Abkhazians were only
17 percent of the population but, as the titular group in
Abkhazia, had a much higher percent of slots in
higher education, high status jobs, and political repre-
sentation reserved for them. In Nagomo-Karabakh the
demographic shift toward Azeris was coupled with
Azeri challenges to Armenian privileges in the region.
In both cases the Georgian and Azeri attempts to
remove or reduce Abkhazian and Armenian privileges
resulted in civil warfare, as Abkhazians and Arme-
nians in Nagorna-Karabakh sought to secede.
It is also true, however, that the most socially mobi-
lized titular nations, that is, the Estonians, Latvians,
Georgians, and Armenians—are also among the most
nationalistic. The Soviet case provides convincing
evidence that socioeconomic development or modern-
ization, and even the provision of indigenous privi-
leges, did not solve the national problem.
Nearly all non-Russians have used the rhetoric of
intemal colonialism. The least developed, such as the
Tajiks, charge that the USSR did not live up to its
promise of interethnic and interregional equalization.
The most developed, such as the Estonians, charge
that they would be even more developed if they had
their independence. This feeling of relative depriva-
tion was a potent catalyst for rising territorial national-
ism that ironically was perhaps most influential in the
most developed republics because the message of
external exploitation and domination interacted with
the trend toward demographic dilution among nations
with a highly developed national consciousness and a
sense of homeland.
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