Brown (2011) ‘The National Question and the Coup.’
Citation: Brown, Archie (2011) ‘The National Question and the Coup: The Collapse of the Soviet Union.’
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Notes: Brown (2011:291): Argues there were good reasons to not expect a democratic Soviet state to emerge from perestroika: accumulated ethnic grievances meant democracy was likely to lead to break up.
Brown (2011:292): Rejects the idea of a simple solution to the nationalities question based on self-determination. Notes that Russia itself consists of as many nationalities as the rest of the Union, and thus could also push for independence. It could have produced a cascade of conflict. Nor would recognition of nationalities and their right to self-determination automatically have led to democracy.
Brown (2011:294): Whereas political and economic reform were top-down issues, nationalities became important through a bottom-up process.
Brown (2011:296): Gorbachev’s ‘turn to the right’ occurred October 1990 to March 1991. His team became more conservative and Gorbachev himself became less accessible to key advocates of political and economic reform. It was a tactical move that left him politically isolated, and stemmed from an underestimation of the threat posed by radical democrats and Baltic nationalists compared to conservative factions.