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The article discusses the history of the organization ASN, originally called the Association for the Study of Nationalities: USSR and Eastern Europe. Topics include the group's affiliation with the organization American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), the association of the journal "Nationalities Papers" with the City College of New York (CCNY), and the failure of the periodical "Journal of Soviet Nationalities." Also noted are the ASN's reaction to the end of the Soviet Union, the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States, and speeches in New York City by leaders of former Soviet Republics.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a body of scholarship arose which effectively bypassed Miroslav Hroch's work on the emergence of small nations. Rogers Brubaker, Yuri Slezkine and Ronald Suny, among others, persuasively argued that Soviet nationalities policies shaped the ethnogeographic make-up of the post-Soviet space some sixty or seventy years later: it had become literally almost unimaginable to conceive of national affiliation outside of institutionalized forms. This analysis also convincingly accounted for the relative weakness of ethnic Russian identity in contrast to the assertive nationalism of non-Russian nationalities around the time of the USSR's collapse. The Kuban' Cossacks - an ethnocultural community in the south of Russia - never had official recognition as a Soviet nationality. Hroch's framework can be applied to show their clearly national characteristics and, indeed, their progress towards nationhood around the turn of the twentieth century. By reclaiming Hroch's framework for the post-Soviet context, and combining it with later scholarship, we are able to identify this process for the first time, and thus further refine our understanding of the nation-formation processes within Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between Kazakhstan and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), examining questions of an ethnically distinct region's acceptance or rejection of "alien rule" over national independence. The Kazakhs would seem to have an extraordinarily strong cause to separate itself from a Russian-dominated union, the author states. Also discussed are ethnic groups who want to stay in a union state dominated by another group.

Focuses on the creation of the Soviet Ukrainian anthem in February 1944. Reflection of various aspects of Ukraine as a republic state in three stanzas of the anthem; Competition among prominent poets for deciding the text of the anthem; Representation of national symbols in the anthem; Decision of the government of Soviet Union to amend Soviet constitution that would enable the union republics to establish their own armies and maintain diplomatic relations with foreign states, in February 1944.