Identity, Social Mobility and Ethnic Mobilization: Language and the Disintegration of the Soviet Union

Abstract

The disintegration of the Soviet Union is an essential case for the study of ethnic mobilization. However, analyses in this article demonstrate that commonly-used measures of ethnic diversity show little consistent relationship with events of mass ethnic mobilization during the period 1987-1992 in either the ethnofederal regions of the Soviet Union or the federal regions of Russia. Instead, the analyses indicate that the degree to which regional populations spoke a metropolitan language was the driving force behind this mobilization. These findings are consistent with recent literature on identity politics, which holds that noticeable and difficult-to-change traits make certain identities politically salient. However, while this literature has largely focused on inherited physical characteristics, I argue that proficiency in a metropolitan language functions in a similar manner by marking non-speakers as outsiders and thus preventing their social mobility. Language may therefore underly much purportedly ethnic political behavior in states with linguistic cleavages.