The seeds of the Soviet Union’s decline were planted… at the moment of [its] greatest triumph – in 1945. This was not so clear during the post-war decade, but matters changed in the post-Stalin years. The Soviet Union’s new geopolitical environment began to exercise subversive long-term effect on the country’s domestic ethnopolitcs. (P. xxiv)

In the context of current inquiries on the prospective developments in the post-Soviet space, it is a potentially riveting experience to take stock of the processes underscoring their direction. This is what Roman Szporluk has attempted in his book Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union. The epigraph above seems to encapsulate the gist of his argument. The volume represents a collection of essays published between 1972 and 1997; thereby, it makes a reflection of the last two decades of the USSR and subsequently its breakup, with a particular emphasis on the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Szporluk’s volume, therefore, focuses on the nationalities issues and relationships between Russia and Ukraine during both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The author himself admits that this book needs to be read as “a record of one scholar’s efforts over a period of years to understand the development of the Soviet Union which, as time went by, began to appear as its decline and then fall” (P. xx). The reader, unfortunately, is more often than not left with mixed feelings. On the one hand, there is the pleasure of engaging ideas and evaluating the significance of corollaries made three decades earlier. On the other hand, it is not apparent how this is relevant for current discourse. Perhaps the prescience and insights of the volume would have been made more pertinent as well as poignant if the individual essays were reconsidered in light of developments going on at the time of publication. Instead, they are presented in the form in which they were written (some of them a good thirty years ago). Thereby, the trajectories of the decline of the USSR and the construction of post-Soviet independent states would have been stressed in a more relevant context for current analysis. In effect, this is one of the main shortcomings of the volume: it is not apparent what it is about: is it about Russia, Ukraine, the breakup of the USSR, or all of these, or something else?
The book includes sixteen of Szporluk’s essays arranged chronologically. However, they seem to follow not only temporal, but also a thematic logic. Chapters 1 and 2 outline the problematic nexus between Soviet modernity and the concept of ethnicity; chapters 3, 4, and 5 center on the issues stirred by the Ukrainian idiosyncrasies of this relationship, whereas chapters 6, 7, and 8 emphasise the Russian perspectives; chapters 9, 10, and 11 focus on a number of Soviet points of view, and the remaining chapters discuss different aspects of post-Soviet existence. In spite of this organizing logic and the merit of the individual chapters, the volume as a whole fails to make a convincing impression.
Szporluk’s interpretation of the relationship between modernity and ethnicity in the USSR elicits the impact of Stalin for maintaining and perpetuating the Soviet model. This model is interpreted as an attempt to set a pattern for relations in the larger socialist community at the time. However, especially after World War II, it became very difficult to sustain the viability and centrality of the Soviet Union in such symbolic framework of interactions. As Szporluk argues, this is not simply the result of a departure from 1920s internationalism, but also the outcome of a deeper ideational and material crisis within the USSR in the context of the dominant position of Russian ethnicity and language.
These patterns are discussed within the context of a Ukrainian identity challenged both by Poland and Russia. The former has treated Ukraine as “Little Poland” and the latter as “Little Russia”. The noteworthy implications deriving from this problematique are that again it is not only the distinct historical experience of Western and Eastern Ukraine that matters, but also the context of their national movements and the way that they were brought together for the legitimation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Szporluk attempts to distinguish between linguistic and ethnic identities (Pp. 109-139) in Ukraine and contrasts these developments with trends in Belorussia. However, the context of his inferences fails to make a convincing case due to the lack of: (i) an interpretation of post-Soviet patterns; and (ii) a general discussion of the implications of the Soviet federal framework on identity-formation in the former USSR.
Similar issues are foregrounding the construction of Russian identity in the USSR. In Chapter 7, “Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism”, Szporluk outlines the main political and constitutional issues underscoring the relations between Russia and the Soviet Union. The following chapter, “The Imperial Legacy and the Soviet Nationalities Problem” tackles the issue of the “de-Sovietization of Russia” (P. 238). In effect, Szporluk challenges the perception that the USSR was engaging in supra-nationalism, rather than nationalisms. His claim is that “supra-nationalism in one country, just as socialism in one country, is nationalism” (P. xxxv). His proposition is suggested in the context of experiential knowledge: “For decades, Sovietism was a way of being Russian politically” (P. 357). Again the figure of Stalin looms large in Szporluk’s analysis of the relationship between economic performance and political legitimacy. Overall, Szporluk insists, the economic failure of the USSR ultimately challenged the viability of a “Soviet people”.
After the discussion of the individual Ukrainian and Russian cases, Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union goes on discussing different aspects of the Soviet experience relating to the dissolution of the USSR. Szporluk’s main argument is that the failure of “Sovietism” derived from its inability to articulate and suggest a non-territorial ethnic group in charge of the policy-process as “the potentially most Soviet cosmopolitan force” (P. 266, emphasis in the original). He insists that besides the army, the central bureaucracy, and the police, there were “no other, broader societal forces that are interested in saving a unitary Soviet state [and] that would stand above the nationalities” (P. 265, emphasis in the original). Szporluk puts forward ethnic Germans and Armenians as possible consolidating factors in the USSR, which, however, have been alienated from the central mechanisms of power. Probably the most prescient essay in this section (and in the entire volume) is chapter 9, “The Soviet West – or Far Eastern Europe?” It attempts a conceptualization of the political, emotional, and intellectual geography of national imagination. Thus, Szporluk sees the real conflict in Russia between “the inertia of society” and “the forces of change” (P. 265). However, for him this conflict has a geographic dimension as well: “the political and cultural legacies of the Soviet West, that is the European Far East, are richer, more democratic and more pluralistic than those of the Soviet imperial centre” (P. 261). In spite of the potentialities suggested by this statement, there is very little empirical evidence (both in the essay and in the volume) to substantiate its claims.
Finally, the volume concludes with five essays on post-Soviet developments, again mainly in the context of Russia and Ukraine. According to Szporluk the most pertinent issues for this period are the binaries of: (i) independence and democratization; (ii) ethnicity and citizenship; and (iii) language and national identity. It is their interaction that intuits the patterns of post-1991 relations in the former Soviet space. For both Russia and Ukraine the main issue is the extent to which independent statehood allows for the introduction of the values and practices of democratic government. In other words, Szporluk attempts to fathom whether independence is simply a disguise for the continuation of “Soviet” rules and procedures. In the context of Ukraine he suggests that the “real problem” is the establishment of a national consensus about the question of reform; that is, “Ukraine is faced with the choice of surviving as a political entity or becoming like Bosnia” (P. 330). Chapter 13, “Reflections on Ukraine after 1994: The Dilemmas of Nationhood” asserts that there are many reasons for the post-independence stagnation in Ukraine:

“One is a failure of political leadership. Another is the general sense that Ukraine’s population is not ready to accept radical reforms and that indeed large segments of it remain attached to Soviet values and institutions. There are indications that there is a split between those ready to accept reforms and those who oppose them and that this split has a territorial and even ethnic dimension.” (P. 328)

For Russia, the dilemma is “how to deal with communism, and how to deal with empire” (P. 357). Szporluk intuits that both contentions are yet to be resolved, however, he claims that post-Soviet Russia has tended to make a mess of the issues rather than be a constructive partner to their solution. First, it has helped the rise of ethnopolitics: “The real meaning of the ‘Russian rights’ issue – ‘the plight of the 25 million Russians’ – is to deprive the successor states of the USSR of the right to define themselves in a territorial or civic sense. Instead, it proposes their ethnicization” (P. 339). Second, as a result Russia has tended to re-create its imperial trappings both in real and identity politics, which has tended to scupper its reform process: “if Russia becomes an empire… it cannot be a democracy at the same time” (P. 331). Szporluk’s suggestion is that “Gorbachev, not Tito, would prove to be ‘the last of the Habsburgs’” (P. 352), however he fails to make a convincing speculation on whether the imperial relations centered on the Kremlin ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union or are carried on in the “new” Russian Federation.
But it is probably the shortcomings of Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union that draw out the importance of Szporluk’s effort. The conceptual and empirical lacunae evident in the volume can be interpreted as possibilities for further intellectual advance on these issues. One possible direction is the problematization of Szporluk’s inferences in the context of current international developments in the region of the former Soviet Union, which some have interpreted as taking a more ominous turn. For instance, it would be beneficial to analyze not only the implications of Vladimir Putin’s “presidential vertical” for relations within the Russian Federation, but also on the impact it has had on its relationship with its neighbours. For instance, the pressure the Russian President exerted on Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in September 2003 to sign a far-reaching agreement for a “single economic space”, which was followed by the unexpected attempt to build a causeway into the Kerch strait by Russian naval forces, apparently to seize control of an island and the adjacent shipping channel from Ukraine (suspended only after Ukraine rushed in reinforcements), are only two interesting cases for consideration. Such developments call for a reconsideration of the relationship between democracy, empire, and independence in the post-Soviet space.
Therefore, Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union would be of benefit to any student of the relations between the states that emerged after the dissolution of the USSR. It provides both an intellectual as well as chronological overview of the processes that led to the end of the Soviet Union. However, perhaps it is the shortcomings of Szporluk’s analysis that are most valuable since they indicate the possible avenues for further inquiry.