Nested Nationalism: Making and Unmaking Nations in the Soviet Caucasus by Krista A. Goff (review)

Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research conducted in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Dagestan, and Moscow, the historian Krista A. Goff produces a ground-breaking work of historiography that examines Soviet nationality politics in the context of the "nontitular" ethnicities of the Caucasus, with particular attention given to minority groups in the Azerbaijan SSR. Nested Nationalism is an achievement in its own right, as Goff details how she was met with considerable resistance and accusations of fueling separatism from government officials, archivists, and fellow researchers in Azerbaijan as she attempted to uncover the lost history of the Talyshes, Georgian-Ingilois, and other groups that included the Soviet subaltern in the South Caucasus (P. 10).

Although this monograph is the result of nearly thirteen years of archival research (beginning in 2007), its true contribution to the field is due to its unprecedented collection, compilation, and interpretation of over 120 oral interviews conducted throughout Azerbaijan and Georgia, in Makhachkala, in Moscow, and in the Netherlands with anonymous asylum seekers from Azerbaijan (P. 11). The lengths to which Goff goes in order to protect the identities of her interviewees speaks to the gravity of such interviews and to their potential political consequences back home. As one Lezgin interviewee states, "the less you say, the longer you live" (P. 14).

This monograph consists of an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion, along with a substantial seventy-eight pages of notes, figures, acknowledgments, and a bibliography. The introduction addresses the scope of the book, which "recovers the traces" of those who suffered as Soviet nationality policies and practices sought to paradoxically both promote and erase their identities through trauma (P. 18). Chapter 1 details the processes of korenizatsiia, minoritization, and nation building in the Soviet Caucasus in the 1920s and 1930s. Chapter 2 examines the influence of World War II on Soviet nationality politics and how the war intersected with national consciousness, thus igniting latent disputes among nontitular and titular ethnicities. Chapter 3 provides an in-depth, historiographical account of the postwar reassessment of identity, territorial disputes, and nation building in the Azerbaijan SSR in the 1950s, including a discussion of how nontitular groups were targeted by Soviet authorities in order to "strengthen" the cohesion of the titular population. Chapter 4 focuses on the trajectory of the Talyshes – examining the work of minority rights activists in the 1950s – and their subsequent erasure from Soviet society. Chapter 5 more broadly examines the mission of minority activists during de-Stalinization and the Thaw and assesses the successes and failures of grassroots movements that sought rights negotiations with Moscow. The conclusion, set against the backdrop of the First World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue in Baku in 2011, applies Goff's arguments and observations to contemporary phenomena: addressing the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Sadval movement, and the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic (P. 214).

There is little ambiguity that many of the contemporary conflicts in Eurasia – whether they be separatist conflicts in the name of self-determination, insurgencies, territorial or resource disputes, or interstate military engagements meant to either liberate minority groups or preserve territorial integrity – are indirectly the result of Soviet nation-building policies such as korenizatsiia ("nativization"), national-territorial delimitation, or the processes of Russification and Sovietization (P. 220). Goff argues further that the forced assimilation and erasure of nontitular populations in the 1930s can be felt today not only in the form of intrastate and interstate armed conflict, such as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but also on a cultural level, manifesting in "microaggressions, overt acts of violence, structural inequalities … [that] generate frustration, embarrassment, resentment, and anger" (P. 216). Recent events in the Caucasus speak to the urgency of this book and its role in filling a knowledge gap crucial to understanding the historical roots of interstate disputes in the region.

Goff begins the book with an anxious letter from Zulfugar Ahmedzade (1898–1942), one of...