Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian Ssr 1923 1934

George O. Liber
Cambridge University Press
9780521413916
0-521-41391-5

This book analyzes the precarious relationship between Soviet legitimacy building and the consequences of rapid industrial development in the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic during the 1920s and 1930s..

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George Liber traces the impact of rapid urban growth on the implementation of Soviet preferential policies, korenizatsiia. He shows how the interplay among industrialization, urbanization and korenizatsiia produced a modern, urban Ukranian identity, and he argues that this explains why the Stalinist leadership changed its course on the nationality question in the 1930s.