Embedded Files
Letter About Moscow’s Policy toward Georgian Nation, 1983
Letter About Moscow’s Policy toward Georgian Nation, 1983
This source demonstrates a top-down view on how the Soviet government viewed the various ethnic groups within modern-day Georgia, which demonstrates the Union’s knowledge yet willful ignorance in representing these groups properly.
These writings exemplify later Soviet nationality policy, and the ineffective rule which led to the formation of breakaway states in 1991.
Letter of Ukrainian Political Prisoners, 1977
Letter of Ukrainian Political Prisoners, 1977
This source demonstrates Soviet repression of Ukrainian national interests through the writings of Ukrainian political prisoners, which many ethnic minorities within the Soviet Union experienced.
Furthermore, the contrast between these writings and the early Soviet policy of Ukrainianization is astounding, with government officials abandoning the earlier model of “national in form, socialist in content” for a more traditional imperial framework.
Thus, a connection may be formed between earlier and later iterations of Soviet nationality policy.
Photographs of Lithuanian Religious Samizdat in Soviet Union, 1972
Photographs of Lithuanian Religious Samizdat in Soviet Union, 1972
These images of illegal religious writings provide valuable insight into the Soviet treatment of Lithuanian churches in the later Soviet period, as Lithuanian believers relied on Samizdat to spread relevant news and maintain connections between one another.
Paired with the image of the Catholic Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights in Lithuania, viewers are able to piece together a more complete picture of how Soviet officials viewed national-religious sentiment in Lithuania before the Union collapsed. Small groups of believers stood up to an increasingly oppressive Soviet government, maintaining networks through officially illegal means.
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