Abstract

This article analyzes some of the main dilemmas and problems that the leadership of the USSR led by Mikhail Gorbachev faced when dealing with the explosion of the national question in the country during perestroika, and focuses on three interrelated issues: the need, against the backdrop of democratization and the political crisis of the Soviet system, to decentralize the Union Federation; the questioning of the existing hierarchy among the nationalities of the Union and at territorial levels; and the urgency of redefining the position and legal status of specific ethnic groups and minorities in the transition from an imperial-type entity to national states dominated by strong nationalist rhetoric and impulses. The research is based on recently declassified sources from the holdings of the Department of Letters of the CPSU Central Committee at the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI), and documents from the holdings of the Committee on Nationalities of the Government of the RSFSR at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF)