THE SOVIET UNION AND ITS PERIPHERAL REPUBLICS: AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

The relationship between Moscow and the peripheral republics of the Soviet Union has been a controversial issue. The complicatedness and implications of this relationship was to a degree recognized during the Soviet era. Yet it was after the Collapse of the Communist regime that its real scope and significance were revealed, especially in Central Asian and Caucasian republics where a variety of problems and crises emerged at local, national, and regional levels. The main argument of this article is that an analytical framework based on three core concepts of totalitarianism, modernization, and colonialism can not only help us analyze the core-periphery relations during the Communist era, but also deeply contributes to our understanding of the post-Soviet conditions in regions such as Central Asia. In the discussion on these three concepts, their ideological origins as well as their concrete implications are fully discussed.