Nested Nationalism is a study of the politics and practices of managing national minority identifications, rights, and communities in the Soviet Union and the personal and political consequences of such efforts. Titular nationalities that had republics named after them in the USSR were comparatively privileged within the boundaries of "their" republics, but they still often chafed both at Moscow's influence over republican affairs and at broader Russian hegemony across the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, members of nontitular communities frequently complained that nationalist republican leaders sought to build titular nations on the back of minority assimilation and erasure. Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Moscow, Krista A. Goff argues that Soviet nationality policies produced recursive, nested relationships between majority and minority nationalisms and national identifications in the USSR.

Introduction1. Making Minorities and National Hierarchies2. Territory, War, and Nation-Building in the South CaucasusInterlude: After Stalin: Reform and Revenge3. Defining the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic4. The Vanishing Minority: Scholars, Politicians, and the Production of Soviet Assimilation Narratives5. Minority Activism and Citizenship after StalinConclusion