In Nested Nationalism: Making and Unmaking Nations in the Soviet Caucasus, Krista Goff examines through the example of Soviet Azerbaijan the ways in which changing political priorities and relations between Moscow and titular elites created different opportunities for the recognition and national development of non-titular minorities (people who did not have republics named after them) in the Soviet Union. By shifting the focus from the all-Union level (where the non-Russian titular people were a minority) to the republic level (where the titular people formed the majority), Goff argues that despite the multi-ethnic goals and structure of the Soviet nationhood system, non-titular minorities often faced strong pressures and incentives to assimilate into the majority nation (here Azerbaijani narod) and that titular nationalism – “not Russian or Soviet colonialism” – is to blame for the discrimination and inequality experienced by the non-titular people (5). She identifies three periods in Soviet history as particularly opportune for the promotion of the native culture and cadres of non-titular minorities: the so-called Soviet “cultural revolution” during Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan in the late 1920s and early 1930s (36–38), the political de-Stalinization during Khrushchev’s period (Khrushchev’s Thaw) (180–181), and Gorbachev’s glasnost during the last period of Soviet rule (221). However, as she aptly points out, these periods did not present equal political opportunities for national development to all non-titular people in Soviet Azerbaijan. For instance, while the Persian-speaking Talyshes and Kurds faced assimilation by being removed from Soviet censuses since 1959 (136), Lezgins and Georgian-Ingilois maintained census and internal passport recognition and had also access to other forms of national cultural support during Khrushchev’s Thaw in the early 1960s (180–181). A similar pattern is also observed in the case of Adjarans in Georgia and Pamiris in Tajikistan whose national categories were likewise eliminated from the census starting from 1959 (172). While these assimilationist practices were, of course, primarily ordered by Moscow, Goff emphasizes that “Moscow’s role should not overshadow the agency” of nationalizing titular elites like İmam Mustafayev and Mirza İbragimov who justified it on the ground of socialist “ethnohistorical progress” (82). The author concludes by pointing out that the myth of the “voluntary” Talysh assimilation into the Azerbaijani nation persists to this day (176) and that this feeds into the master narrative of the current Baku leadership that “Azerbaijan is and always has been a model of tolerance” (15; 214; 283).

Methodologically innovative, empirically sound, and ultimately convincing, the book draws on a unique combination of archival research in five different former Soviet republics (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Federation) and on more than 120 oral history interviews conducted over a period of 13 years (2007–2020) in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, and the Netherlands (11). Furthermore, the author was very courageous in conducting research in an environment where minority issues constitute a politically sensitive topic and where there still exists “a popular refusal to acknowledge assimilatory and discriminatory practices” (220). As such, the historiographic contribution of this book is very important. Indeed, by re-visiting Soviet history through the perspective of non-titular minorities, Goff generates counternarratives to many of the defining “frameworks of Soviet nationality histories” (23). For instance, while many influential scholars argue that Stalin’s drive for centralization and his attack on titular nationalism in the late 1920s/early 1930s impaired Soviet indigenization policies (korenizatsiia) in the titular republics, Goff contends that the opposite was the case for non-titular people since they were “first brought into korenizatsiia” exactly during this period (22–23). Equally important, viewing Soviet history through non-titular lens debunks the post-colonial narrative with which many non-Russian titular elites describe the Soviet experience, rendering all non-Russians equally victimized (5). Instead, as aptly noted by Goff, “For some nontitular minorities in Azerbaijan, the ‘big brothers’ that they most resented or distrusted were representatives of Soviet Azerbaijan rather than of Moscow” (219), since curtailing their national rights had an “overwhelmingly Azerbaijanifying effect, not a Russifying one” (23).

Despite these obvious strengths, a more substantive discussion of certain topics would have made the argument presented here more compelling. First, a more in-depth discussion of the reasons why non-titular minorities in Azerbaijan faced different opportunity structures for national development would have been of particular interest. Stated differently, why were some non-titular minorities more likely to be targeted with assimilation than others? To be sure, the author does briefly mention that sensitive border minorities lacking neighboring Soviet kin republics (such as Talyshes and Kurds) were more likely to be targeted (181), however more space should have been devoted to this crucial issue. This within-case comparison could then have been complemented with a cross-national one as the author also touches upon the assimilation of Adjarans in Soviet Georgia and of Pamiris in Tajikistan (172–173). All this brings home the fact that often there is not a uniform state policy towards minorities. Indeed, the very same state can apply different ethnicity regimes to different minorities residing within its borders. Second, given the author’s point that assimilation narratives in Azerbaijan persist to this day, and given the fact that the Russian Federation in itself has also moved in an assimilationist direction since the 1997 elimination of passport ethnicity, to what extent can we talk of a pattern of shifting from multi-ethnic to assimilationist regimes in post-Soviet countries? This is another related issue that deserves attention.

All in all, Nested Nationalism is an outstanding work providing a refreshing view of the “Affirmative Action Empire” from a hitherto overlooked perspective. It will be of interest primarily to historians and comparativists of ethnicity and nationalism and it is indispensable for understanding the current ethnic trajectories in the vast post-Soviet space.