A state’s own inclusionary categories become the vehicles of its dissolution

Evidence

What began as a largely peaceful process soon radicalized and escalated. In principle, a straightforward cycle could have occurred: a decentralized USSR could have granted partial autonomy to a certain number of titular nationalities, incorporated them into its governing structure, repressed the more unruly and threatening claimants, and returned to a revised version of Soviet business as usual. Instead, fifteen nationalities gained total independence, others acquired rights they had never enjoyed under Soviet rule, and what Beissinger calls a “tide of nationalism” emerged. In the process, the Soviet regime disappeared. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1255

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the US forced-removal study claim about state-imposed categories being available identity bases; here the same co-optive machinery that stabilized the USSR provides the frames and actors for its breakup. — connects to: States build durable categories that tie unequal rights to separated groups. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 553; State homogenization programs bred contradictory nationalist claims that spur secession — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1021; State-imposed categories become available identity bases for subsequent political entrepreneurs. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 574 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Postcolonial theory’s own binary can reproduce the categories it aims to dissolve #qualifies (0.82) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 74
• State apparatuses actively fashion and reify racial categories rather than merely reflect them #expands (0.80)