Political Science Forum The ‘Moscow centre’ 1 and its peripheries: an ideological overview of the Soviet Union’s difficulties as a multinational state 2 By Emanuel Copila Teaching Assistant, Politics Department West University Timioara, Romania Abstract Taking into account the ideological responses the Soviet Union offered, in its different phases of existence, to the national question, this study aims to offer a diachronical perspective of Moscow’s efforts in order to create a ‘Soviet people’. Kenneth Jowitt’s concept, ‘the Moscow centre’, applies to the whole socialist camp, both the USSR and to the rest of the communist states loyal to Moscow; however, in the present paper, I have carried out a risky enterprise, and limited it only to the territory of the former USSR, more exactly, to the relation between Moscow and the nationalities and/or ethnies of the Soviet Union, most of them dispersed trough the remote regions of the country and only a part of them having their own federative republic. Recognizing the imperilous potential which the nationalities might have with reference to the Soviet Union as a state, the communists tried both ideologically and politically, to ‘forge’ a Soviet supranational identity able to overcame this thorny problem. Officially, the Russians also must have 1 The syntagm was borrowed from Jowitt: 1992, p. 159 2 This paper was initially presented at the 2008 edition of the ‘Ideologies, values and political behaviors in Central and Eastern Europe’ conference, which took place between 5 and 6 of December at the West University of Timioara. Its previous title was Cohesion or destabilization? Controversial aspects regarding the influence of the Russian Federation on its ‘near abroad’, where I also took into account the national problems of the former Soviet Union. Finally, I decided to concentrate on the Soviet Union exclusively. The research needed to conceive this paper was partially facilitated by an AMPOSDRU grant which I received from Babe Bolyai University for the whole duration of my doctoral studies.