Authors

Discussion

‘Negotiation’ with Moscow was a delicate balancing act for the leaderships of the Soviet Republics during the Khrushchev era. They had to demonstrate their fealty to Moscow and ensure the Centre’s continued rule over the republic, but they also tried to push the boundaries of acceptable autonomy and secure the maximum possible central investment on behalf of their respective populations. This paper discusses who these negotiations were with (the Central Committee Apparatus in Moscow), how they were conducted (in person; via the all-important telephone for personal connections), and how republics had to actually show that there were issues of nationalism in their republics in order to justify their retention by Moscow as valuable managers. I will focus on the case of Latvia, the most aggressively autonomous republic of the period.