Institutional development is a process that can be analyzed from the bibliometrics of its contingent generation of documentation in the same manner that can be analyzed by historical methods. As institutions grow in resources, the absolute volume of documentation produced rises. In the context of the Soviet Southern Tier, the Russian language documentation bibliometrics for the eight republics image their relative level of institutional development. Comparing the relative levels of documentation to socio-economic variables, the degree to which the documentation is a local product, or a product of All-Union intervention can be determined. Hence, the degree to which institutional development is dependent or autonomous can be gauged for each republic. The analysis of these relationships between the degree to which documentation production is a dependent process, and the relative level of documentation generation, provides an empirical basis for the ranking of regional institutional development. This ranking establishes the framework for a historical description of the relative position of the nationalities of the Southern Tier. This quantitative perspective on Soviet nationality policy parallels the historical process by which the nationalities have been integrated into the Soviet system. The two nationalities most constrained by the nationality policies are the Armenians, with their nationalism and irredentism based on well developed local institutions, and the Uzbeks, with their large population base and historical leadership role in Central Asia. The role of intensively Soviet developed nationalities (Turkmen, Kirghiz, and Karakalpak) in the multi-ethnic system is considered in terms of their moderating the potential for hegemony by the largest nationalities. Azerbaijan SSR emerges as the regional center of a system of measures taken to promote stability and to minimize the prospects of autonomous ethnic hegemony in the Soviet Southern Tier.