Assertion: The nationalist movement was strongest in the European and prosperous parts of Russia, the Baltic Area, Ukraine, and Georgia.

Reason: The people here were always fascinated with the western lifestyle and wanted to secede from USSR and join NATO since the very beginning.

The Assertion is correct but the Reason is incorrect.

The correct answer is Option 4 - The Assertion is correct but the Reason is incorrect.

Assertion: The nationalist movement was strongest in the European and prosperous parts of Russia, the Baltic Area, Ukraine, and Georgia.

Reason: The people here were always fascinated with the western lifestyle and wanted to secede from USSR and join NATO since the very beginning.

CORRECTION in Reason- Ordinary people here felt alienated from the Central Asians and from each other and concluded also that they were paying too high an economic price to keep the more backward areas within the Soviet Union.

The primary motivations for nationalism in these regions were more about preserving their cultural identity, achieving political autonomy, and resisting Russian/Soviet dominance. The specific desire to secede and join NATO emerged more clearly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, rather than "since the very beginning" of their nationalist movements.

During the Cold War, many thought that nationalist unrest would be strongest in the Central Asian republics given their ethnic and religious differences with the rest of the Soviet Union and their economic backwardness. However, as things turned out, nationalist dissatisfaction with the Soviet Union was strongest in the more “European” and prosperous part – in Russia and the Baltic areas as well as Ukraine and Georgia (Assertion is correct). Ordinary people here felt alienated from the Central Asians and from each other and concluded also that they were paying too high an economic price to keep the more backward areas within the Soviet Union (Reasoning is incorrect).