As a person who was raised by a Russian and knows many Russians, I can assure you that nationality is the significant dividing line in the society. A person in an area will describe themselves by nationality. Most of these nationalities speak their own languages, have their own history and culture. When these people go overseas and live in different countries, you will see that they separate by these nationalities. There will be a Georgian, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainian, etc clubs. The Russian club will be filled with people who consider themselves Russian by nationality.
Okay that's fine, but not seeing where it negates anything that was mentioned in the posts you quoted. When they go overseas and live in different countries and separate themselves by nationality doesn't seem to suggest that the referendum itself was invalid. After all Puerto Ricans tend to cluster together even when they move elsewhere in the USA, but Puerto Ricans are all American citizens and a significant number of Puerto Ricans do not want outright independence (many want more local autonomy). Even from countries and regions where you have a single ethnic group, settlement patterns for persons who migrated overseas tended to show that people from
one particular area tended to settle together anyway:
This generation of Sicilian immigrants tended to cluster together in groups according to the regions from which they had emigrated. In New York City those emigrating from the village of Cinisi huddled together on East 69th Street, while larger sections like Elizabeth Street contained emigrants from several different areas including Sciacca and Palermo. Sicilians from fishing villages settled in Boston on the North Street, while others settled in San Francisco's North Beach. Many of the districts were soon regarded as "Little Italys." Sicilians in Chicago congregated in an area known as "Little Sicily," and those in New Orleans lived in a district dubbed "Little Palermo."
When African-Americans migrated away from the South, they often tended to settle in areas together (for historical, legal (Jim Crow), cultural and other reasons). Even now these patterns still occur.
And it isn't as if say the majority of Georgians didn't live in Georgia to start out with - in essence, while the Georgian SSR and RSFSR were in the same country (USSR), most Georgians lived in the Georgian SSR, not the RSFSR so they wouldn't have been any less separate from these other nationalities than their compatriots who migrated to New York and settled in a predominantly Georgian area versus a predominantly Russian area (in fact given that both groups were in the same
city they were in some ways more closely co-located than the average Georgian and the average Russian in the USSR). Couple that with the fact that up until the 1990s the USSR had an internal passport and propiska system and it meant that the chances that many Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Russians, etc could even have neighbours from different nationalities was smaller than it would have been in a system of completely free internal movement. Thus when such persons migrated away to the USA or other western countries, it would only be expected that their circle of contacts would likely include more persons from their own ethnic group than persons from without. And once you are moving from Baku to Boston, are you more likely to move to an area with people you don't know or to one with people whom you do know, if the choice was available to you?
What we have been saying is that up until 1991 most persons from other nationalities did not have a problem with living in a state that included the RSFSR. However, most persons from other nationalities definitely wanted more local autonomy and democracy. That was not incompatible with remaining in a union with the RSFSR or a democratic successor republic to the RSFSR. Even after 1991 polls from some western organizations showed that between 20-40% of persons in many of these republics would be in favour of some form of renewed union that included Russia and this is at least a decade after the dissolution.
The protest movements under the communists also were divided by nationality.
Given that many protests movements were localized, some were spontaneous and many were often directed at the republic's governing communist party, this doesn't seem surprising.
The USSR was a massive country. Without a history of nationwide freedom of movement or freedom of speech. In such circumstances it would seem surprising if most protests movements actually were coordinated across the length and breadth of the Union at first.