Soviet people
Soviet people (Template:Lang-ru[1]) was an ideological demonym and proposed ethnonym for the population of the Soviet Union. The Soviet government promoted the doctrine of uniting all peoples living in USSR into a single multinational state.
The term "Soviet people" first appeared in official statements in the 1970s. Through the history of the Soviet Union, both doctrine and practice regarding ethnic distinctions within the Soviet population varied over time. Minority national cultures were not completely abolished in the Soviet Union. By Soviet definition, national cultures were to be "socialist by content and national by form", to be used to promote the official aims and values of the state.While the goal was always to cement the nationalities together in a common state structure, as a pragmatic step in the 1920's and early 1930's under the policy of korenizatsiya (indigenization) the leaders of the Communist Party promoted federalism and the strengthening of non-Russian languages and cultures. By the late 1930's, however, policy shifted to more active promotion of Russian language and later still to more overt Russification efforts, which accelerated in the 1950's especially in areas of public education. Although some assimilation did occur, this effort did not succeed on the whole as evidenced by developments in many national cultures in the territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Reinforcing the distinctions in national identities, the Soviet state maintained information about "nationality" on many administrative records, including school, work, and military records, as well as in the periodic censuses of population. The infamous "fifth record" (Template:Lang-ru, pyataya grafa) was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizen's ethnicity (Template:Lang-ru, natsionalnost). In some cases, this official nationality served as a basis for discrimination.
See also
- New Soviet man
- Homo soveticus
- Melting pot
- Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and National Character
- Rootless cosmopolitan
- Russification