Soviet people
Soviet people (Template:Lang-ru) was an ideological demonym and proposed ethnonym for the population of the Soviet Union. The Soviet government promoted the doctrine of assimilating all peoples living in USSR into one Soviet people, accordingly to Marxist principle of Fraternity of peoples.
The effort lasted for the entire history of the Soviet Union but did not succeed, as evidenced by developments in most national cultures in the territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Russification efforts by the Soviet authorities met resistance in many localities, especially in the territories of the Baltic republics and the Western Ukraine.
In some cases, ethnic background or national identification served as a basis for discrimination. The infamous "fifth record" (Template:Lang-ru, pjataja grafa) was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizen's ethnicity (Template:Lang-ru, natsionalnost).
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.