Советский народ | |
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 Map of the country's constituentUnion Republics in 1989 | |
| Total population | |
| 286,730,819 (1989 census) | |
| Languages | |
| Russian,[1]Ukrainian,Belarusian,Kazakh,Azerbaijani,Georgian,Armenian,Uzbek,Kyrgyz,Tajik,Turkmen,Latvian,Estonian,Romanian,Lithuanian, others (see:Languages of the Soviet Union) | |
| Religion | |
| Christianity,Islam,Judaism,Buddhism,Atheism, others (see:Religion in the Soviet Union) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Citizens of thepost-Soviet states |
| Part ofa series on the |
| Culture of the Soviet Union |
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| People |
| Languages |
| Traditions |
| Cuisine |
| Festivals |
| Literature |
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TheSoviet people (Russian:сове́тский наро́д,romanized: sovetsky narod) were thecitizens and nationals of the Soviet Union. Thisdemonym was presented in the ideology of the country as the "new historical unity of peoples ofdifferent nationalities" (новая историческая общность людей различных национальностей).[2]
During thehistory of the Soviet Union, different doctrines and practices on ethnic distinctions within the Soviet population were applied at different times. Minority national cultures were never completely abolished. Instead the Soviet definition of national cultures required them to be "socialist by content and national by form", an approach that was used to promote the official aims and values of the state. The goal was always to cement the nationalities together in a common state structure. In the 1920s and the early 1930s, the policy ofnational delimitation was used to demarcate separate areas of national culture into territorial-administrative units, and the policy ofkorenizatsiya (indigenisation) was used to promote involvement non-Russian nationalities in government on all levels and strengthen non-Russian languages and cultures. By the late 1930s, however, the policy was changed to a more active promotion of theRussian language and later to more overtRussification, which accelerated in the 1950s,[citation needed] especially inSoviet education. Although some assimilation did occur, it did not on the whole succeed. The continued development of the many national cultures in the Soviet Union led to the drafting of theNew Union Treaty in 1991 and the subsequentdissolution of the Soviet Union.[3]
Assessments of the success of the creation of the new community are divergent. On the one hand, the ethnologist V. A. Tishkov and other historians believe that "for all the socio-political deformities, the Soviet people represented a civil nation."[4][5] The philosopher and sociologist B. A. Grushin noted that sociology in the USSR "recorded a unique historical type of society that had already gone into oblivion". At the same time, according to the sociologist T.N. Zaslavskaya, it "did not solve the main task associated with the typological identification of Soviet society".
Some historians evaluating the Soviet Union as a colonialempire (Soviet empire), applied the "prison of nations" idea to the USSR. Thomas Winderl wrote: "The USSR became in a certain sense more a prison-house of nations than the old Empire had ever been."[6]
In an interview withEuronews in 2011, Russian PresidentDmitry Medvedev recalled the use of the term "Soviet people" as a "unified community" in the Soviet Union but added that "these constructions were largely theoretical".[7]
In contrast to Soviet national identity politics, which declared the Soviet people as a supranational community, the post-SovietRussian Constitution speaks of a "multinational people of theRussian Federation". From the outset, the idea of the "Russian nation" as a community of allRussian citizens has met with opposition.[8]
In December 2010, Russian PresidentDmitry Medvedev pointed out the lack of an all-Russian unifying idea as a problem during a discussion in theState Council and proposed multiethnic patriotism as a replacement for the idea of "the Soviet people".[9]
