Friendship of peoples (Russian:дружба народов,druzhba narodov) is a concept advanced byMarxistsocial class theory. According to Marxism,nationalism is only a tool of theruling class, used to keep theworking class divided and thus easier to control and exploit. With the success ofclass struggle (i.e. the abolition ofsocial classes), the natural brotherhood of all workers would make the idea of separatenations obsolete.^[1]

The concept of the friendship of peoples is often opposed to "bourgeois cosmopolitanism". The concept of friendship of peoples was opposed to the concept ofinternationalism. In this context, the notion of internationalism was explained as "bourgeois cosmopolitanism", so the notion of "internationalism" was conceptually replaced by the notion of"international socialism", also known as "proletarian internationalism".

Tsarist Russia was dubbed the "prison of the peoples"^[2] ("тюрьма народов") byVladimir Lenin. TheSoviet Union, which replaced the empire, proclaimed that the goal of its national policy was to forge a new national entity, the "Soviet people".^[3] Leading up to and during the establishment ofBolshevik power, the friendship of peoples narrative limited the scope of Russian exceptionalism, however, throughoutWorld War II the metaphor experienced a reconfiguration and the leading role of Russians in theOctober Revolution, as well as cultural and technological advancements of theSoviet Union was increasingly emphasized.^[4]Under Joseph Stalin despite the ubiquitous slogan of "friendship of the peoples" between 1939 and 1953 a total of approximately 6 million people from many of the Soviet Union's ethnic minorities (Poles,Romanians,Lithuanians,Latvians,Estonians,Volga Germans,Finns,Crimean Tatars,Crimean Greeks,Kalmyks,Balkars,Karachays,Meskhetian Turks,Koreans,Chechens, Ingush, and others) wereforcefully resettled or deported, often to remote locations in theFar East orCentral Asia, 1.5 million of whom died of disease or hunger, which in some cases made up more than 40 percent of a deported population.^{[5][better source needed]}

TheConstitution of the Soviet Union of 1977 stated: "The union of the working class, the collective farm peasantry and the people's intelligentsia, the friendship of peoples and nationalities of the USSR have been strengthened."^[6] Even though the Soviet Union often claimed to make significant progress on "the nationalities question",its dissolution came about largely due to inter-ethnic conflict and like other communist countries a privileged nationality (in this case the Russians, inYugoslavia the Serbs, inVietnam theKinh people and inChina theHan Chinese) had more political and economic power^{[citation needed]}. Some historians evaluating the Soviet Union as acolonialempire, 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."^[3] HistorianKevin O'Connor similarly described the concept "friendship of peoples" as "a metaphor that was intended to signify the existence of a multinational community on Soviet soil, but which in reality put the Russians "first among equals."^[7]

• Bourgeois nationalism
• Cosmopolitanism
• Proletarian internationalism
• Order of Friendship of Peoples
• All-Russian nation, earlier Tsarist and post-Soviet nationalist concept

• Lowell, R. Tillett (2012).The Great Friendship: Soviet Historians on the Non-Russian Nationalities.The University of North Carolina Press.ISBN 978-0-8078-3675-0

• "On the National Pride of the Great Russians" article by Lenin