Soviet Nationalities Policy of the 1960s – early 1980s

The analyzed period was characterized by a combination of three factors. The ёrst of them is a controversial and largely unfavorable dynamics of socio-demographic and ethno-cultural processes. This refers to the uneven growth of the number of different ethnic communities, the demographic crisis of the Russian ethnos (caused by, among other things, “an echo of war”), the continued heterogeneity of the social structure of Soviet ethnic groups, agrarian overpopulation of some Union republics, the beginning of the outяow of the Russian population from the latter, as well as slowing down the spread of the Russian language. The second important factor is centrifugal political and economic processes. The weakening of job rotation, excessive subsidies for the national republics, the development of the shadow economy, boost training of the national intelligentsia and unbalanced application of the system of territorial autonomies may be mentioned among them as the means of solving the national question. And ёnally, the third factor is the socio-cultural crisis, which included the crisis of the Soviet ideology and the ofёcial Marxist-Leninist philosophy, a conceptual impasse of the Soviet national policy, and the weakening of the “soft power” of Russian culture. The political, scientiёc and creative elite of the Soviet Union could not give a satisfactory answer to these crisis phenomena. Moreover, the increase in the negative trends in the elite circles caused such moods that connected breaking the deadlock with the rejection of the “imperial” policy in favor of the construction of “nationstate” by diminutive nationalism. At the same time the long-term negative consequences of this approach, which are still evident, were undervalued.

• Podyapolskiy S.A.

• Общий отдел

• Гуманитарные науки
• Социальные (общественные) науки