The “National Revolution” of the Bolsheviks and the “National Policy” of modern Russia

Abstract

The article gives a detailed description of the main areas of Soviet national policy: the creation of a national-territorial federation, the practice of “personnel rooting”, the cultural and linguistic revolution, and others. As a result, the conclusion is drawn that the Soviet national policy had two kinds of consequences. On the one hand, by promoting the development of ethno-nations in the union and autonomous republics it created institutional and psychological prerequisites for eroding the legitimacy and later collapse of the Soviet system. On the other hand, its focus on eroding Russian identity and substituting it with Soviet identity gave the former imperial features. The author especially notes a close connection and continuity of the conceptual foundations and practices of Russian ethnopolitics with the theoretical dogmas and practice of the Soviet “national policy”. However, if the Communist Party consciously built the national states within the USSR, trying to accelerate the course of history, in modern Russia this process continues as if by inertia, despite the proclamation of a strategic goal being the formation of a Russian political nation.