Racial Minorities in the Soviet Union

N THE seventeen years since the Soviet Union was founded most of us have grown familiar with the alphabetical designation USSR, yet in the main our conception of it has tended to remain vague. The more familiar designation U.S.A. definitely suggests a union of 48 states, and we are prone to recognize something analogous in the idea of a union of republics. The analogy would be closer, however, if by a stretch of the imagination we could picture the United States as composed of 48 independent territorial and political units, each representing a different nationality, wholly distinct from the others in culture, language, economy, and tradition. The conformation of the USSR is just such a mosaic of nationalities, unified by common socialistic purposes and principles. The Russian Federative Republic represents only one of more than ioo nationalities of recognized identity in the Soviet Union, yet the fact is that Russians have been historically conditioned to play the conspicuous role in this part of the world. The ascendancy enjoyed by Russia during the centuries of Tsarist rule created complex problems of national minority life that were inherited by the Soviet Government in 1917. It is recognized throughout the world today that Soviet power during the past decade has undertaken a new policy in dealing with this problem of minor nationalities and has achieved certain definite successes in its solution. This must necessarily be of the deepest importance to every person interested in problems of cultural contact and race relations throughout the world. In order to understand properly the many dimensions of this national question and the definite aspects of Soviet policy, it is necessary to turn back a page of history for a moment to get a view of pre-revolutionary Russia. The main interest expressed in the domination of Tsarism over the minor nationalities of Russia and Siberia was economic exploitation, and the rigid administrative control exercised by the Russian Government over these peoples was bent to the practical requirements of Russian capital's claim on sources of raw material. Out of this relationship there

Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Soviet union · Law · Russia and Soviet political economy

• Travels of an American Indian into the Hinterlands of Soviet Russia”

  Open Access•Benjamin Balthaser•American Quarterly•2014

  Añadir item

• The Cambridge History of Native American Literature

  Open Access•Melanie Benson Taylor•Cambridge History of Native…•2020

  Añadir item

• Nineteenth-Century American Indian Newspapers and the Construction of Sovereignty

  Open Access•Oliver Scheiding•Cambridge History of Native…•2020

  Añadir item

• Reservation Realities and Myths in American Literary History

  Open Access•David Treuer•Cambridge History of Native…•2020

  Añadir item

• Indigenous Lives, Visual Autobiographies

  Open Access•Hertha D Sweet Wong•Cambridge History of Native…•2020

  Añadir item