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TheSovietUnion,asheir to the former territory of the Russian Empire, was exceptionally diverse in its national composition. Its 1989 census identified 113 ethnic communities, or “nationalities” (Russian natsional’nosti), having populations of 1000 or more, as well as several dozen groups numbering in the hundreds. Almost all had their own languages, customs, and religious traditions, although in many cases national consciousness was weak until the 20th century. Twenty-two Soviet nationalities had at least 1 million members.
The145.2millionethnic Russians, the largest nationality by a lopsided margin, came to a bare majority (50.8 percent) of the entire population. Their fellow Eastern Slavs, the Ukrainians and Belorussians, came second and fourth in size, with 44.2 million people (15.5 percent) and 10 million people (3.5 percent), respectively, and several smaller Slavic nationalities were also represented. Ethnic groups of Turkic extraction, based primarily in Central Asia, the Azerbaijan republic, and the middle Volga River valley of the RSFSR, accounted for about 17 percent of the population. Of them, the 16.7 million Uzbeks were the third largest Soviet nationality, the 8.1 million Kazakhs fifth, the 6.8 million Azerbaijanis sixth, and the 6.6 million Tatars seventh. In eighth, ninth, and tenth place were the Armenians (4.6 million), in Transcaucasia; the Tajiks (4.2 million), in Central Asia; and the Georgians (4 million), also in Transcaucasia.
Sovietnationalitypolicy had two defining and at times discordant aspects. On the one hand, it singled out the Russians as the foremost ethnic group and placed the Soviet Union firmly in the line of Russian states going back to the Russian Empire and to the medieval principality of Muscovy. All heads of the Communist Party except Stalin, a Georgian, were of Russian descent. On the other hand, the state acknowledged the worth of the minority nationalities and demarcated a territorial homeland for most of the largest of them. The area’s government and party committee were normally headed by persons from the titular ethnic group.
For15ofthe22biggest nationalities (Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Belorussians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Tajiks, Georgians, Moldavians, Lithuanians, Turkmen, Kirgiz, Latvians, and Estonians) the homeland was a union republic, or SSR. Several dozen smaller groups were assigned lesser units labeled, depending on their size and location, autonomous soviet socialist republics (ASSRs), autonomous oblasts (regions), or autonomous okrugs (areas). Twenty autonomous republics (all but four of them in the RSFSR), eight autonomous oblasts, and ten autonomous okrugs existed in 1989. Three nationalities with more than 1 million members each—the 2 million Germans, 1.4 million Jews, and 1.1 million Poles—had no localized territorial base.
Thebordersoftheunion republics invariably encompassed groups other than the titular nationality, and migration, especially of Russians out from the RSFSR, also heightened their ethnic pluralism. The titular groups were the largest community in all union republics in 1989, but there was much variation. At one pole, the indigenous Armenians constituted 93.3 percent of the population of the Armenian republic; at the other, Kazakhs were only 39.7 percent of the population of their republic. There was one union republic (Kazakhstan) in which the titular people made up less than 50 percent of the population, two republics (Latvia and Kirgizia) where the titular people barely cleared 50 percent, and three (Estonia, Moldavia, and Tajikistan) where they composed between 60 and 65 percent. In the capital cities of seven of the 14 non-Russian republics, the titular nationality was less than 50 percent of the population, and in two it was 51 percent. Ethnic Russians, 81.5 percent of the population of the RSFSR, were second to the titular group in all union republics except Armenia, Georgia, and Moldavia.
Theorientingprinciples of Soviet nationality policy were applied in different ways in different periods. In the early years, the emphasis was on the cultural autonomy of the minorities. A more rigidly pro-Russian approach was introduced in the mid-1930s, followed by arrests of the political and cultural leaders of most non-Russian republics, and by the wholesale deportation during World War II of several groups—the Germans of Ukraine and the Volga basin, the Chechens, and the Crimean Tatars among them—unjustly accused of pro-Nazi sympathies. After 1953 the CPSU allowed most of the banished peoples to return and moderated its stance, although it did not hesitate to use force against open critics of the system. Rhetoric about the long-term “fusion” of the Soviet peoples aside, efforts to assimilate the non-Russians focused on education, linguistic integration, migration, and intermarriage.
Ethnicrelationsbecame more strained in the 1970s and 1980s. One reason was the perception among some Russians that the Soviet Union catered too much to other nationalities and that higher birthrates among non-Russians were about to deprive Russians of their slim demographic majority. At the same time, dissent and impatience with Moscow’s domination picked up pace on the non-Russian side, especially in the Baltic republics and Ukraine. Many Soviet Jews, deprived of a territorial unit, alienated by frequent occurrences of anti-Semitism, and frustrated by the lack of economic opportunity, sought to emigrate to Israel or other destinations. Bowing to Western pressure, the Soviet government grudgingly allowed several hundred thousand to leave. Ethnic Germans also departed in large numbers.
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