Improving National Relations in the USSR

Abstract

The problem of nationalities occupied a substantial place among the wide range of social problems raised at the Twenty-seventh CPSU Congress. The Soviet Union has been a pioneer in addressing the national question which, as V. I. Lenin wrote, is a worldwide phenomenon. It is one of the most acute questions in the history of mankind: the engendering of class antagonisms that inevitably entail national oppression, the lack of equality of nationalities before the law, and their inequality. Our country has convincingly demonstrated to the entire world that with the victory of socialism antagonisms in the sphere of national relations are being overcome. As noted in the new edition of the CPSU Program, "the Soviet Union has successfully resolved the national question that was left over from the past." In the course of socialist construction, the formerly backward national hinterlands have long ago vanished; socialist nations have joined to form an international community—the Soviet people—that is new in its social parameters; there have formed common cultural traits that are characteristic of Soviet people of all nationalities; national discord is a thing of the past; and the fraternal friendship of the peoples, forged in their common creative labor and tested in the most difficult of wars, has become the standard of life.