1992 Reports

Back to the USSR?

Solchanyk, Roman

Researchers at the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences apparently have come up with what can only be described as a sensational discovery—both for the world of science and the world of politics. The Russian geneticists claim that the “Soviet people” (sovetskiy narod), long the foundation upon which the Communist Party of the Soviet Union structured its nationalities policy, is a proven reality. Understandably, the prevailing view among Western Sovietologists—or at least among that small group who argued that nationalities issues in the Soviet Union deserved to be taken seriously—has been rather different, namely, that the concept of a “Soviet people” was an artificial ideological device invented by Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Suslov.