Soviet Russia, Ukraine, and So On: Difference between revisions
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{{Useful Notes}}
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''Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik'' (СССР in Cyrillic)- the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Also known as the Soviet Union, the USSR, or (almost always incorrectly) Soviet Russia. The last designation will be our first subject.
You will hear hundreds of Westerners in [[Cold War]] contexts (even all sorts of people who should and ''do'' know better) calling the place Russia and its inhabitants Russians. In fact, Russia was only one of the fifteen Soviet Republics that comprised the USSR, and was officially called the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). Yes, the RSFSR was by far the largest state in the USSR, covering over three quarters of the total land area of the Union and containing about 60% of its population. And Russia was dominant politically and culturally. But it was by no means all of the USSR.
===Famous Soviets ===
While ''Russkie'' certainly ran the show, many of the most famous and infamous Soviets weren't Russian. [[Yakov Smirnoff]] (he of "In Soviet Russia"- when he was most famous he just used "Russia" since it was very much around then) is from [[Ukraine]] (and he was also Jewish - in the USSR Jews were considered an ethnic group, separate from ''Russkie'', Ukrainians and others). [[Nikita Khrushchev]] was not in fact Ukrainian, but having moved there at 14, he was percepted as one. [[Joseph Stalin]] was ''
=== Nationalities ===
As in much of the world, people prefer to be called by their specific nationalist over broad descriptions, and ''especially'' over wrong descriptions.
This is true among many Slavic peoples. Calling many Ukrainians (especially from the Western Ukraine) Russians tends to annoy them a lot
This also applies to non-Slavic peoples Calling [[Estonia|Estonians]] that (if they're not ''Russkie'') probably annoys them too, since they're not even Slavs. Same goes for the [[Latvia|Latvians]] and [[Lithuania|Lithuanians]] (also not Slavs) who spent quite a bit of time trying to fight off the Russians. It is just like calling an Irishman English. This was true even back in Soviet times. And calling Georgians Russians is a pretty good way to make them dislike and threaten you ever since the events of 2008.
=== Multinationalism ===
[[File:U.S. S.R. - Ethnic Compositions - DPLA - 754227d4ec980a6b169104b656de499a.jpg|thumb|Map of ethnicities in the USSR by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] circa 1949.]]
Officially, the Soviet Union was a multinational state, with no nation given preference over any other (notice the word "Russian" does not appear in the name of the USSR). In practice, it was inevitable that Russians would mostly run the show, given that they vastly outnumbered all the other ethnic groups. On the other hand, because the Soviet constitution had the rights of the republics to secede, even if only on paper, the authorities tended to give much more leeway in running them to avoid problems, especially in the latter periods. During the Stagnation of [[The Seventies]], with its famous shortages, the official state policy was to first fund and supply the national republics to avoid problems, and for Russia proper, especially in the "Flyover Country" provinces, to get the remains and the seconds. Which also contributed to the national tensions, even if from the other side. Other groups also never lost their separate ethnic identities. Some Soviet leaders encouraged these separate identities, while others (most notably Stalin) tried to make everyone Russian.
* However, Stalin's native Georgia was always one of the least Russified Republics - its Russian minority was negligible and the local Party branch conducted all of its business in Georgian, unlike Belarus or Kazakhstan, where the Russian language almost completely displaced the local ones.
* Of course even without Stalin, there was a lot of forced and encouraged relocation of Russians to other SSR states. Without actively forcing Russification, it served to whittle down the majorities of the major ethnic groups. The legacy lives on today in some areas, notably Latvia, where the number of Russians nearly outnumber the actual Latvians. It's considered a bit of a problem.
[[File:КПСС.svg|thumb|Logo of the CPSU.]]
(This only covers stuff pre-glasnost, when things changed very quickly)
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There were elections in the USSR, but all candidates had to be approved by the CPSU. This was ''how'' the CPSU came to be more powerful than the State: in order to become a State official, you had to be elected... but before you could run for election, you needed CPSU approval. Note that, strictly speaking, candidates did not have to be CPSU ''members''—they just had to be ''approved'' by the CPSU. But, in practice, non-members were almost never approved to run. Also, in practice, the CPSU only approved one candidate to run for each office. So the voters most often had the choice to either vote for the one CPSU candidate or abstain. Strangely enough, the Soviet government sometimes ran propaganda campaigns to ''encourage people to vote''... largely because it looked good and democratic on paper (consider the fact that American elections are often criticized for their low voter turnout). After all, saying that 90% of the population voted for Comrade Ivanov sounds great - even if he was literally the only candidate.
[[File:Komsomol Emblem.svg|thumb|Emblem of the Komsomol.]]
The CPSU had a youth movement, ''Vsesoyuzny Leninskiy '''Kom'''munisticheskiy '''So'''yuz '''Mol'''odyozhi'' (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), better known as Komsomol. Age limit was 14-28.
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Younger children could join the Young Pioneer movement, found in other Communist countries as well. Nearly all the children of the Soviet era ended up in this one, being rather akin ([[Scout Out|at least in style]]) to the Scouting Movement, which was banned in the USSR. They could be recognised by their red scarves. Quite a number fought against the Nazis in the [[Great Patriotic War]] (the Soviet part of World War 2).
The fifteen states of the USSR and their independent names-
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[[Category:Hollywood History]]
[[Category:Useful Notes/Russia]]
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