AbstractsEconomics

The Soviet Union is truly a meeting ground of nationalities; the 1959 census returns list no less than 112 separate races, nationalities and tribes, speaking as many different languages. No other country in the world has such a diversity and mixture of peoples within its borders; consequently, no other country has been faced with such a minority or nationalities problem. The attitude of the Bolsheviks, rulers of the Soviet Union, toward these nationalities, forms the subject matter of this enquiry; in order to understand the factors affecting their attitude, it is first necessary to examine, albeit imperfectly, the Tsarist nationality policy in the Russias, the writings of Marx and Engels upon nationalism, and the view of the Austrian Social-Democrats and Jewish Bundists - for these were the legacies inherited by the Bolsheviks, the first practical, the others theoretical.