The People’s Commissariat for Nationalities and Nation-formation Process

Implementing national policy, the Soviet power provided many peoples of Russia, including the Kalmyk people, with national statehood. In spite of great difficulties and costs, it was creating the necessary conditions for overcoming economic and educational backwardness and was doing much in improving their well-being and training personnel. Thus, much was done for implementing the nation-building policy. Being based on the documentary materials from the Soviet higher authorities, the article considers the evolution and objectives of the national policy of the Bolsheviks before and after the October revolution, its implementation in the first years of the Soviet power. The author concludes that Soviet national policy since the first years of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat became a program of involvement of the peoples of Russia in socialist construction with the elements of federalism in a unitary state. It is specifically noted that, in addition to the principles of Unitarianism, this state is distinguished by the fact that the organization and activity of bodies of the ruling party, built on the principles of democratic centralism, were solid enough to save centralized and ideologically-based system of governance, which played an important role in ensuring the unity and indivisibility of the Federal state.

national question, national policy, RSDRP, the Bolsheviks, Soviet federative state, The People’s Commissariat for Nationalities of RSFSR, Kalmyk department, the rights of nations to self-determination, autonomy, Kalmykia

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