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Soviet Union [USSR] Russians
Russians have been the largest and most dominant nationality in
both the Soviet Union and its predecessors, the Russian Empire and
Muscovy. From the time of Muscovy's rise as the dominant
principality in the northeast of the territory of Kievan Rus', a
Russian state continually extended its territory and enabled Ivan
III (1462-1505) to proclaim himself "Ruler of all Rus'." Peter the
Great (1682-1725) established the Russian Empire, which during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries reached the Baltic Sea in the
northwest and the Black Sea in the southwest, the Pacific Ocean in
the east, and the Pamirs in the south
(see
fig. 3). The Romanov
Dynasty, which promoted Russian administrative control over the
disparate nationalities in its domain, ruled for three centuries
until it was overthrown in February 1917 (according to the Julian
calendar; March 1917 according to the Gregorian calendar). After
the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October 1917 (November
1917), Russian domination of political, economic, and cultural life
in the Soviet Union continued despite the rule of Joseph V. Stalin,
who was Georgian by birth. Yet throughout their history, Russians
themselves were subjected to oppressive rulers, whether tsarist or
communist. Particularly devastating since the advent of communist
rule in November 1917 were the Civil War (1918-21), forced
collectivization and industrialization, the
Great Terror (see Glossary), and World War II, each
of which resulted in extreme
hardship and loss of great numbers of Russian people.
According to the 1989 census, some 145 million Russians
constituted just over half of the population of the Soviet Union,
although their share of the total has been declining steadily. A
low fertility rate among the Russians and a considerably higher
fertility rate among the peoples of Soviet Central Asia may make
Russians a minority nationality by the year 2000.
Most Russians lived in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic (Russian Republic), an immense area occupying threefourths of the Soviet Union and stretching from Eastern Europe
across the Ural Mountains and Siberia to the Kamchatka Peninsula in
the Pacific Ocean. Many other nationalities lived in the Russian
Republic. Sixteen of the twenty autonomous republics were located
here, as well as five of the eight autonomous oblasts and all ten
of the autonomous okruga. But Russians also constituted
substantial minorities in the populations of most non-Russian union
republics in the Soviet Union (see
table 16, Appendix A). Only a
small percentage of Russians claimed fluency in the languages of
the non-Russian republics in which they resided.
In the late 1980s, Russians were the second most urban
nationality in the Soviet Union (only Jews were proportionally more
urbanized). Russians constituted about two-thirds of the entire
urban population of the Soviet Union; all major cities in the
Soviet Union had a large Russian population. In addition, Moscow,
the largest city and capital of the Soviet Union, served as the
administrative center for the Russian Republic. The domination by
Russians has been evident in almost every phase of Soviet life and
has increased in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1972, 62.5 percent of the
members of the Politburo, the highest organ of the CPSU, were
Russians. In 1986 the percentage of Russians rose to 84.6 and then
to 89 in 1989. Generally, Russians were the party second
secretaries and the chiefs of the Committee for State Security
(Komitet gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti--KGB) in non-Russian
republics. Russians also constituted a majority of CPSU membership,
amounting to about 61 percent in the 1980s. Only Jews and Georgians
have also had representation in the party that was higher than
their proportion of the population. Russian dominance of the CPSU
has also helped them dominate Soviet society.
Russians held a high percentage of the most important positions
in government, industry, agriculture, education, science, and the
arts, especially in the non-Russian republics. The number of
Russians attending higher education institutions also was
disproportionate to their share of the population. Only Jews,
Armenians, and Georgians had a proportionally higher number of
students at these institutions.
Russian language and culture has had special status throughout
the Soviet Union. The Russian language has been the common language
in government organizations as well as in most economic, social,
and cultural institutions. Higher education in many fields has been
provided almost exclusively in Russian, and mastery of that
language has been an important criterion for admission to
institutions of higher learning. Administrative and supervisory
posts in non-Russian republics were often held by Russians having
little knowledge of the native language. In 1986 Russian was the
language used to publish 78 percent of the books by number of
titles and 86 percent of the books by number of copies. The
publication of magazines and newspapers printed in Russian and in
the other indigenous languages has been equally disproportionate.
The homeland of about 119.8 million Russians and over 27
million non-Russian nationalities, the Russian Republic also
provided substantial industrial, agricultural, and natural
resources to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, in 1989 the Russian
Republic, alone among the fifteen union republics, had party
apparatus separate from that of the CPSU. The functions performed
in non-Russian republics by republic-level CPSU organizations were
performed for the Russian Republic by the central agencies of the
CPSU.
Data as of May 1989
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