ABSTRACT
The international and popular Western image of the Soviet Union rarely recognizes the multiethnic and formally federal character of the Soviet state. The temptation has been enhanced in the seventies by Soviet efforts at greater integration of the bloc, with its emphasis on the identical nature of "fraternal ties" on both sides of the border as well as a start of direct exchanges between the republics and East European states. In party and state relations in the USSR, ethnicity has become the main base for interest group demands, a phenomenon familiar to the students of ethnic relations worldwide. The modernization policy has transformed and developed the Soviet economy and restructured the society through industrialization, collectivization, urbanization, and the development of mass education and communications systems and social services, affecting all of the Soviet peoples. Cultural conflict is in many ways a substitute for an open political conflict, the appearance of which is muted for systemic reasons.
