ABSTRACT
Throughout the existence of the USSR, Soviet Russia implemented administrative policies to regulate linguistic and cultural practices across its territories, often making an effort to suppress national languages other than Russian. In the early decades, the explanations for this control varied. The state saw itself as a civilizing force, especially when it came to non-Slavic ethnic groups whose social structure seemed to be in need of reorganization in order to move towards socialism. Stephen Lovell calls the USSR’s position on multinationalism a “ paradox”: the state acknowledged and even prided itself on the existence of over a hundred nations within itself, yet its striving for a collective identity functioned in direct opposition to national impulse. The USSR used its ethnically and linguistically diverse population as the foundation for an argument about its own tolerance and inclusivity and, especially in the first decades, demonstrations of this diversity were actively encouraged.
