ABSTRACT
Lenin's nationalities policy was substantially more favorable to non-Russians than tsarist policy had been: national discrimination was outlawed, Russian chauvinism was brought under control, and the use of local languages was supported. However, once Lenin became ill, it was Stalin who set out the bases of Soviet nationalities policy. In the cultural realm, Stalin put into practice the formula "national in form, socialist in content." What this really meant was limiting the role of "national" components of culture to the language itself and to cultural creations of a purely folkloric character, such as folk dances. Moscow was to control everything else. Language problems were and remain a sore point in Soviet nationalities policy. With Russian being quite legitimately "the language of communication" among the nationalities of the country, the role of other languages and the place of bilingualism are hot issues.
