Academician Yu. Bromley under the rubric “Questions of Theory on the National Processes in the USSR: Achievements and Problems”
The USSR’s solution of the nationalities question in the form we inherited it form the past is one of the most evident achievements of socialism. At the same time, as M. S. Gorbachev noted, “our achievements should not create the impression that the national processes are problem-free.”
Consistency and continuity in the implementation of the Leninist nationalities policy do not preclude but, on the contrary, presuppose a thorough consideration of changes occurring in this sphere. Under the considerations of restructuring this acquires particular importance because, as the CPSU Central Committee January (1987) Plenum pointed out, “the negative phenomena and deformities against which we have launched a struggle are also present in the sphere of national relations.”
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The solution of modern economic problems is impossible without taking into account both the interests of the country as a whole and the interests of each republic. Consequently the Basic Guidelines for the economic and Social Development of the USSR in 1986-1990 and in the Period Through the Year 2000 presuppose profound qualitative advances in the structure of republican economic complexes. A special system of measures for efficient utilization of production potential will be implemented in each one of them.
Demographic factors, including migration by the population, also have an effect on national processes. The result is an increase in the number of nationalities living in each republic. At present, approximately 20 percent of the country’s population comprises people who do not belong to the indigenous nationalities of republics where they live.
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Peoples’ traditions, customary norms of behavior, and value orientations are factors of the acceleration of the republics’ socioeconomic and spiritual development and of the overcoming of negative phenomena in society’s moral and ethical life.
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At the same time, it would be incorrect to reduce everything to the development of national cultures while overlooking the importance of bringing them closer together. ”… It is important,” the 27th party congress noted, ”to ensure that healthy interest in everything valuable that exists in each national culture does not degenerate into attempts at isolation from the objective
Peoples’ traditions, customary norms of behavior, and value orientations are factors of the acceleration of the republics’ socioeconomic and spiritual development and of the overcoming of negative phenomena in society’s moral and ethical life.
[…]
At the same time, it would be incorrect to reduce everything to the development of national cultures while overlooking the importance of bringing them closer together. “… It is important,” the 27th party congress noted, “to ensure that healthy interest in everything valuable that exists in each national culture does not degenerate into attempts at isolation from the objective process of interaction and alignment of national cultures.”
Meanwhile, unfortunately, some works of fiction and art and scientific works contain attempts to idealize reactionary-nationalist and religious remnants of the past under the guise of national originality, to embellish the history of one people, and to diminish the role played by other peoples.
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The improvement of socialism depends largely on the extent to which we succeed in mobilizing the spiritual energy and boosting the labor and social activity of people. It must be borne in mined in this work that the problems of the human factor have their national and ethnic aspect. It is, after all, specific people who are direct vehicles of the national element. But our social scientists concentrated their attention mainly on studying the correlation of national and international elements at the republican and inter-republic level, while the individual’s specific national features were overlooked. The result was an underestimation of the problem of the dialectical combination of national and international elements in people’s awareness and behavior.
[Pravda, 13 February, 1987]
The Karabagh File, Documents and Facts, 1918-1988, First Edition, Cambridge Toronto 1988, by the ZORYAN INSTITUTE, edited by: Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, pp. 63-64.
