Soviet Miscegenation?

Factual Questions
1

My question is based upon my assumption that the leadership of the Soviet Union would have placed great value on a cohesive national identity shared by all citizens, that a long-term goal would have been to have Soviet citizens identify first as Soviets then second as Russians or Georgians or Uzbeks or Latvians etc.

If this, admittedly unresearched, assumption is wrong, then we can wrap up the Thread right quick.

If the assumption has any merit, then I pose this question:

Did the Soviet government have any programs, PR campaigns, to promote a positive view of mixing of ethnic groups? Any effort to present positive examples of ethnic mingling in the media? Were there youth programs specifically structured in such a way as to present opportunities to socialize outside of one’s own ethnic group? Were the admissions policies of colleges and universities structured in such a way as to encourage diversity on campus? Were there any public figures (politicians, entertainers, athletes) who were famously in a mixed marriage?

Looking, on Wiki, at the ethnic breakdowns for former Soviet Republics, everything breaks down in a very clean way. There isn’t much mention of any multi-ethnic groups.
eg Russia
eg Estonia
eg Azerbaijan
eg Uzbekistan

Granted, we’re not dealing with an immigrant culture, the various ethnic groups lived in areas to which they had centuries of historic connection (effectively self-segregated) and the Soviet Union as a country had a brief history, so I would not expect an attempt at direct comparison to Brazil (38.5% Multiracial) or the United States (1.9% multiracial- does not included multi-ethnic backgrounds that do not cross race).

But, unlike Brazil or the United States, I am assuming (prepared to be told that it is an incorrect assumption) that the Soviet government would have placed great value upon ethnic miscegenation as a path toward national unity. I am assuming some parallel to the ideal of eliminating religion.

Might it be that the Wiki figures I’ve provided are simply overlooking multi-ethnic former Soviets? Or are mixed ethnic backgrounds really just very rare?

2

If I remember correctly, the Soviets actually did the opposite when they were creating the ethnic homelands of central Asia. The population of that region were largely migratory herdsman without permanent homes. There were large cities like Samarkand that had stable populations, but they were a minority of the people.

During the Soviet revolution, central asia achieved a de facto independence. But then the victories communists reasserted control. One thing the commies did was to delineate “homelands” for the various ethnic groups: Tajiks were shipped to Tajikistan, Uzbeks to Uzbekistan, Turkmen to Turkmenistan, etc…

Each central Asian republic does contain varying amounts of folk from the other ethnicities. But the intent was to create sub-nations with the Soviet Union.

3

I meant, “Sub-nations WITHIN the Soviet Union.”

4

The main Soviet campaign to create cohesion in the USSR was “Russification” - a program of converting non-Russian ethnic groups into imitation Russians. (The Soviets didn’t invent the idea - it had also been used in the Russian Empire.) Russian people were resettled in non-Russian regions, Russian was used as the official language of the Soviet Union, Russian history and culture was taught in all Soviet schools, Russian television and radio dominated the media, etc. Ironically, Stalin (who was not a Russian) was one of the biggest proponents of these programs.

5

I’ve heard the exact opposite. The borders were carefully drawn in such a way that no one SSR would have too great a majority of any one ethnic group. That is, it was deliberately engineered such that there was a large minority of Tajiks in Uzbekistan, Uzbeks in Tajikistan, Uzbeks in Turkmenistan, etc. Furthermore, the Soviets engaged in a policy of aggressive Russification, particularly in Kazakhstan and the Baltic states. (Even today ethnic Russians make up a quarter to a third of Kazakhstan’s population.) I have heard it claimed that all this was done to stymie nationalist secession/rebellion movements.

6

So how soes this jibe with the figures in the OP links that show that Uzbekistan is 80% Uzbek? I think that the reason that central Asia was partitioned in such a way was to break the nomads of their wandering lifestyle. The Soviets wanted stable, landed farmers, instead of the troublesome horsemen. I know that in Uzbekistan, Soviet policy was to grow cotton to the exclusion of all else. Even to the point of destroying the land, two main rivers and the Aral Sea.

7

You missed out Latvia

You mentioned Azerbaijan, but the numbers there aren’t as simple as they might seem. In the Karabakh region there were huge changes due to the Soviets bussing in large numbers of Azeri people for decades. Since Independence and the war with Armenia, virtually all the Azeri people left (and a whole bunch of ethnic Armenians went back to Armenia)


Year 	Armenian 	Azeri 	Russian 	Notes
1923 [5] 	94% 	N/A 	N/A 	At the time of when it was an autonomous oblast; exact figures of the period are conflicting.
1979 [6] 	80.5% 	18.1% 	0.9% 	Figures from the 1970 Soviet census
1988 [7] 	75% 	23% 	N/A 	Armenian figure widely quoted by media sources; others place it near 80%.
2001 [8] 	95% 	Under 1% 	N/A 	Other minorities currently living in the region include Assyrians, Greeks, and Kurds

There has been an awful lot of movement since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

8

That could explain the majority of “local” ethnicities in their titular homelands. I guess I’d have to see what the figures were like during the early years of the USSR vs the post Soviet years. It could be that central asians have undone much of the past Soviet effort to erase their respective ethnicities.

9

:confused:
I provided four examples from the 15 former SSRs, so I actually “missed out” another 10 former SSRs in addition to Latvia.

Could you please clarify the point you are trying to make?

Since you singled out Latvia specifically, I expected that you were to point out a difference that set Latvia apart from the other examples I listed. I was prepared for you to show that in my (admittedly limited) research I had overlooked a statistic that showed that a measurable percentage of the residents of Latvia indeed have ethnically mixed ancestry.

If there is evidence of such, it is provided by neither your quote nor your link.

There is no figure provided to suggest a sizable portion of the population that identifies as having mixed ethnic heritage.

10

Tapioca Dextrin, rereading my OP I see sufficient murkiness for you to have misunderstood what I was looking for. It may seem like I was interested in the different ethnic groups interacting with each other.

More to the point, I’m interested in whether to government hoped to erase individual ethnic identity to such a degree as to remove ethnicity as a factor in intermarrying.

Like after a semester of the Volga German dude sitting next to that really hot Uzbek chick in physics class, they get together and make a half-Volga half-Uzbek little Soviet baby.

None of the Demographic information I’ve read on the former SSRs suggests a significant portion of the population as identifying with mixed ethnic heritage.

11

It jibes very well; why would you think that it doesn’t? An 80% majority of Uzbeks in Uzbekistan means that 20% of the population must be of other ethnicities. 20% is a pretty big minority.

12

Communist Suck