p The establishment of national statehood in the postRevolution period has helped to bring about fundamental changes in the economic, political and cultural life of the peoples and to eradicate age-old antagonisms and mutual distrust.

p Having built socialism the Soviet peoples have laid a firm foundation for the further consolidation of their friendship and co-operation.

p The Soviet Union has now entered the period of communist construction which, as the C.P.S.U. Programme points out, constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations, a stage in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved.

p In the years following the 20th Party Congress, the Communist Party and the Soviet Government continued to pro mote the development and consolidation of the U.S.S.R. as a Union state, as well as of the Union Republics and all forms of Soviet autonomy.

p Nevertheless, it would be wrong to think that the existing forms of national statehood have accomplished their historical mission and are no longer essential. In the same way, as the Soviet socialist state as a whole has not yet fulfilled all its tasks, so Soviet federalism has not exhausted itself. Soviet national statehood has much to accomplish in ensuring increasingly closer fraternal cooperation and mutual aid among all peoples on the basis of proletarian internationalism which is a major achievement of socialism.

p The Soviet federation and autonomy must employ all their inherent capabilities to solve these tasks.

p Lenin had repeatedly warned against undue haste, overindulgence in administrative measures and artificially accelerating the eradication of national statehood and national distinctions. He pointed out that this was a lengthy process and linked it up with the existence of state. Any attempt to shorten this process, he said, would only cause harm and resurrect nationalistic prejudices.

p Therefore, in defining the tasks of the Party and the people in the sphere of national relations, the Programme of the C.P.S.U. underlines the need for making full use of and improving the forms of the national statehood of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.

p These forms, however, do not remain unchanged. The present stage in the development of national relations is influencing and will continue decisively to influence the further development and improvement of the forms of national statehood.

p First and foremost, this is manifested in two objective and interconnected tendencies in the national question under socialism, namely, the further improvement of the national statehood of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. and the growing rapprochement and strengthening friendship and co-operation between them. Both these natural tendencies are developing intensively in present-day conditions.

p All the forms of the national state organisation are developing all-sidedly. The powers of the Union and Autonomous Republics are being steadily extended and they are playing an increasingly more important role in state affairs and in the federal organs of slate power and administration. At the same time, the socialist nations are drawing closer together and furthering their mutual enrichment on the basis of proletarian internationalism.

p The mobility of the population has increased immeasurably in the course of socialist and communist construction due to the rapid growth of the productive forces, the appearance of new industrial centres, the discovery and exploitation of natural wealth, the ploughing up of virgin lands and the development of all types of transport. In some cases the indigenous nationality of one or another republic would have been unable to cope with major economic tasks were it not for the help it received from dozens of different nationalities living in other Union Republics. The peoples of the Soviet Union have accumulated vast experience in jointly tackling important economic tasks. Fused into a single family, people of different nationalities have built giant power stations and industrial projects in Siberia and the Ukraine, they have developed virgin lands and constructed the Bukhara-Urals Oil Pipeline; they are building irrigation works and canals in the Hungry Steppe in Uzbekistan, and so on and so forth.

p Thousands of factories and building projects employ people of many nationalities, who are united by their work in building communist society. When a foreign tourist visiting the Sharki Yulduz Collective Farm, Uzbekistan, learned that there were 15 nationalities among its members he asked how they managed to get along together. Thereupon he was reminded of an old legend which ran as follows: once three strangers, an Uzbek, an Arab, and a Tajik, met at a crossroads and decided to continue their travels 66 together. But soon they began to argue. The Uzbek was searching for izyum, the Arab wanted to find map, while the Tajik was looking for angur, and there is no knowing how their argument would have ended. Fortunately, they met a wise man who knew their languages. He took them to a garden and showed them a vine. They thanked him for settling their argument and he replied: “The three of you were looking for one and the same thing, only you did not understand each other.” That, the collective farmers told the tourist, was how in the past people looked for one and the same thing, only there was no concord between them, for they were divided. The Communist Party helped them to understand each other and establish close, comradely relations.

p The multinational population of the republics grew, particularly where new industrial and agricultural centres sprang up. In ten of the 15 Union Republics the nonindigenous nationalities today comprise more than 25 per cent of the population. Moreover, this share is steadily rising in spite of the fact that the indigenous population is also growing.  [66•* 

p The giant projects in these republics attracted hundreds of thousands of people from the Urals, the Ukraine, the Caucasus and Siberia. Even the collective and state farms have become multinational. The Union Republics are also actively exchanging specialists.

p These facts demonstrate the growing multinational character of the Soviet republics, which is of enormous significance in drawing nations ever closer to each other through joint labour.

p The internationalist community of interests is beginning to prevail over national interests. This is manifested in particular in the fact that the boundaries between the Soviet republics are losing their former significance. Inasmuch as all nations are equal, they are building their life on a single socialist foundation, their material and spiritual requirements are satisfied to an equal extent, all of them are united 67 in a single family and they are jointly advancing towards communism, which is their common goal. This provides further proof that in the U.S.S.R. nations are developing not through the consolidation of national barriers or national aloofness, but by furthering fraternal mutual aid and expanding mutual contacts.

p New industrial centres, a single power grid in the European part of the U.S.S.R. (in the near future there will be a single power grid for the whole country), a single system of railway, water and air transport, giant gas and oil pipelines, canals, telegraph, telephone and radio and television communications, interlocking economic relations, factories and building projects make up the material and technical basis for the unhampered and comprehensive development of all socialist nations in the U.S.S.R.

p Every step towards communism stimulates the exchange of material and spiritual values between the socialist nations. Thus, under socialism the burgeoning of nations and their consistent rapprochement are two aspects of a single interconnected process.

p The growing social homogeneity of nations is accompanied by the eradication of distinctions in their economic and cultural levels due to historical, geographic and other causes. The Party is set on furthering the mutual enrichment and rapprochement of the cultures of the peoples of the U.S.S.R., and consolidating their internationalist basis, thereby promoting the formation of the future single culture of communist society.

“The Party and all the Communists,” Leonid Brezhnev said in his report to the 23rd Congress of the C.P.S.U., “irrespective of their nationality, will continue to work tirelessly for further consolidation of the friendship and fraternity of the peoples of the Soviet Union so that their economic, cultural and spiritual ties become closer and more varied.”  [67•*