National in form, socialist in content": the Buryat nation in the Soviet ideological discourse

The main aim of this work is to investigate the nation-building processes and "national" identities construction in the USSR, the reconstruction of the Soviet ideology from the point of view of its use in the practice of nation-building. The main task is to analyze the correlation and relationships between ethnicity and ideology - concepts that determined the political practice of the power. The sources of the research are the text corpus that formed the basis of the power discourse on this issue: official reports and speeches of the Communist leaders of the Buryat-Mongolian Autonomous Republic, materials of the Party and republican meetings and conventions that developed the strategy and the tactics of the (ethno-)national policy. The analysis of the sources demonstrates how ethnicity transformed from a lever of population mobilization under the flag of nationalism into a reliable tool of the Communist control of the national periphery. This situation opened space for the conceptualization of the idea of a united social community - the Soviet people. Construction of "socialist nations", simultaneous repression of traditional cultures and actualization of the Soviet internationalism ideas - all this contributed to the strengthening of the Communist regime and the formation of a unified political community within the boundaries of the USSR. Ethnicity began to play a special role in these processes at the national periphery; after appropriate processing it was included in the ideological arsenal of the Soviet state. The main declared aim of the Soviet state was to build a Communist society; accordingly, ethnic policy was largely conditioned by the aspiration to achieve this aim. The authors concluded that the Soviet ideological discourse constructed a complex system of identities where loyalties of political and socio-cultural nature took place and reconciled. Bringing nationalism into their program, the Communists saw it as a tactical tool that would eventually overcome the dominance of local identities and contribute to the development of a common political identity within the boundaries of the USSR. In this sense, they can be described as "internationalist nationalists", whose actions, however, focused primarily on the formation of a united Soviet community, rather than on encouraging separate national identities. Ethnic culture and tradition, which had to be preserved because of political expediency, were auxiliary raw "material" exposed to active construction. Everything that did not fit into the framework of the Marxist-Leninist ideology was cut off this material.

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