Friendship of peoples

Friendship of peoples (Russian: дружба народов, druzhba narodov) is a concept advanced by Marxist social class theory.

[3] Leading up to and during the establishment of Bolshevik power, the friendship of peoples narrative limited the scope of Russian exceptionalism, however, throughout World War II the metaphor experienced a reconfiguration and the leading role of Russians in the October Revolution, as well as cultural and technological advancements of the Soviet Union was increasingly emphasized.

[4] Under Joseph Stalin despite the ubiquitous slogan of "friendship of the peoples" between 1939 and 1953 a total of approximately 6 million people from many of the Soviet Union's ethnic minorities (Ukrainians, Poles, Romanians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Volga Germans, Finns, Crimean Tatars, Crimean Greeks, Kalmyks, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Koreans, Chechens, Ingush, and others) were forcefully resettled or deported, often to remote locations in the Far East or Central Asia, 1.5 million of whom died of disease or hunger, which in some cases made up more than 40 percent of a deported population.

"[6] Even though the Soviet Union often claimed to make significant progress on "the nationalities question", its dissolution came about largely due to inter-ethnic conflict and like other communist countries a privileged nationality (in this case the Russians, in Yugoslavia the Serbs, in Vietnam the Kinh people and in China the Han Chinese) had more political and economic power [citation needed].

"[3] Historian Kevin O'Connor similarly described the concept "friendship of peoples" as "a metaphor that was intended to signify the existence of a multinational community on Soviet soil, but which in reality put the Russians "first among equals.