Titular nationThe titular nation is the single dominant ethnic group in a particular state, typically after which the state was named. The term was first used by Maurice Barrès in the late 19th century. The notion was used in the Soviet Union to denote nations that give rise to titles of autonomous entities within the union: Soviet republics, autonomous republics, autonomous regions, etc., such as Byelorussian SSR for Belarusians. For an ethnos to become a Soviet titular nation, it had to satisfy certain criteria in terms of the amount of population and compactness of its settlement.
Soviet and communist studiesSoviet and communist studies, or Soviet studies is the field of historical studies of the Soviet Union and other Communist states as well as historical studies of the Communist parties that existed or still exist in some form in many countries, both inside and outside the former Eastern Bloc, such as the Communist Party USA. Aspects of its historiography have attracted debates between historians on topics including totalitarianism and Cold War espionage.
Soviet patriotismSoviet patriotism is the socialist patriotism involving emotional and cultural attachment of the Soviet people to the Soviet Union as their homeland. It is also referred to as Soviet nationalism due to the country's reliance on patriotic propaganda. Socialist patriotism Stalin emphasized a centralist Soviet socialist patriotism that spoke of a collective "Soviet people" and identified Russians as being the "elder brothers of the Soviet people".
Russian diasporaThe Russian diaspora is the global community of ethnic Russians. The Russian-speaking (Russophone) diaspora are the people for whom Russian language is the native language, regardless of whether they are ethnic Russians or not. A significant ethnic Russian emigration took place in the wake of the Old Believer schism in the 17th century (for example, the Lipovans, who migrated southwards around 1700). Later ethnic Russian communities, such as the Doukhobors (who emigrated to the Transcaucasus from 1841 and onwards to Canada from 1899), also emigrated as religious dissidents fleeing centrist authority.
LithuanizationLithuanization (or Lithuanianization) is a process of cultural assimilation, where Lithuanian culture or its language is voluntarily or forcibly adopted. The Lithuanian annexation of Ruthenian lands between the 13th and 15th centuries was accompanied by some Lithuanization. A large part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania remained Ruthenian; due to religious, linguistic and cultural dissimilarity, there was less assimilation between the ruling nobility of the pagan Lithuanians and the conquered Orthodox East Slavs.
Russian PartitionThe Russian Partition (zabór rosyjski), sometimes called Russian Poland, constituted the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that were annexed by the Russian Empire in the course of late-18th-century Partitions of Poland. The Russian acquisition encompassed the largest share of Poland's population, living on 463,200 km2 (178,800 sq mi) of land constituting the eastern and central territory of the former commonwealth.
