The Modernization of the Russian Marxist Concept of the Nation in the Social Sciences and Humanities in the USSR in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The paper analyses the processes of modernization of the “Marxist-Leninist historical and economic” interpretation of the concept of the “nation” in social and human sciences in the USSR in the second half of the 20th century. In the paper, from the standpoint of modern scientism, on the basis of the principle of historicism, methods of systematic, comparative, discursive and content analysis, semantic innovations, determinants and leading trends of improvement of the concept of the national community were studied. The concept, which was not only the ideological core of the Marxist-Leninist “historical and economic theory of the nation”, but an important conceptual element in the whole complex of social and political sciences in the USSR, had its own dominating social communist ideology with its world-historical process narrative. The material of the article is of particular importance for adequate understanding of the history of the development of socio-philosophical and political sciences in the USSR and Ukraine in the second half of the 1960s, the first half of the 1990s, as well as for the scientific understanding of the dominant analytical and ideological prescripts of Soviet Marxism in its ideological confrontation with the Western political science, and for understanding of the theoretical foundations of nation-building and nationstate building during the years of Soviet power.

Keywords

• socio-political studies
• USSR
• Stalin
• the Stalin’s definition of the nation
• “Russian Marxist Theory of the Nation”
• Marxist-Leninist historical and economic theory of the nation
• AustroMarxism
• Scientific communism
• Communist metanarrative
• concept of the “nation”
• concept of the “Soviet people”