Friendship of peoples

Friendship of peoples (Russian: дружба народов, druzhba narodov) is a concept advanced by Marxist social class theory. According to Marxism, nationalism is only a tool of the ruling class, used to keep the working class divided and thus easier to control and exploit. With the success of class struggle (i.e. the abolition of social classes), the natural brotherhood of all workers would make the idea of separate nations obsolete.

The concept of the friendship of peoples is often opposed to "bourgeois cosmopolitanism". The concept of friendship of peoples was opposed to the concept of internationalism. In this context, the notion of internationalism was explained as "bourgeois cosmopolitanism", so the notion of "internationalism" was conceptually replaced by the notion of "international socialism", also known as "proletarian internationalism".

History

Tsarist Russia was dubbed the "prison of the peoples" ("тюрьма народов") by Vladimir Lenin. The Soviet Union, which replaced the empire, proclaimed that the goal of its national policy was to forge a new national entity, the "Soviet people". 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.