The Theory of Ethnos and Ethnic Processes in Soviet Social Sciences

Abstract

The term ethnos or ethnic community has been used in contemporary Soviet literature mainly to denote a human community, referred to in spoken Russian as “a people” (narod). The same term denotes both those peoples who have lagged behind in their development and peoples of highly industrial countries; tribes and nations, small populations (for example, the Hoppi or the Ket) and large ones including millions of people (like the Russians or the Italians). It is used to designate contemporary people as well as those who have vanished with history (for example, the Etruscans or the Scythians); peoples who are territorially compact and those who are dispersed over widely separated areas (for example, the Armenians). The substitution of the term ethnos for the word people was made necessary by the fact that (in Russian and in many other languages) the word “people” has a number of different connotations, and the Russian narod is used to describe not only ethnic communities but also the “toiling masses of people” or simply a large crowd of humans.