Soviet Policy on National Minorities

EW OBSERVERS will now take exception to the judgment of the Webbs made in 1938 that the Soviet Union can claim with a high degree of accuracy that it has solved the difficult problem presented by the existence of national minorities in a strongly centralized state.' The extraordinary unity manifested by all segments of the population which has enabled the Soviet people to repel the Nazi invaders has been the outcome of a successful minority policy. While the merit of this phase of Soviet rule is now almost universally acknowledged, it should be recalled that the Soviet minority policy was once -sharply condemned. Characteristic is the caustic criticism published in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences in an article on Federalism by Max Hildebert Boehm which declared :2