This refers to the uneven growth of the number of different ethnic communities, the demographic crisis of the Russian ethnos (caused by, among other things, “an echo of war”), the continued heterogeneity of the social structure of Soviet ethnic groups, agrarian overpopulation of some Union republics, the beginning of the outfl ow of the Russian population from the latter, as well as slowing down the spread of the Russian language. <...> The weakening of job rotation, excessive subsidies for the national republics, the development of the shadow economy, boost training of the national intelligentsia and unbalanced application of the system of territorial autonomies may be mentioned among them as the means of solving the national question. <...> And fi nally, the third factor is the socio-cultural crisis, which included the crisis of the Soviet ideology and the offi cial Marxist-Leninist philosophy, a conceptual impasse of the Soviet national policy, and the weakening of the “soft power” of Russian culture. <...> The political, scientifi c and creative elite of the Soviet Union could not give a satisfactory answer to these crisis phenomena. <...> Keywords: soviet national policy, socio-cultural crisis, “diminutive nationalism”, nation building, Soviet people, “ friendship of peoples”, agrarian overpopulation. <...> Dynamics of socio-demographic processes Uneven growth in the number of different ethnic communities. <...> However, various ethnic groups were affected by these processes to varying degrees. <...> Large groups of the latter lived in Ukraine (mainly in Donbass and the Black Sea regions), in Uzbekistan and in other Soviet republics27 At the same time, a population census in . 1959 found that since 1939, in all Transcaucasian republics the proportion of “titular” nationality had increased. <...> During the period between the censuses of 1926 and 1959, the number of non-Russians who indicated Russian as their mother tongue increased from 6.5 up to 10.2 million people, and by 1970 by another 2.8 million, however, as M.N. Guboglo pointed out, “in general, the ratio of nationality and native language has changed a little.” The scientist noticed an interesting trend: the percentage of the people who considered the language of their nationality to be their mothertongue, was highest in the Union republics (more than 95%, except for Armenians – 91.4%, Ukrainians – 85.7% and Belarusians – 80.6%), slightly lower in the ASSR and in autonomous regions (over 85%, but lower in the case of the Bashkirs, Karels, Mordovians, Udmurts and Komi), whereas among the peoples who did not have their own autonomy <...>