Demographics of the Soviet Union in the context of "Federal union"

An Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR, Russian: автономная советская социалистическая республика, АССР, romanized: avtonomnaya sovetskaya sotsialisticheskaya respublika) was a type of administrative unit in the Soviet Union (USSR), created for certain ethnic groups to be the titular nations of. The ASSRs had a status lower than the constituent union republics of the USSR, but higher than the autonomous oblasts and the autonomous okrugs.

In the Russian SFSR, for example, Chairmen of the Government of the ASSRs were officially members of the Government of the Russian SFSR. Unlike the union republics, the autonomous republics only had the right to disaffiliate themselves from the Union when the union republic containing them did so, as well as to choose to stay with the Union separately from them. The level of political, administrative and cultural autonomy they enjoyed varied with time—it was most substantial in the 1920s (Korenizatsiya), the 1950s after the death of Joseph Stalin, and in the Brezhnev Era.

The Soviet people (Russian: сове́тский наро́д, romanized: sovetsky narod) were the citizens and nationals of the Soviet Union. This demonym was presented in the ideology of the country as the "new historical unity of peoples of different nationalities" (новая историческая общность людей различных национальностей).