The titular nation is the single dominant
ethnic group
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...
in a particular state, typically after which the state was named. The term was first used by
Maurice Barrès in the late 19th century.
Soviet Union
The notion was used in the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
to denote nations that give rise to titles of autonomous entities within the union:
Soviet republics,
autonomous republics,
autonomous region
An autonomous administrative division (also referred to as an autonomous area, zone, entity, unit, region, subdivision, province, or territory) is a subnational administrative division or territory, internal territory of a sovereign state that has ...
s, etc., such as
Byelorussian SSR for
Belarusians
Belarusians ( ) are an East Slavs, East Slavic ethnic group native to Belarus. They natively speak Belarusian language, Belarusian, an East Slavic language. More than 9 million people proclaim Belarusian ethnicity worldwide. Nearly 7.99&n ...
.
For an ''ethnos'' to become a Soviet titular nation, it had to satisfy certain criteria in terms of the amount of population and compactness of its settlement. The language of a titular nation was declared an additional (after Russian) official language of the corresponding administrative unit.
China
The
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
has adopted some of the principles behind this Soviet concept in its ''
ethnic minority'' policy—see
Autonomous administrative divisions of China.
Yugoslavia
The federal republics of
Socialist Yugoslavia were perceived as nation-states of the constitutional peoples.
After the
breakup of Yugoslavia
After a period of political and economic crisis in the 1980s, the constituent republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia split apart in the early 1990s. Unresolved issues from the breakup caused a series of inter-ethnic Yugoslav ...
, only
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to th ...
was not defined in its constitution as a nation-state of its titular nation.
See also
*
National delimitation in the Soviet Union
*
Nation state
A nation state, or nation-state, is a political entity in which the State (polity), state (a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory) and the nation (a community based on a common identity) are (broadly ...
*
Princely state
References
Soviet internal politics
Political science terminology
Nationalism
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