Ethnic consent in the Soviet Republic of Buryatia

Interethnic relations in the Republic of Buryatia are characterized by stability. The article discusses the interaction of the two largest nations in the region during the Soviet era, the Buryats and the Russians, who make up the overwhelming majority of the population. Consent is an inner attitude and an urgent need for the interacting subjects, this concept includes the similarity of ideas, key objectives, values, interpersonal and intergroup trust. All these features were inherent in the ethnic relations in Soviet-era Buryatia. The policy of the Soviet Union was aspired to internationalism, which had been consistently embodied as an administrative principle. Along with popularization of positive values and behaviors in accordance with this principle, all spheres of the society including ethnic identity were unified. At the same time, the government supported some manifestations of ethnicity. In the Buryat ASSR internationalism was a reality reflecting the relationships of ethnic groups over the centuries and manifested as the friendship of peoples that had been developed in the country during the Soviet era. In the republic there was no prejudice between people on their national identity, partly because many of people were descendants of mixed marriages. In the Soviet era the indigenous people of Buryatia used to say (and they say today): “We all became friends”, this words reflect the maximum closeness of the representatives of different nations to each other as subjects of interethnic communication. The concept of “consent” has come to mean “positive relations” at different stages of the history of ethnic interaction. Currently, this concept is in the process of conceptualization, which opens up certain perspectives, including the use of new tools for studying inter-ethnic communication.