Since Gorbachev's accession to power in March 1985, his rule has been marked by a very visible concern for economic reforms and developments in international relations. Nationality and minority affairs within the USSR, which played such a prominent part previously with the mass emigration movements and open dissent of the 1970s, have not been at the forefront of his interests, in either his speeches or his travels. However, the local Party congresses and the 27th Congress of the CPSU as a whole provide an opportunity for a review of current thinking on this enduring and contentious issue. The All-Union Congress in particular witnessed the appearance of the final draft of the Party's new Program for the future, with its relatively recently adopted longer-term perspective on the question of the advent of full communism and the withering away of conflicting and antagonistic national minority allegiances. The limited prospects for this long awaited moving together of nations are likely to have been significant features in the readjustment of the time scale of Communist development and the emergence of a more realistic assessment of the possibility of producing a fully “Soviet” man divested of his narrower ethnic loyalties.

The goals of social progress, as perceived by Marx and Engels, are the creation of conditions for the achievement of full social equality, and the development of the abilities of all members of society. They uphold the principle that when the means of production are socialized, then the condition of ending not only class contradiction but also class distinction is created. The full realization of equality is possible only given a complex set of conditions arising at the higher stage of communist society.

In 1921 Lenin admitted thet it had become apparent that the system formed in Russia after the revolution (October 1917) had suffered defeat in its attempt to introduce communist principles of production and distribution. Within this complex environment, Lenin put forward a new concept of socialism, very different from his earlier version, that allowed class distinctions and inequality to persist.

In the past decade we have witnessed increased interest on the part of psychologists and educators in developmental and preschool psychology, as well as in the application of psychological findings to the problems of learning disorders. The realization that cognitive development depends upon continuous interaction between the developing organism and the environment gave impetus to the current research on preschool children.

Even a superficial review of psychological literature will reveal worldwide interest in developmental and preschool psychology. Names like Piaget and Inhalder in Switzerland, as well as Bruner and Kagan in the USA, are internationally recognized. Very few Western psychologists, however, will recognize Kostiuk, Zaporozhets or Zinchenko as Ukrainian psychologists. Among Western psychologists they are simply recognized as “Soviet” psychologists. While most Western psychologists recognize that the Soviet Union as a political entity is not identical with Russia, some unfortunately identify psychologists in the Soviet Union as Russian psychologists.

Soviet scholars basing themselves on the assertion in the Program of the CPSU that “peaceful coexistence of states with different social regimes does not means a diminution of the ideological struggle,” severely criticize those Western authors who in their works throw light upon the shadowy aspects of theory and practice of the ruling party in the USSR. Utterances of Western scholars which express doubt about the veracity of data contained in documents of the CPSU and the accuracy of theses and positions based on these data are rejected as totally unfounded inventions. Scholars of countries with the same social regime as in the Soviet Union are subject to no less severe attacks if they contest in their works, directly or indirectly, the theses and positions worked out by Soviet authors. While the Western scholars concerned are termed bourgeois falsifiers, the unfavored scholars (and political leaders of the socialist countries) are categorised as revisionists, a no less pejorative term in Soviet parlance: thus, for example, “the powers of international imperialism,… leaning on services of revisionists of various strains”; or “to expose contemporary bourgeois and other falsifiers of history.”

The historical feud between Hungary and Romania over Transylvania has escalated in proportion and intensity in recent years. Territorial dispute is no longer central to the present debate. Rather, it is the treatment of approximately two million ethnic Hungarians residing in Transylvania that has generated considerable tension between the governments of Janos Kadar and Nicolae Ceausescu. Transylvania's ethnic Hungarians represent an obstacle to Ceausescu's policy of “national communism,” which promotes “Romanianism” to the detriment of the country's minority populations. In Hungary, reformists both within and outside the Kadar government have pressed the regime for a satisfactory solution to the perceived mistreatment of Hungarians living in neighboring socialist countries. By complicating relations between the two countries, the nationality question also effectively limits the degree to which Hungary and Romania can cooperate succesfully on regional endeavors. Finally, particularly in the case of Romania, exacerbation of the nationality question has attracted increased concern among “external” players, including the Soviet Union and the United States.

The Program of the CPSU adopted at the 27th Party Congress (1986) included a guarded reference to the nationality question. It observed that the “nationality question, as it has been inheritedfrom the past, has been successfully solved.” This reference to nationality problems as a remnant of the fading capitalist past was not designed to suggest that problems of a national character have ceased to exist in the Soviet Union today. Gorbachev made this point to the Congress delegates noting: “Our achievements should not create the impression that there are no complications in nationality processes. The contradictions characteristic of all development are unavoidable in this sphere as well.” The violent outbursts of a national character in Kazakhstan in December 1986 provide fresh evidence that ethnic tensions lurk just beneath the surface. These tensions have been held in check largely by the threat of reprisals from central authorities who have regarded meaningful expressions of nationalism as treasonous.