Previously, the East Slavs associated this concept with consanguinity and came from the old verb "to be born." Words with the same root: clan, relative. But in modern Russian, people are a much broader term. So, this word can be defined as the population of any particular country or historically formed human community. As well as a large number of people gathered together, or the working masses. All this is quite successfully applied in the definition of “people is”, used both in the socio-political sense and in the general ethnic culture.
People and nation
In political terms, the word people is sometimes identified with the concept of a nation, being something like its synonym. However, this is not quite true. A nation is a socio-cultural community that has developed during the formation of a single state. And the people are also a community of people, but united by the corresponding global characteristics (culture and language, origin and faith, and the like). In this context, a nation is a broader concept that exists within a country and statehood. A people is something less extensive, but often existing outside borders and social laws. So, a nation can be represented by several peoples. And various ethnic groups, for example, can be combined into one nation.
Ethnography and Political Science
The description of the people, as a science, is called ethnography. Here, people mean an ethnos (a human group), common in origin - connected by the bonds of consanguinity. Later, describing the ethnic group, they began to use secondary signs that contribute to unification: language and territory, religion and the historical past, culture and customs.
In political science and political economy, people are often opposed to an elite that has power. This concept denotes a mass of the population that does not have privileges, in terms of quantity - the main (basis).
friendship of Peoples
Some believe that this is just one of the most used terms of the Soviet past. Is there really friendship between peoples as a phenomenon, or is it still an idea of the ideological policy of the USSR state? Of course, ideology could not have done without it. And the friendship of peoples is a segment of interethnic policy that has been methodically pursued in the Union since the time of Leninism and Stalinism, to the most, that is, Brezhnev era of stagnation. Then, according to historians, this policy was supplanted by the idea of multinationality of the Russian Federation (approximately, from the end of the 80s). The concept itself, which includes the concept of "friendship of peoples", and the solution of the national question in a young Soviet country did not immediately arise. It is known that Lenin spoke only of the oppression of certain peoples (not Russians) in the former imperialist Russia and of the urgent need to finally solve nationality issues. But under Stalin in 1935 it was stated that confidence between the peoples of the USSR had grown, and that the national question could be considered already resolved. And the Russian people themselves took the place of honor of the "elder brother" in relation to others living in the state.
It is interesting that today the friendship of peoples is fixed, one might say, even constitutionally. The Constitution of the Russian Federation speaks of the multinational people of Russia, making it clear that this phenomenon is not empty words, but the unity and good relations of peoples to each other - the norm of public life.
