One hundred years ago, at the end of December 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was born. Vladimir Lenin, the creator and first leader of the Soviet Union, had denounced Tsarist Russia for holding Russians and non-Russians in a “prison of nations.” His new Soviet Union would unite the exploited masses of the old Tsarist lands in a country that was “national in form, socialist in content.” The Russification of the Tsarist era was over, as was the Russian chauvinism that Lenin despised.

However, as was so often the case in Soviet history, the reality of this new way of life didn't live up to the promises made by the Party bosses in Moscow.