p The disunity characteristic of feudal society disappears in the course of capitalist development and a single national market is formed as a result of which nationalities turn into 266 nations. “Nations,” wrote Lenin, “are an inevitable product, an inevitable form, in the bourgeois epoch of social development.”  [266•* 

p A nation, like a nationality, has such features as common territory, language and culture. But as distinct from nationality it is a durable community of people and, as Lenin noted, it owes its durability to “profound economic factors”.  [266•** 

p Community of economic life is a key feature of a nation. It is the economy, economic links that unite people living on common territory and having a common language into a single whole, into a nation. Economic and political development fosters a common psychology which is manifested in the historical traditions of a nation and in its distinctive culture and mode of life.

p Nations are not races. Racial distinctions are certain external biological traits such as the colour of skin, the shape of the eyes, and others. On the basis of these distinctions humanity has been divided into three basic races: white, yellow and black.

Imperialist ideologists claim that the economic, political and cultural level of one or another people, or the position of a person in society depend on racial traits. They talk a lot about the ascendancy of the white race which, they say, has been assigned by nature itself to dominate the “coloured” races. But historical experience and scientific data prove that people of all races have equal abilities. As regards the backwardness of some peoples which do not belong to the white race, it is not due to the colour of their skin or hair, as bourgeois ideologists assert, but to the centuries of colonial oppression by the white exploiters. Now that they have cast off the imperialist yoke, the peoples of the former colonies and dependencies are successfully developing their economy and culture. Particularly rapid progress is being made by the socialist-oriented countries.