Was it incorrect to label everyone in the former Soviet Union as "Russians?"?

Yes, to avoid this mistake people should develop from cultural point of view, acquiring more knowledge regarding History and even elementary Geography.

For example Estonia was a part of Soviet Union, even though it had it's own culture and language. But Russia was the main part of the union anyways.

2 causes: 1) The Soviets had been perpetually paranoid about their communist puppets escaping their sphere of have an effect on*, and they have been convinced that Hafizullah Amin was orienting his nation in the direction of the united states and China. This used to be whole BS. Amin used to be so blindly loyal to Moscow that once, within the early stage of the invasion, Soviet precise forces had been attacking his palace in order to kill him, he used to be in the beginning convinced that it used to be all some sort of conspiracy to border the Soviet Union. 2) Afghanistan used to be undergoing an Islamic insurrection against the government, whose try to impose communism on the nearby population had alienated everybody from it. The Soviets believed occupying Afghanistan would stabilize the hindrance. All this completed was to show the entire Afghan folks against the purple army and bring outside aid for the rebellion, when you consider that the entire world now suspected that the Soviet Union used to be going to use Afghanistan as a springboard for a sprint towards the Indian Ocean through either Pakistan or Iran. In short, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to maintain its communist government from defecting from its orbit, which it was under no circumstances going to do, or from being overthrown, which was once simply as likely after the invasion because it was once before it. *now not without reason. See Albania, China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Kampuchea, Mozambique, North Korea, Romania, Yugoslavia.

Yes you are correct in that we all tended to call the Soviets as Russianss world wide

To most Americans, they wouldn't have even known all of the names of the nations and I doubt they would even know in America what their names are now.

Ask how many they can even name, I doubt they could come up with more than 6-8

Hman

The USSR was made up of other countries and so not all Russian. They were, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Tajikistan, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan ,Armenia.

Lithuania,Latvia and Estonia were occupied/annexed.

USSR was a successor of the Russian empire. That's why Soviet citizens called Russians. To my mind, Soviet people (citizens) is a correct determination.

P.S. Soviet leaders planned to create a new community of people - a soviet nation (based on Russian culture).

I agree with you definitely, but it just happens.

Look at the UK for example, most people I know refer to the UK as 'England' where in fact it is not England at all, I'm from Wales so therefore I am from the UK but certainly I'm not 'English'. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples where this happens too.

asker: "Was it incorrect to label everyone in the former Soviet Union as "Russians?"?

All throughout the Cold War, we Americans would commonly refer to the Soviet Union as "Russia." But my understanding is that Russia was only part of the Soviet Union. To put it another way, my thinking is that all Russians were Soviets, but not all Soviets were Russian. Does anyone agree?

===========================

ABSOLUTELLY !!!!.......more to that, this lingvistic paradox - calling Soviets as Russian and USSR as Russia - resulted in pretty racists atitudes, like for example "Russian rape of Berlin" (about cases of Soviet soldiers raping German women when they captured Berlin - as if there were no Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians etc, among rapists - Russians were just 48% of Red Army in 1945)....or calling Stalin as Russian dictator (while Stalin was a Georgian ethnically and ofcource Soviet dictator, not Russian) etc.etc....as a result all the bad things that Soviet Union did are now blamed exclusivelly on Russia , while Ukrainians, Georgians and allothers get away with that ( being whitewashed for political reasons)....

Also, you see, Russia is still pretty strong while other ex-Soviet countries are weak, so to counterbalance Russia and to dehumanise it, western propaganda is using this lingvistic mistake (of equating Soviets to exclusivelly Russians) - because it is flattering for Ukrainians (for example) not to be associated with Soviet crimes and to blame only Russians for those - as a result it "seduces" ex-soviet non-russian states to distance themselves from Russia in political rhetorics and to accuse exclusivelly Russians in everything and so to play victim card (and that is exactly what is needed by NATO and USA for various political reasons) .

But if you looked at who was ruling USSR you would see that in most cruel times georgians were dictating rules and methods (Stalin and his KGB-GULAG chief Beria were both georgians) and they were dominating politics completely!!!!, At the begining of USSR in 1920-s - Jews were 70% of Politburo,...then later Khrushchev and Chernenko were Ukrainians etc...well it is enough to remember the fact that though the most cruel KGB chief was a georgian Beria and founder of Che-Ka-NKVD-KGB was a Pole Dzerhzinsky, but there were 3 Ukrainians who were chiefs of Soviet KGB in Kremlin in 1960-1980-s - Semichasny, Tsvigun, Fedorchuk.....etc...The last Soviet Police Chief(interior minister) was a Latvian Pugo, the same like the first Commander-in-Chief of the Red Army was also a Latvian - Vacietis...and the Red Army itself started when Latvian Red Rifles Division took the mane of Red Army when it sided with Lenin in 1917....etc.etc....

I have thousands of such example....So, yes you are 100% right - it is incorrect label to call Soviet Union as Russia and Soviets as Russians...

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

Erinys wrote : "Referring to the USSR as "Russia" could also have been done deliberately to imply that ..................... the Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Armenians, Baltic peoples, etc., were only involuntarily part of the USSR and that it was Russia's fault."

------------------

really?...and you want to say that Russians were VOLUNTARY part of USSR ?...tell that to millions White Army Russians who perished in civil war fighting against international bunch of commies that grabbed power in a 1917 coup (despite russians defeated them in elections to Constutient Assembly)...or tell that to millions of Russian victims of Gulag...Russia's fault? - that is exactly what western propaganda wants to shove down the throat of new generation by using label of "russian" to everything "soviet"