EN
The article deals with different aspects of the struggle between Joseph Stalin and Anatolii Lunacharskii about the choice of administration means in the cultural and ethnic policy in the years 1917-1929. The author shows this problem as a part the conflict between People’s Commissariat of Education, headed by Lunacharskii, and People’s Commissariat For Nationalities’ Question, headed by Stalin, against the background of the revolution, civil war, and the construction of the Soviet Union. Special attention has been paid to the problems emerging from the contrast between the Bolshevik image of the ideal future and the ethnic-cultural realities, inherited from the past.