very interesting because i know quite a lot of people didn't care about nations in the soviet times.
i read a book thats sais that shevarnadze position in the eighties (foreign affairs minister) was one the reasons of the collapse of the usse (him being georgian and not russian). when i got to russia, everyone told me that nobody cared about the citizenship back then, he was just a soviet. that was even the case for stalin or beryia despite their strong accents.