Soviet people
Stalin imagined the Soviet people as a family of nations united and led by the Russians. Numerous times he interchanged the terms "Russian" and "Soviet". In July 1933, raising a toast at a meeting with writers, Stalin told them to "drink to the Soviet people, to the most Soviet nation, to the people, who carried out the revolution before anyone else", "Once I said to Lenin that the very best people is the Russian people, the most Soviet nation".