National delimitation in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the process of specifying well-defined national territorial units (Soviet socialist republics [SSR], autonomous Soviet socialist republics [ASSR], autonomous oblasts [provinces], raions [districts] and okrugs [circuits]) from the ethnic diversity of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its subregions. The Russian-language term for this Soviet state policy was razmezhevanie (, natsionalno-territorialnoye razmezhevaniye), which is variously translated in English-language literature as "national-territorial delimitation" (NTD), "demarcation", or "partition". National delimitation formed part of a broader process of changes in administrative-territorial division, which also changed the boundaries of territorial units, but was not necessarily linked to national or ethnic considerations. National delimitation in the USSR was distinct from nation-building (), which typically referred to the policies and actions implemented by the government of a national territorial unit (a nation state) after delimitation. In most cases national delimitation in the USSR was followed by korenizatsiya (indigenization). Policies of national delimitation in the Soviet Union Pre-1917 Russia was an imperial state, not a nation state. In the 1905 Duma elections the nationalist parties received only 9 percent of all votes. The many non-Russian ethnic groups that inhabited the Russian Empire were classified as inorodtsy, or aliens. After the February Revolution, attitudes in regards to this topic began to change. In early 1917, a Socialist Revolutionary publication called Dyelo Naroda, No. 5 called for Russia to be transformed into a federal state along the lines of the United States. Specifically, separate constituent units inside of this federal state would be created for the various regions and ethnic groups of Russia (such as Little Russia, Georgia, Siberia, and Turkestan). The Soviet Russia that took over from the Russian Empire in 1917 was not a nation-state, nor was the Soviet leadership committed to turning their country into such a state. In the early Soviet period, even voluntary assimilation was actively discouraged, and the promotion of the national self-consciousness of the non-Russian populations was attempted. Each officially recognized ethnic minority, however small, was granted its own national territory where it enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy, national schools, and national elites. A written national language (if it had been lacking), national language planning, native-language press, and books written in the native language came with the national territory, along with cultural institutions such as theaters. The attitudes towards many ethnic minorities changed dramatically in the 1930s–1940s under the leadership