Abstract: Having analyzed the unique statistical material of the 20th century, the author examines the national composition of the USSR institutions of governance: executive, legislative, and judicial authorities, the CPSU apparatus at the level of the highest authorities of the Soviet Union; and republican and local institutions, as well as in the army and law enforcement bodies. According to the author, since the 1930s, there has been a gradual displacement of Russians and their replacement with representatives of the “titular nations” in all the union republics, which turned the USSR federal structure into the “cradle” of new states that appeared on the ruins of the Soviet Union.