A culture does not necessarily equate nationality or ethnicity. And the notion of a nation as a whole was only established thanks to technological and social developments (such as newspaper, compulsory education, etc). That is why in Humankind there is a tech called "Nationhood" in Industrial era.

HappyHead wrote:

Part of me was worried, as @lex-kravetski pointed out above, that soviet was english slang in the same vein as yankee, but it looks like the word was adopted by the people themselves and used as an identity descriptor.

I watch quite a few videos on Youtube from Russian speaking authors and when people of USSR are mentioned - they are usually called soviets, and it doesn't mater if the video praises USSR, critiques it or is simply informational. Also, in my country "радянці" (Ukrainian word for "soviets") is the most common name for soviet people. So, I would say that "soviets" being a slang is more like personal opinion of @lex-kravetski rather then popular opinion in post soviet countries.

lex-kravetski wrote:

You may use word "soviet" in country name, but with some noun only. "Soviet Union" or "Soviet Republic". Now, it is like trying to call Britain "United" without "Kingdom".

Or calling the United States of America just America.

Wait!

As someone who was born and lived for quite a while in the Soviet Union I can assure everyone that indeed Soviets is a correct name. The correct identification for the people in Soviet Union was Soviets People (Советский народ in Russian).

Soviet Union consisted of 16 different national republic so to label everyone as Russian was factually incorrect and moving away from Russia to completely different identity was in fact one of the main points of the Communist Revolution.

And yes the ideology was Communism but the culture was indeed Soviet, it was Soviet People, Soviet Movies etc