In Marxism, bourgeois nationalism is the alleged practice by the ruling classes of deliberately dividing people by nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion, so as to distract them from initiating class warfare. It is seen as a divide and conquer strategy used by the ruling classes to prevent the working class from uniting against them (hence the Marxist slogan, Workers of all countries, unite!).
After the October Revolution, the Bolshevik government based its nationalities policy (korenization) on the principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology. According to these principles, all nations should disappear with time, and nationalism was considered a bourgeois ideology.
In his Report on the 50th anniversary of the formation of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev emphasized: "That is why Communists and all fighters for socialism believe that the main aspect of the national question is unification of the working people, regardless of their national origin, in the common battle against every type of oppression, and for a new social system which rules out exploitation of the working people."
Bourgeois nationalism as a concept was discussed in China by Liu Shaoqi as follows: