In Only Three of the 47 Numerically Small Peoples in Russia, Do a Majority Now Speak Their Native Languages, ‘Vedomosti’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 9 – To mark the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Moscow’s Vedomosti newspaper feature a statistical description of the 47 nationalities Moscow recognizes in the Russian Federation, groups which together number approximately 315,000 or 0.2 percent of that country’s population.

            Among the most significant of the numbers the paper reports are the following (vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2026/08/09/1219585-korennie-malochislennie-narodi).

·       Only three of the 47 of the numerically small indigenous peoples in Russia have a population in which the majority of members speaks the native language of the group. Moreover, four of the five with the highest percentage of native language speakers showed a decline in that figure since 2002.

·       Fifteen of the 47 now have fewer than 1,000 members – a few have less than 100 members -- and thus are at risk of extinction in a generation or so, while one, the Nenets, with 49,800 as of 2021 may be dropped from the list because Russian law specifies that such groups must be smaller than 50,000.

·       Between the censuses of 2002 and 2021, only 13 of these groups increased in numbers, while 29 of them declined, with the five others remaining the same.

·       With only a few exceptions, urbanization is playing a key role in the decline of the size of these nations, whose members are more likely to assimilate to others when they leave rural areas and move into cities.