Number of Russians Down in All Non-Russian Areas since 1991 and in Most Russian Ones as Well

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 15 – The number of ethnic Russians in all the non-Russian federal subjects has declined since 1991, in some cases significantly (more than 90 percent in Chechnya, the most extreme case), and in all but eight of the historically Russian ones. Among these is Moscow where the number of Russians has increased by more than 20 percent.

            On the one hand, this pattern has led to a relatively small decline in the total number of ethnic Russians in the country – a falloff of just over four percent between the 1989 and 2010 censuses. But on the other, it has meant that the non-Russian federal subjects are in almost every case ever more non-Russian (burckina-new.livejournal.com/1398624.html).

                In one respect, that represents a sorting out of the country along ethnic lines that recalls what happened in the USSR in the last two decades of its existence. But in another, this new trend is unprecedented in that it reflects more ethnic Russian decline and exit rather than more rapid growth rates among non-Russians.

            But because people live in particular regions and not in the country as a whole, this decline in the number of ethnic Russians in non-Russian areas means that non-Russians in almost all cases find themselves relatively more numerous than at the end of Soviet times. And it means that ethnic Russians are more aware of their absolute decline than they were three decades ago.

            This sense of loss among ethnic Russians is likely to be especially strong since despite losses in World War II, ethnic Russians increased approximately a million a year on average during Soviet times, but since 1991, they have declined by more than 17 million in the CIS, the result of super mortality and rapidly falling birthrates.