One Russian Resident in Three is the Product of an Ethnically Mixed Marriage, Genotek Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 26 – Analyzing the results of the 100,000 Russians who have sought its services, Genotek says that one resident of the Russian Federation is the product of an ethnically mixed marriage and has presented data on the most common pairings among the 37 largest nations in that country.

            Those who identify as ethnic Russians most often intermarry with Belarusians (22.6 percent), Ukrainians (20.3 percent), Ashkenazi Jews (14.9 percent) and Tatars (14.1 percent). They intermarry less often with Mordvins (6.9 percent) and Armenians (3.2 percent), the company says (nazaccent.ru/content/39534-genetiki-u-33-rossiyan-roditeli-raznyh-nacionalnostej.html).

            Among other nations within the borders of Russia, Genotek says, families in which one of the parents in an Ashkenazi Jew and the other is a Belarus or Ukrainian are “frequently encountered.” Other pairings found are Ukrainians with Belarusians, Tatars with Chuvash, and Tatars and Bashkirs, as well as many others.

            The rarest kind of intermarriages in its sample are between Jews and Koreans, Armenans and Udmurts, and Tatars and Frenchmen. All these combinations are displayed on an interactive chart that the Nazaccent portal has posted.

            On the one hand, the company’s figures must be taken with a grain of salt because they are not based on a representative sample but rather on people who have applied to the company’s for information on their genetic backgrounds and may have greater reasons to assume that their parentage was diverse.

            But on the other, even allowing for that, the figures suggest three conclusions: ethnic intermarriage remains more common than many assume, it is not just between Russians and others, and members of most groups have distinct preferences when it comes to deciding on a marriage partner from others.