Average Age in Non-Russian Municipalities Far Lower than in Ethnic Russian Ones, ‘To Be Precise’ Survey Finds

Paul Goble

              Staunton, April 30 – The To Be Precise portal has surveyed Russia’s 2300 upper-tier municipalities to come up with a portrait of the all-Russian average of this category of administrative structures in which 27 percent of all residents of that country live. But its references to outliers is especially useful for several reasons.

              On the one hand, it provides data on a category smaller than federal subjects, in which Rosstat data are typically gathered and released; and on the other, it highlights differences between predominantly non-Russian and predominantly ethnic Russian areas that are often obscured when data are grouped in those larger categories.

              In a typical municipality which is located west of the Urals and is predominantly ethnic Russian, the average age is 40, although in some Russian areas, it is far higher with the average being over 50. In non-Russian municipalities, in contrast, the average age is far lower where it stands at 21 or 22 (tochno.st/materials/kakoi-vygliadit-tipicnyi-rossiiskii-municipalitet-obieiasniaem-na-dannyx).

              That means that the Russian areas in this category will have far fewer children than the non-Russian ones and that the non-Russian share of the population, barring assimilation or outmigration, will increase rapidly over the coming decades, a trend that often is obscured if the data are presented about only larger units.

              In nearly 40 percent of these upper-tier municipalities, “90 percent or more of the population identify as ethnic Russians,” and in only 13 percent “does the ethnic Russian share of the population fall below 30 percent,” the portal reports But in some municipalities in Dagestan, Chechnya and Tyva, the Russian share of the population is “less than one-tenth of one percent.”

              In general, the To Be Precise portal continues, “the larger the upper-tier municipality, the lower the proportion of ethnic Russians.” In small ones with fewer than 10,000 residents, “the median share of Russians in 91 percent but in cities with populations exceeding 50,000, this figure drops to 75 percent.”

              That pattern, the portal continues, is “the result of urbanization and migration: larger municipalities particularly those including major cities attract people from other regions and countries, resulting in a more diverse ethnic composition. Small settlements in contrast remain largely outside these migratory flows and thus more ethnically homogeneous.”

              To Be Precise concludes: “the typical Russian municipality belongs to [Natalya Zubarevich’s] ‘Third Russia”—a vast peripheral territory inhabited by residents of villages, settlements, and small towns, an area which ‘survives on the land' and exists outside of politics, as the agricultural calendar remains unaffected by changes in government."