Abstract
Russia, which remains home to several hundred ethnic groups and fourteen linguistic families, inherited much of the Soviet Union’s legacy with respect to ethnic and linguistic categorization. The policies of categorization and official recognition of various ethnic and linguistic groups continue to influence these identities in the Russian Federation. The Russian state paid due attention to ethnicity and linguistic diversity and largely ignored the racial diversity of its population mainly due to the fact that classifications of the racial composition of the country crisscrossed ethnic and linguistic divisions and, unlike ethnicity, did not form the basis for political mobilization. This chapter details such issues as the variation of ethnic designations in official documents and mixed marriage research; the official categorization of the country’s population in censuses, particularly in the first post-Soviet population census of 2002; Russian academic research traditions in ethnicity studies, as well as current approaches to the problem of categorization and official recognition and the use in administrative practices of ‘mixed’ (in terms of ethnic and language affiliation) categories.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
‘Titular’ in the Soviet and post-Soviet context means the ethnic group that gives its name to an ethno-political and administrative unit, such as Bashkirs for Bashkortostan and Tatars for Tatarstan.
- 2.
There are a number of laws, presidential decrees, and government resolutions, as well as several articles in the federal constitution (Article 68, 69, 72) that make use of the categories of indigenous peoples and national minorities and stipulate special rights.
- 3.
The relevant concepts in population genetics are exogamy (out-group marriages) and endogamy (preference for in-group marriages).
- 4.
The issue of Cossacks (formerly a military estate, comprising people from a number of ethnic groups, including most numerous Russians and Ukranians, but also of Tatar, Kalmyk, Bashkir, and Buryat origins), was rather ingeniously solved by providing in the questionnaire an option for computing their overall number irrespective of different ethnic backgrounds (a small square at the bottom of the Form B for coders). And although, for example, Cossacks who spoke Ukrainian were added to Ukrainians in the census results (and with other languages to respective ‘nationalities’), their overall number due to this provision could also obtained.
- 5.
- 6.
These were twelve minority peoples of the so-called Andi-Dido peoples, counted previously as Avars, and two minorities counted in 1989 and in prior censuses as Dargins.
- 7.
In alphabetical order, Agul, Avars (Maarulal), Dargins (Dargwa), Kumyk (Qumuq), Lak (Laq), Nogai (Noghai), Lezgin, Rutul, Tabasaran, and Tsakhur (Tsakhighali) [Slovari natsional’nostei 1989].
- 8.
Adygei (Adyge), Altai, Circassian (Cherkess, Adyge), Jews, Karachai (Qarachaili), Khakass (Khaas), and Komi-Permiak.
- 9.
Chukchi, Dolgan, Evenk, Khant, Koriak, Mansi, and Nenets.
- 10.
The directory was approved by Goskomstat on 2 September 2002 (decision 171) and published shortly before the census. The official title of its first table was ‘The Alphabetical List of Nationalities and Ethnic Names’. When Goskomstat officials discussed with me, in a telephone conversation on 18 July 2002, the exact formulation of the table title, I was arguing that the correct title should be ‘A Directory of Ethnic Self-Designations’. It could not be simply titled ‘Directory of Nationalities’ precisely because it contained variants of ethnic names, often applied to one and the same population category. Hence, the title could be misread as the alphabetical list of groups, not of the various names used by individuals to refer to group affiliation. The Goskomstat Census Department official argued that the term ‘nationality’ is a traditional census term and could not be avoided in census publications. A compromise decision was made to print on the booklet’s title page ‘Alphabetical Lists of Nationalities and Languages’, but to preserve both ‘ethnic names’ and ‘nationalities’ in the titles of the tables included in this publication.
- 11.
For detailed analysis of the Tatar issue in the census, see Sokolovskiy (2004a).
- 12.
For example, Lak, or in Russian Laktsy, are called Tumal by Avars, and Yaholshu by Lezgins; both of the latter terms are sometimes used by Laks themselves for self-designation. One of the North Caucasus peoples, the Tsez, are also called Tsuntins by Avars and Dido (Didoytsy) by Georgians; both terms function as self-designations, or alternative ethnonyms.
- 13.
Grekos, Ellinos, Pontios, Romei, Rumei, Romeos, Romeus, and Rum.
- 14.
The official title of this list changed when a decision was made to assign individual codes to each ethnic self-designation registered in the alphabetical list (see footnote xii above). Previously, designation variants of the same census category were to receive the same digital code according to the ‘Comprehensive Dictionary of Nationalities’ (the dictionary consisted of three columns: (1) generic or official name of the group; (2) list of designation variants and subgroups belonging to this census category; (3) list of regions where the individuals included into this category were expected to be concentrated). The List of Nationalities included only the first column of these three, thus enumerated only the official designations. The alphabetical list of self-designations enumerated all 879 ethnic names and variants with unique codes arranged alphabetically. The list was used by coders, dealing with diversity of answers to the census question Vasha natsional’naia prinadlezhnost’, literally meaning ‘Your national belonging’, ‘national belonging’ being understood as ethnic (nationality) affiliation and correctly translated as ‘Your ethnic affiliation’. This usage of ‘nationality’ is traditional and can be traced back to the Russian Census of 1920 (see also the chapter by Myrzabekova, this volume).
- 15.
The most obvious example here is Mordva-Moksha and Mordva-Erzia, persons speaking two different and mutually incomprehensible, though closely related, Finno-Ugric Mordvinian languages, and, at the same time, stressing the idea of the unity of the Mordva people, irrespective of linguistic adherence.
- 16.
For example, a traditional division of the Mari into ‘east-meadow’ and ‘mountain’, speaking their own languages, was preserved. Overall, twenty four such subgroups were identified, most of which had not been mentioned in Soviet censuses after 1926; they formed a substantial increase over the previous 1989 Census list.
- 17.
The census results were published in a fourteen-volume series and on CDs and available at the official Federal Statistical Bureau website (http://www.perepis2002.ru).
References
Alexeyev, V. P. (1986). The Origin of the Human Race. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Arutyunyan, Y. V., & Bromley, Y. V. (Eds.). (1986). Sotsial’no-kul’turnyy oblik sovetskikh natsiy [The Socio-Cultural Portrait of Soviet Nations]. Moscow: Nauka.
Bromley, J., & Kozlov, V. (1989). The Theory of Ethnos and Ethnic Processes in the Soviet Union. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31(3), 425–438.
Bruk, S., & Kozlov, V. (1967). Etnograficheskaia nauka I perepis’ naselenia 1970 goda [Ethnographic Studies and the Population Census of 1970]. Sovetskaia etnografia, 6, 3–20.
Cadiot, Juliette. (2001). La constitution des catégories nationales dans l’Empire de Russie et dans l’Union des Républiques Socialistes Soviétique (1897–1939). Thèse doctorale, EHESS, Paris.
Garcelon, M. (2001). Colonizing the Subject: The Genealogy and Legacy of the Soviet Internal Passport. In J. Caplan & J. Torpey (Eds.), Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (pp. 83–100). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gorenburg, D. (2006). Rethinking Interethnic Marriage in the Soviet Union. Post-Soviet Affairs, 22(2), 145–165.
Hirsch, F. (2005). Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lewis, R. A., Rowland, R. H., & Clem, R. S. (1976). Nationality and Population Change in Russia and the USSR: An Evaluation of Census Data, 1897–1970. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Martin, T. (2001). The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mogilner, M. (2013). Homo Imperii: A History of Physical Anthropology in Russia. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Moine, N. (1997). Passeportisation, statistique des migrations et contrôle de l’identité sociale. Cahiers du Monde Russe, 38(4), 587–599.
Shirokogoroff, S. M. (1923). Etnos: Issledovanie osnovnykh printsipov izmeneniia etnicheskikh i etnograficheskikh yavlenii [Ethnos: Research on the Basic Principles of Change in Ethnic and Ethnographic Phenomena]. Shanghai: Sibpress.
Slezkine, Y. (1994). Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Smith, J. (1999). The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917–1923. Basinstoke: Macmillan.
Sokolovskiy, S. V. (1990). Mezhetnicheskia brachnost’ u shortsev Tashtagolskogo raiona [Inter-Ethnic Marriages mong Shor in Tashtagol District]. Problemy ecologii cheloveka v Sibiri [Human Ecology Issues in Siberia]. Novokuznetsk: 60–62.
Sokolovskiy, S. V. (2001). Obrazy drugikh v rossiiskoi nauke, politike i prave [Images of Others in Russian Science, Politics and Law]. Moscow: Put.
Sokolovskiy, S. V. (2004a). Kriasheny vo Vserossiiskoi perepisi naselenia 2002 goda [Kriashens in the All-Russian Population Census of 2002]. Moscow: Orgservice-2000.
Sokolovskiy, S. V. (2004b). Osnovy analiza populiatsionnoi podrazdlennosti [The Basiс Principles of Population Sub-Division Analysis]. Etnoecologicheskie issledovania [Ethno-Ecological Studies], 61–98. Moscow.
Sokolovskiy, S. V. (2005). The 2002 Census: Games According to Wittgenstein. Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia, 44(1), 25–33.
Soroko, E. (2014). Etnicheski smeshannye supruzheskie pary v Rossiiskoi Federatsii [Ethnically Mixed Families in the Russian Federation]. Demografichesoe obozrenie, 1(4), 94–122.
Susokolov, A. A. (1987). Mezhnatsional’nyye braki v SSSR [Interethnic Marriages in the USSR]. Moscow: Mysl’.
Tishkov, V. A. (1997). Ethnicity, Nationalism and Conflict in and After the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame. London: Sage Publications.
Weitz, E. D. (2002). Racial Politics Without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating the Soviet Ethnic and national Purges. Slavic Review, 61(1), 1–34.
Acknowledgements
Research funding for this article was provided by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences (research project No. 177-2018-0005).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sokolovskiy, S.V. (2020). Mixed, Merged, and Split Ethnic Identities in the Russian Federation. In: Rocha, Z.L., Aspinall, P.J. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Mixed Racial and Ethnic Classification. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22874-3_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22874-3_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22873-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22874-3
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)