The Russian population grew most rapidly in the non-Russian Union republics, where it increased by over 30 percent, more than twice the rate of the Russian gains in the USSR as a whole, and three times as fast as in the RSFSR. In 1959,14.24 percent of Soviet Russians lived outside the RSFSR, but 11 years later their ratio increased to 16.5 percent. How were those Russians distributed “in diaspora”?
It seems best to arrange the non-Russian Union republics into three geographic groups or regions, especially since the pattern of Russian population increase varies significantly and there are also variations in the general population growth among the regions. The three regions are: Transcaucasia, Central Asia (including Kazakhstan, which Soviet sources usually place in a separate category from Central Asia), and Soviet Eastern Europe.
Of the total of 5,017,000 Russians added to the population of the non-Russian Union republics between 1959 and 1970, the share of Transcaucasia equaled a mere 8,000, or 0.16 percent of the total gain of Russians outside the RSFSR. Soviet Eastern Europe received 2,714,000, more than half of the gain (54.1 percent), and Central Asia, including Kazakhstan, received 2,295,000, or 45.7 percent. By 1970, the Russian population in Central Asia reached 8,509,000 (1959: 6,214.000), in 40 Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union
Transcaucasia 973,000 (1959: 965,000), and in Eastern Europe
11,785,000 (1959: 9,071,000). There was a slight percentage shift in the total distribution of Russians over this period: Transcaucasia’s share of the total number of Russians living outside the RSFSR dropped from
5.9 to 4.57 percent. Eastern Europe’s declined from 55.8 to 55.4 percent, and Central Asia’s gained from 38.24 to 40 percent.
World History
