The 11.5 percent increase of Russians in their republic’s non-Russian subdivisions (and the decline in their percentage of the combined population) obscures considerable variations among the autonomous republics. (See table 2.2.) Thus, in five autonomous republics, Karelia, Komi, Udmurt, Chuvash, and Yakut ASSRs, the ratio of Russians in the total population rose. Karelia and Komi arc located in the northwestern and northern parts of the RSFSR respectively. The Russians now constitute 68.1 percent in the population of Karelia (1959; 63.4 percent) and 53.1 percent in that of Komi ASSR (1959; 48.6 percent). In Far Eastern Yakutia the Russian population reached 47.3 percent by 1970, an increase from 44.2 percent in 1959. In the Ural-area Udmurt ASSR Russians increased from 56.8 to 57.1 percent, and in the Chuvash ASSR in the upper Volga from 24.0 to 24.5 percent of the total population.
Except for the Udmun republic (where Russians and the population at large increased at a slower rate than in the RSFSR as a whole), the increase of the Russian population in these five autonomous republics was very considerable. Between 1959 and 1970 Russians increased by 13.26 percent in Chuvash ASSR, by 17.67 percent in Karelia, 29,3 percent in Komi, and 36 percent in Yakutia. This increase and the resultant strengthening of the Russians were likely achieved more by immigration than by natural means.
There was also a high Russian immigration rate to some of the 11 autonomous republics, in which their ratio in the population fell between 1959 and 1970. In others the Russians were increasing very 38 Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union
Slowly, and in the autonomous republic of Daghestan ASSR in North Caucasus, their number actually went down from 214,000 to 210,000 (a decrease of 1.87 percent), and their percentage in the population fell from 20.1 to 14.7 of the total. In two republics, Mari ASSR and Mordovian ASSR, the overall population increase was relatively small but the Russian increase lagged behind that of the natives, and though Russians srill constitute a dominant element in these upper-Volga areas their percentage went down (in Mari from 47.8 to 46.9 percent, in Mordovia from 59.1 to 58.9 percent).
More interesting and more important seem to be the changes in the well-populated middle-Volga republics of Bashkiria and Tataria. In Bashkiria Russians decreased from 42.4 to 40.5 percent while Bashkirs rose from 22.1 to 23.4 percent, and Tatars (the second largest ethnic group in that republic) rose from 23.0 to 24.7 percent. In the Tatar ASSR Russians decreased from 43.9 to 42.4 percent of the total while Tatars came close to regaining a majority (47.2 in 1959 to 49.1 percent in 1970). There was no important Russian immigration to these areas; if there was any, it must have been counterbalanced by emigration. The Russian increase amounted to 9.1 percent in Bashkiria and 6.15 percent in Tataria.*®
In the two Siberian republics, Buryat ASSR and Tuvinian ASSR (the latter once known to stamp collectors as the mysterious state of Tannu-Tuva), even as large an increase of the Russian population as 18.7 percent in Buryat and 27.5 percent in Tuva was not enough to prevent a relative decline (from 74.6 to 73.5 percent in the former, and from 40.1 to 38.3 percent in the latter). The “natives” were obviously increasing even faster than the Russians.
Keeping up with the natives in the North Caucasus area of the RSFSR proved even more difficult for the Russians. In the Kalmykian ASSR, whose population had been deported under Stalin and then rehabilitated, Kalmyks increased from 35.1 to 41.1 percent of the population (they numbered 110,000, an increase of 45,000 over 1959). Russians, although they still outnumbered Kalmyks by 13,000 in 1970, fell from
55.9 to 45.8 percent in the Kalmyk republic’s population. Quite mysteriously, Ukrainians more than doubled in Kalmykia between the two censuses (the increase was 106.25 percent), from 1,600 to 3,300, although their share in the population remains small (1.8 percent).
An apparent Russian emigration from Daghestan (decline of 1.87 percent) caused their share in the population to fall from 20.1 to 14.7
The Nations of the USSR in 1970 39
Percent. Population as a whole rose far above the Soviet average in Daghestan, and it also rose in Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, and the Chechen-Ingush ASSRs. In consequence, despite a 34.35 percent increase, Russians declined from 38.7 to 37.2 percent in Kabardino-Balkaria’s population. A slower (but still above the RSFSR average) Russian increase in North Ossetia 12.85 percent) produced a Russian drop from 39.6 to 36.6 percent in the total population, which as a whole rose twice as fast as the Russians in it. The low—less than the RSFSR average— gain of 5.46 percent reduced the Russians from almost a half to just above a third of the population of the Chcchen-Ingush ASSR (from 49.0 to 34.5 percent). That republic’s population increased by a half between the censuses, when Chechens and Ingushes, another collective victim of Soviet deportations, seem to have returned from their exile. Chechens increased from 244,000 to 509,000 (from 34.3 percent to 47.8 percent) and Ingushes from 48,000 to 114,000 (6.8 to 10.7 percent).”
World History
