The Russian Cenus asks respondents to classify themselves by nationality.
So they avoid the term race used in the US Census. The Russian approach
might have avoided offending the Welsh by offering Welsh as a nationality.
See below:
Census Shows Shifts in National Identity Within Russia
ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 10 November: Russia's national composition has changed in the past
13 years. According to the results of the national census there are now
about 160 nationalities within the country - 24 more than were reflected in
the previous census, held in Soviet times in 1989.
This was stated at a news conference today by Vladimir Zorin, the minister
in charge of nationality issues. Zorin pointed out that respondents
defined their own nationality.
As before, most of the people within Russia regard themselves as ethnic
Russians (80 per cent or 116m), and also as before the second most numerous
nationality are the Tatars (5,560,000). Other nationalities exceeding 1m
are the Ukrainians (2,940,000), Bashkirs (1,670,000) and Chuvash, Chechens
and Armenians. A further 23 nationalities have a numerical strength of over
400,000, including Mordovians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, Udmurts, Russian
Germans and Ossetians.
Armenians, Azeris and Tajiks have gained in number from migration, Zorin
said, and the Chinese have gone from 5,000 to 35,000 in the past 13 years.
The numbers of Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russian Germans have declined by
a third.
Kryashens have appeared in a census for the first time since 1929 - they
number about 25,000. There are also 7,000 Christian Tatars. A total of
140,000 assigned themselves to a new nationality - Cossacks. Zorin
explained that the first census in Imperial Russia in 1897 categorized the
Cossacks as a social class. There were also those who described themselves
as pechenegs, polovtsy (ancient tribes) and elves, but they were few in
number, Zorin said. Some 800 self-descriptions cropped up in census returns.
Zorin also said that 1.5m people gave no indication at all of nationality,
two-thirds of them living in Moscow, St Petersburg and Moscow Region.
The government will adjust its nationalities policy in the light of the
census returns, Zorin went on to say, adding that Russia is regarded as the
most ethnically-diverse country in the world. European countries, for
example, average about nine nationalities.
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