But the last census had certain nuances. After all, it was held remotely during the pandemic years. “It turns out that the 2020/21 census complicated the situation by obtaining information on the ethnic composition of the population: for 16.6 million people, nationality data was not received or they did not want to indicate it for various reasons. Among them, 7 million people “refused to answer the question about nationality”, 542.2 thousand people “have no nationality” and about 9.05 million people the information was obtained from administrative sources. Thus, the proportion of people “without nationality” was 11.3% of the country’s population, and this significantly undermines the reliability of data on the country’s cultural diversity. In fact, without additional explanations, it is very difficult to use these data”, explains the scientist.
People “without nationality” corresponded the most via the Internet on the “Gosuslugi” portal and did not want to indicate nationality after indicating their personal data. In addition, the passport and other official documents currently do not contain such information. “And if this underestimation falls on the urban population (it makes up 75% of the country’s population), then representatives of those ethnic communities that are distinguished by increased urbanization, low birth rates and scattered settlement patterns certainly suffered from it. These, of course, are, first of all, the most numerous peoples living in Russian cities and towns in various regions: Russians, Tatars, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Chuvashians, Mordvins, Udmurts… This includes some small population groups. widely settled throughout the country ( Jews, Russian Germans and others)”, – adds Tishkov.
Read the full interview with academician Valery Tishkov in the next issues of Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
