DYNAMICS OF ETHNIC HETEROGENEITY IN RUSSIAN REGIONS FROM 1959 TO 2021

Abstract

In the post-Soviet period, there has occurred a change in the main trends in the transformation of the ethnic space of
Russia, although some of them were laid down in the late Soviet period. The study aims to develop a classification of Russian regions
according to the dynamics of ethnic heterogeneity in the late Soviet period (from 1959 to 1989) and the post-Soviet period (from 1989
to 2021). The paper examines the features of using such indicators of ethnic heterogeneity of territories as entropy, indices of ethnic
polarization and mosaic. To assess the dynamics of ethnic heterogeneity of the regions, the ethnic mosaic index (Eckel index) was
used. The classification of regions was carried out with the help of a cartographic technique that allows combining two most important
characteristics of ethnodemographic dynamics – the change in the proportion of the Russian population and the ethnic mosaic index.
According to the nature of the dynamics of these indicators in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods, classes of Russian regions were
distinguished (five for each period). The study showed that from 1959 to 1989 there prevailed the process of relative alignment of the
ethnic composition of the population in the regions of Russia. That period was characterized by an increasing ethnic heterogeneity of
both the majority of regions formed not on the basis of nationality and national-territorial entities. Between 1989 and 2021 the process
of regional ethnic polarization became predominant in Russia. It was expressed in growing mono-ethnicity in, on the one hand, the
overwhelming majority of regions with predominance of the Russian population and, on the other hand, most of the republics. During
that period, the process of ‘pulling’ the titular peoples into their national-territorial entities manifested itself to the fullest extent.