On September 22, 1999, the Russian government issued Decree No. 1064 “On the All-Russian Population Census of 2002,” according to which the census was to take place between October 9-16, 2002. The population count time was scheduled for midnight, October 9, 2002. At one of its meetings in March 2000, the Learned Council of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (IEA) discussed the draft of the lists of nationalities and languages, prepared by the State Committee on Statistics (Goskomstat) on the basis of the preliminary census of 1994, and sent to the Institute for evaluation. The lists contained scores of mistakes and were based on outdated classification principles. They were thoroughly criticized by the specialists and rejected as possible instruments for the future census. Initially, according to the Goskomstat schedule, the lists were to be revised and finalized by March 2000, but their actual preparation took over a year.

In summer 2000, Goskomstat announced an open competition for the preparation of the lists of nationalities and languages to be used in the future census. As a result of the competition, IEA signed a state contract with Goskomstat, on August 28, 2000, to prepare four dictionaries (a list of nationalities, alphabetic lists of nationalities and languages, a systematic dictionary of nationalities and explanatory notes) that were to be used in coding procedures of the census questionnaires. The Learned Council of the institute appointed three members of the census commission, with the institute’s director Valery Tishkov at its head. All the mentioned dictionaries according to the contractual terms were to be prepared by three deadlines: the list of nationalities and two alphabetic lists of nationalities and languages were to be forwarded to Goskomstat by November 30, 2000; a systematic dictionary of nationalities with an index of the regions where their members predominantly reside, by March 30, 2001; and explanatory notes, with clarification of principles used for the preparation of the dictionaries, by August 30, 2001. During the work on the dictionaries another contract with Goskomstat had been signed, for the elaboration of a list of alternative designations of ethnic groups and their subdivisions, to be completed and forwarded to Goskomstat by November 30, 2001. During a conference at the Goskomstat Moscow office, the lists were presented to representatives of its regional branches, and soon a reaction followed.

In what follows, I will try to outline the main principles of the elaboration of the new lists of nationalities and languages from an “insider perspective,” as during all the phases of the project I was the main person responsible for the drafting the lists. Professor Puchkov worked mostly on geographic issues, providing lists of territories of residence for each category. Professor Sokolova dealt exclusively with the issues concerning the so-called “Siberian small-numbered peoples” (malochislennye narody) and Professor Tishkov contributed to the elaboration of the general principles of their compilation and to the final editing of the lists.

The most important guiding principle that was operative in most of the choices made during the preparation of the dictionaries was the liberalization of the census procedures. In working terms, it meant the protection of the right of individuals to proclaim their own ethnic identity (Art. 26.1 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation). Several documents of international law, including the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (ratified by the Russian parliament in June 1998) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities were also considered as relevant. Of particular importance were Art.1.1. of the Declaration, stating that “States shall protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity” [emphasis mine—S.S.] and Art. 3.1. of the Framework, according to which “Every person belonging to a national minority shall have the right freely to choose to be treated or not to be treated as such and no disadvantage shall result from this choice or from the exercise of the rights which are connected to that choice” [emphasis mine—S.S.]. Basing itself on these norms and using previous Soviet censuses lists and published results, encyclopedia and dictionaries, and in many cases unpublished fieldwork data shared by the institute’s area experts, the commission compiled new lists of nationalities and languages, which turned out to be even longer than the lists of the last Soviet census of 1989. Thus, instead of 128 census categories in the list of nationalities, the first draft mentioned more than 200 categories, and the latest list contained over 170; while the number of languages increased from 113 to 143. At the same time, over 30 ethnic categories and 12 languages, which were mentioned in the 1989 census, were removed from the 2002 census lists. The exact criteria of inclusion/exclusion varied depending on the case under consideration and do not easily lend themselves for summarizing.

The largest group of excluded categories were the categories which, in the 1989 census, were designated as “nationalities, residing predominantly outside of the borders of the USSR.” This group, in the 1989 census, consisted of 35 categories, many of which were either pure statistical groupings, such as “peoples of India and Pakistan,” or country-of-origin designations (not ethnic categories) such as Americans, English, French, Spanish etc. All these categories were excluded on the suggestion of Valery Tishkov at a late stage of the project in November 2001. In supporting his position, Tishkov put forward three arguments: 1) many of the categories from this group are essentially country-of-origin designations and do not refer to ethnic composition; 2) many of those from group that refer to ethnicity and ethnic entities have left the country since 1989 (Albanians, Cubans, Croats, Serbs, Czechs and Slovaks among them); 3) some categories from the group are so small numbered, that they could be relegated without much concern to the residual category “others” (such as Austrians, Baluch, Dutch, Italians, and Japanese). The reduction of the draft list of nationalities has coincided with the first hearings of the Census Law in the State Duma, during which some of the MPs voiced their concern over “splitting-up of the country population into too many groups,” and attempts at “the division of nations into artificial entities.”

Not all of the “foreigners” were excluded from the list. The groups that had expectedly large population counts remained on the list. Among them were Pushtuns (replacing with Uzbeks and Tajiks the former “Afghans”), Bulgarians, Finns, Greeks, Chinese and Vietnamese (maintained as composite categories, comprising not only the Han and Viet peoples, but also all the groups originating from China and Vietnam), Hungarians, Koreans, Kurds, Mongols, Poles, Romanians, Turks, and Uighurs.

For those not having first-hand experience with Soviet census instruments such as dictionaries (or registers) of nationalities and languages, it is perhaps necessary to mention that nationalities were not listed alphabetically in the list of nationalities. They were instead clustered into several general groupings, named and unnamed, reflecting the complex ethno-political organization of the country. The two named clusters were the “Nationalities of the USSR” and the already mentioned cluster of “Nationalities, residing predominantly outside of the borders of the USSR.” Russians opened the list and the fourteen “titular nations” of the former Soviet republics followed, not in alphabetic order, but in the same order as they were listed in the Soviet constitution. The principles of ordering within this subgroup had changed several times. First, the nations were listed in the order they had joined the Union; then a criterion of numerical size was introduced; during the preparation of the 1989 census it was pointed out that the Uzbeks had become more numerous than the Bielorussians and a new principle of listing in the same order as in the relevant article of the Constitution was introduced to solve the problem of re-ordering in the case of other possible changes in the numerical order.

The “titular nations” subgroup was followed by a subgroup of the main (titular) nationalities of autonomous republics, which had lower administrative status than the Soviet republics. The category names within this subgroup were listed alphabetically, but, again, with some inconsistencies, as there were more “titular groups” than republics (several autonomous republics had in their “titles” the names of two peoples, such as Kabardino-Balkaria), others, such as Dagestan, had more peoples which were considered titular and twice as many which were indigenous to the region but not counted separately. Out of more than 30 ethnic groups from Dagestan in the 1989 census rank-ordering, only the ten most numerous ethnic categories were chosen to be identified in the subgroup of the “autonomous republics’ peoples. With other “titular autonomous peoples,” this subgroup contained 29 categories. Another smaller subgroup had been formed from the titular peoples of autonomous regions (oblast) and okrugs. It contained only seven ethnic categories, because most of the indigenous peoples of the northern autonomous territories (okrugs) were listed within the next subgroup, named “Nationalities of the North.” The latter well-known category comprised 26 peoples of the North. The group was subdivided into two parts. The first contained “Northerners” that had their own autonomous districts. The second—all the remaining small groups, scattered over the vast territory of Siberia and the Far East. Then a residual subgroup of “peoples without ’their own’ ethnic territories” followed, comprising 16 ethnic categories. The list was concluded by the already mentioned category colloquially known as the “foreign peoples” and two residuals of “others” and “nationality was not provided.”

Needless to say, all these groupings have lost to a large degree their legitimacy, and it has been decided, from the start, that the status subdivision of ethnic categories into “more and less indigenous,” or “more and less titular” is not to be used in the new census. All major categories are now listed in alphabetical order, the only exception being subcategories, which will be listed immediately after their overall category. I will later clarify this issue of subcategories. The reasoning against groupings has not been of purely political nature, namely, that they reproduce the hierarchy of peoples, which is to be abolished in a democracy. It has also been observed that the groupings contained many mistakes. For example, both the Tajik and Azerbajani “titular nations” of the Soviet republics were more numerous, that is, in census terms “resided predominantly” in neighboring Afghanistan and Iran, hence should not have been listed in the first, but in the last grouping of nationalities. The same was true for the Jews, Roma, Saami, Aleut and Yupik (Siberian Yupik and related groups, speaking the Eskimo languages are called in Russian Eskimos), each of them being more numerous abroad, than within the country. That is why the subdivision into “residents” and “foreigners” has been the first object of critique and involved a series of further innovations. The division of census categories into “titular” and “non-titular” nationalities seemed irrelevant and incorrect both on political and legal grounds and has been abolished as well.

In the new list, only the group of northern peoples “violate” the alphabetic principle. The reason is legal. A federal law, ”On Guaranteeing the Rights of Indigenous Numerically Small Peoples of the Russian Federation,” signed by Boris Yeltsin in April 1999, provided a special list, enumerating 45 “numerically small” (malochislennye) peoples, thus creating a motivation to preserve the group in census dictionaries as well. Prior to the law, the group included 26 peoples of the North. In February 1993, the list has been supplemented by three peoples from south-western Siberia: Shor, Teleut, Kumanda. A series of negotiations was undertaken between leaders of various groups and the government, as many groups whose population numbers were below the threshold of 50,000, claimed the privileges associated with the status of “a numerically small people.” The process has not yet been completed, as the Dagestan government claimed exemption from the law and has not provided an official list of Dagestani small-numbered groups. Precisely because the list of these peoples was incomplete, the IEA census commission decided not to use the grouping in census dictionaries of nationalities.

The attempts initiated under Stalin to reduce the number of ethnic categories by joining smaller groups to larger neighbors were reversed already in the first post-Stalin census of 1959. Since that time, every census officially acknowledged more and more groups via its dictionaries of nationalities. The “ethnic revival” of the 1990s made public and institutionalized through various NGOs many ethnic groups, previously known only to ethnographers and linguists. As most of these groups preserved their separate identities, the new dictionaries introduced them into the future census nationalities categorization. Besides the already mentioned Andi-Dido peoples of Dagestan, many groups, previously counted among Altai (Teleut, Kumanda, Telengete, Tubalar, Chelkan) and Tatar (Nagaibak, Kriashen, Siberian Tatar, Karagash) were added. The issue of Kriashen proved to be the most sensitive, and stays unresolved due to the strongest opposition from Tatarstan.

As many peoples are constituted by groups, with marked differences in language and culture, often claiming separate identity, a provision has been made for separate coding of such groups, though their population numbers would be added to larger entities when the census results are published. The most notable example here is Mordva-Moksha and Mordva-Erzia, speaking two different and mutually incomprehensible, though closely related Finno-Ugric Mordovian languages. Other examples include Ossetians (with Iron and Dighor, speaking different languages and professing respectively Islam and Christianity), Armenians (with a special group of Cherkessogai, speaking Circassian language), Greeks (with Urums, speaking their own vernacular of a Turkic linguistic group), Georgians (with five groups characterized either by ethno-cultural and confessional differences, or speaking in their own languages: Adjar, Ingiloi, Laz, Mingrelian, and Svan) Two small groups—Aliutor and Yug, formerly speaking their own separate languages and preserving to a degree their separate identities, were recognized as subgroups of Koriak and Ket respectively. A traditional division of Mari into “east-meadow” and “mountain” (speaking their own languages) has been preserved. As Mennonites often claimed a separate origin and some of them still adhere to the idea that they form a separate people (neither Dutch, nor German), they are listed after Germans as a subgroup of the latter (and receive a special code). Karagash are listed after Nogai, as they speak a vernacular very close to the Nogai language (previously they were counted among the so called Astrakhan Tatars, and finally added to Tatars). Tatars have subgroups of Astrakhan and Mishar. A mountaineer subgroup of Tuvinian origin (Todja) is listed after Tuvinians (they are included into the federal law on the “numerically small peoples”). Similar subgroups with special cultural characteristics were registered among Turkmen (Trukhmen of the Stavropol region), Finns (Inkeri, or Ingermanland Finns), Chechens (Akkins), and Estonians (Setu). These 24 subgroups, most of which have not been mentioned in Soviet censuses after 1926 thus formed a substantial increment to the previous 1989 census list.