Ethnic Groups of Russia (Alexander the Liberator)

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Russia is a multi-ethnic state with an estimated 180 to 200 ethnic groups designated as nationalities; the populations of these groups vary enormously, from millions (e.g., Russians and Tatars) to under 10,000 (e.g., Samis and Kets).

Ethnic Groups[]

Name	Main Area	Info
Germans	Saratov Oblast	The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages. Germans constitute the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, German society has been characterized by a Catholic-Protestant divide.
Komi	Komi	They may have been much more widespread in the past. Scandinavians knew of prosperous Bjarmians who were settled in the area of modern Arkhangelsk. A medieval Komi state was known as Principality of Great Perm. Their northernmost subgroup is also known as the Komi-Izhemtsy (from the name of the river Izhma) or Iz'vataz.
Russians	All of Russia	Russians (Russian: русские, russkiye) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the nation-state of Russia. The Russians share many cultural traits with their fellow East Slavic counterparts, specifically Belarusians and Ukrainians. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion. The Russian language is the official language in Russia excluding the Imperial Autonomous Territories.
Rusyns	Ukraine	Rusyns, also known as Ruthenes (Rusyn: Русины Rusynŷ; also sometimes referred to as Руснакы Rusnakŷ – Rusnaks), are a primarily diasporicethnic group who speak an East Slavic language known as Rusyn. The Rusyns descend from Ruthenian peoples who did not adopt the use of the ethnonym "Ukrainian" in the early 20th century. As residents of the Carpathian Mountains region, Rusyns are also sometimes associated with the Slovak highlander community of Gorals (literally, "Highlanders").
Belarusians	Belarus	Belarusians (Belarusian: беларусы, biełarusy, or Byelorussians (from the Byelorussian SSR), are an East Slavic ethnic group who are native to modern-day Belarus and the immediate region.
Ossetians	Ossetia	An Iranian ethnic group of the Caucasus Mountains, indigenous to the region known as Ossetia. They speak Ossetic, an Eastern Iranian (Alanic) language of the Indo-European languages family, with most also fluent in Russian as a second language. The Ossetian language is neither closely related to nor mutually intelligible with any other language of the family today. Ossetic, a remnant of the Scytho-Sarmatian dialect group which was once spoken across the Steppe, is the only Iranian language native to Europe. The Ossetians are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christian, with a sizeable minority professing Uatsdin and Islam.
Georgians	Georgia	Georgians arose from the ancient Colchian and Iberian civilizations. After Christianization of Iberia by Saint Nino they became one of the first who embraced the faith of Jesus in the early fourth century and now the majority of Georgians are Eastern Orthodox Christians and most follow their national autocephalous Georgian Orthodox Church. There are also small Georgian Catholic and Muslim communities in Tbilisi and Adjara, as well as a significant number of irreligious Georgians.
Lithuanians	Lithuania	The largest of the Baltic ethnic groups, their native language is Lithuanian, one of only two surviving members of the Baltic language family. Most Lithuanians belong to the Roman Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Evangelical Lutherans.
Estonians	Estonia	The oldest known endonym of the Estonians is Maarahvas. Eesti, the modern endonym of Estonia, is thought to be derived from the word Aestii, the name given by the ancient Germanic people to the Baltic people living northeast of the Vistula River. The Roman historian Tacitus in 98 AD was the first to mention the "Aestii" people, and early Scandinavians called the land south of the Gulf of Finland "Eistland" (Eistland is also the current word in Icelandic for Estonia), and the people "eistr". Proto-Estonians (as well as other speakers of the Finnish language group) were also called Chuds (чудь) in Old East Slavic chronicles.
Altai	Altai	The Altay were originally nomadic, with a lifestyle based on hunting/trapping and pastoralism, but many of them settled as a result of Russian influence. Some remain Shamanists, while others have converted to the Orthodox (the Altai mission took shape under Saint Makarii Glukharev, Apostle to the Altai.) In 1904, a religious movement called Ak Jang or Burkhanism arose, perhaps in response to Russian colonization.
Tuvans	Tuva	Tuvans have historically been cattle-breeding nomads, tending to their herds of goats, sheep, camels, reindeer, cattle and yaks for the past thousands of years. They have traditionally lived in yurts covered by felt or chums covered with birch bark or hide that they relocate seasonally as they move to newer pastures.
Latvians	Latvia	Latvians (Latvian: latvieši; Livonian: lețlizt) are a Baltic ethnic group, native to what is modern-day Latvia and the immediate geographical region. They are occasionally also referred to as Letts, although this term is obsolescent. Latvians share a common Latvian language, culture and history.
Khakas	Khakassia	The Khakas, or Khakass, are a Turkic people, who live in southern Siberia. They speak the Khakas language, which belongs to the family of Turkic languages. They have dark skin and eyes and coarse dark hair and beards. Their faces are wide, the cheekbones not very prominent. The Khakass tend to be short, with the average male height being 162-164 cm. In some Khakass groups characteristics of the Finno-Ugrian ethnic groups are discernible.
Crimean Tatars	Crimea	Crimean Tatars (Crimean Tatar: Qırımtatarlar, Turkish: Kırım Tatarları, Russian: Крымские Татары, Ukrainian: Кримськi Татари) are a Turkic ethnic group that formed in the Crimean Peninsula during the 13th–17th centuries, primarily from the Turkic tribes that moved to the land now known as Crimea in Eastern Europe from the Asian steppes beginning in the 10th century, with contributions from the pre-Cuman population of Crimea. Since 2014 Crimean Tatars were officially recognized as indigenous peoples of Russia.
Ukrainians	Ukraine	Ukrainians (Ukrainian: українці, ukrayintsi) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to the Imperial Autonomous Territory of Ukraine. The modern name ukrayintsi (Ukrainians) derives from Ukrayina (Ukraine), a name first documented in 1187. Several scientific theories attempt to explain the etymology of the term. In the last few centuries the population of the Ukraine experienced periods of Polonization and Russification, but preserved a common culture and a sense of common identity.
Buryats	Buryatia	Buryats share many customs with their Mongolian cousins, including nomadic herding and erecting yurts for shelter. Today, the majority of Buryats live in and around Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Imperial Autonomous Territory, although many live more traditionally in the countryside. They speak in a dialect of Mongolian language called Buryat.
Kazakhs	Kazakhstan	The Kazakhs (also spelled Kazaks, Qazaqs; Kazakh: Қазақ, Qazaq, قازاق‎, Qazaqtar, Қазақтар, قازاقتار‎) are a Turkic people who mainly inhabit the southern part of Eastern Europe and the Ural Mountains and northern parts of Central Asia, the region also known as the Eurasian sub-continent. Kazakh identity is of medieval origin and was strongly shaped by the foundation of the Kazakh Khanate between 1456 and 1465, when several tribes under the rule of the sultans Zhanibek and Kerey departed from the Khanate of Abu'l-Khayr Khan.
Kyrgyz	Kyrgyzstan	Kyrgyz are predominantly Muslims. Islam was first introduced by Arab traders who traveled along the Silk Road in the seventh and eighth century.
Romanians	Moldova	Moldovans are the largest population group of the Imperial Autonomous Territory of Moldova. There is significant controversy over whether to classify them as Moldovan or Romanian, and it has been a heated topic on the separatist and Romanian unification movements.
Karelians	Karelia	Karelians (Karelian: karjalaižet) are a Balto-Finnic ethnic group who are native to the Northern European historical region of Karelia, which is today split between Finland and Russia. Karelians have been declining in numbers in modern times significantly due to a number of factors. These include low birthrates (characteristic of the region in general) and especially Russification, due to the predominance of Russian language and culture. By 2002, there were only 65,651 Karelians in the Karelian Oblast (65.1% of the number in 1926, including the Karelian regions taken from Finland which were not counted in 1926), and Karelians made up only 9.2% of the population in their homeland. Russians, meanwhile, were 76.6% of the population in Karelia. This trend continues to this day, and may cause the disappearance of Karelians as a distinct group.
Yakuts	Yakutia	The Yakuts are divided into two basic groups based on geography and economics. Yakuts in the north are historically semi-nomadic hunters, fishermen, while southern Yakuts engage in animal husbandry focusing on horses and cattle.
Nenets	Nenets and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs	They bred the Samoyed dog to help herd their reindeer and pull their sleds, and European explorers later used those dogs for polar expeditions, because they have adapted so well to the arctic conditions. The Nenets gave the Polar Bear a special place in their religious life. Tundra wolves can be a source of considerable economic loss, as they prey on the reindeer herds which are the livelihood of some Nenets families. Fish was a major component of the Nenet's diet. They had a shamanistic and animistic belief system which stressed respect for the land and its resources. They had a clan-based social structure. The Nenets shaman is called a Tadibya.
Siberian Yupik	Chukchi Peninsula	Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits, are a Yupik Eskimo people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far northeast of the Russian Empire and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Central Siberian Yupik (also known as Yuit), a Yupik language of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages. They are also known as Siberian or Asian Eskimo was officially assigned to them in 1931, at the brief time of the campaign of support of indigenous cultures in the Soviet Union. Their self-designation is Yupighyt (йупигыт) meaning "true people". Sirenik Eskimos also live in that area, but their extinct language, Sireniki Eskimo, shows many peculiarities among Eskimo languages and is mutually unintelligible with the neighboring Siberian Yupik languages.
Kalmyks	Kalmykia	They are the Oirats in Russia, whose ancestors migrated from Dzungaria in 1607. They created the Kalmyk Khanate in 1630–1724 in Russia's North Caucasus territory. Today they form a majority in the autonomous republic of Kalmykia on the western shore of the Caspian Sea.
Tatars	Tatarstan	The largest group by far that the Russians have called "Tatars" are the Volga Tatars, native to the Volga region (Tatarstan and Bashkortostan), who for this reason are often also simply known as "Tatars", with their language known as the Tatar language. As of 2002 they had an estimated population close to 6 million. There is a common belief that Russians and Tatars are closely intermingled, illustrated by the famous saying "scratch any Russian just a little and you will discover a Tatar underneath" and the fact that a number of noble families in Tsardom of Russia and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had Tatar origins; however, genetics show that majority of Russians form a cluster with Northern and Eastern Europeans (especially Belarusians, Ukrainians and Poles), and are relatively far from Tatar peoples. Due to multicultural marriage many inhabitants in Russia have Tatar as well as Slavic roots. Especially in Tatarstan Russian-Tatar marriages are very common.
Abkhaz	Abkhazia	The Abkhaz language belongs to the isolate Northwest Caucasian language family, also known as Abkhaz–Adyghe or North Pontic family, which groups the dialectic continuum spoken by the Abaza–Abkhaz (Abazgi) and Adyghe ("Circassians" in English). The Abkhaz is closely ethnically related to Circassian. Classical sources speak of several tribes dwelling in the region. There are also three subgroups of the Abkhaz people. The Bzyb (Бзыҧ, Bzyph) reside in the Bzyb River region, and speak their own dialect. The Abzhui (Абжьыуа, Abzhwa) live in the Kodori River region, and also speak their own dialect, which the Abkhaz literary language is based upon. Finally, there is the Zamurzakan who reside in the southeast of Abkhazia.
Armenians	Armenia and Artsakh	Most Armenians adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church, a non-Chalcedonian church, which is also the world's oldest national church. Christianity began to spread in Armenia soon after Jesus' death, due to the efforts of two of his apostles, St. Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew. In the early fourth century, the Kingdom of Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity as a state religion. Armenian is an Indo-European language. It has two mutually intelligible and written forms: Eastern Armenian, today spoken mainly in Armenia, Artsakh, Iran, and other parts of Russia; and Western Armenian, used in the historical Western Armenia and, after the Armenian Genocide, primarily in the Armenian diasporan communities. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots.
Poles	Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus	The Poles are a West Slavic ethnic group native to Poland in Central Europe who share a common ancestry, culture, history and are native speakers of the Polish language. A wide-ranging Polish diaspora (the Polonia) exists throughout Europe, the Americas, and in Australasia. Despite the independence of Poland in 1921, there is an estimated 1,009,691 ethnic Poles living in Russia.