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Measuring Nationality Trends in the Soviet Union: A Research Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Ellen Jones  and
Fred W. Grupp
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Extract

Preliminary results from the 1979 Soviet census reveal that non-Slavic minorities make up over a quarter of the populace. Ethnic diversity has been and will remain, at least for the foreseeable future, an important consideration in Soviet policy making. Analysis of nationality trends is thus a key aspect of Western study of Soviet domestic politics. Assessment of Soviet labor force prospects, for example, depends in part on the occupational skills, Russian fluency, and geographical mobility of the Soviets of Muslim heritage in the fast-growing southern tier of the USSR. Soviet military capabilities will be increasingly affected by a rising proportion of Muslims of draft age. In addition, long-term population projections hinge on an evaluation of how rapidly these same groups will exhibit the low fertility associated with demographic modernization.

Type
Discussion
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , Spring 1982 , pp. 112 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1982

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References

1. Basic party policy on the national question is articulated in the Communist Party program (see Materialy XXII s “ezda KPSS [Moscow, 1961], p. 190). See also ” Natsional'naia politika KPSS,” Kratkiislovar’ spravochnik agitatora ipolitinformatora (Moscow, 1977), p. 50 and “Rastsvet i sblizheniia sotsialisticheskikh natsii,” Kratkii slovar', pp. 73-75.

2. “A review of some aspects of social development reveals a similar pattern of overall progress but little real change in the relative standing of national groups in terms of such indicators as urbanization or the proportion of population with secondary or higher education,” Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “The Dialectics of Nationalism in the USSR,” Problems of Communism, 23, no. 3 (May-June 1974): 1-22.

3. ” … although by almost every measure there has been substantial movement towards equalization of nationalities during the Soviet era, this movement is strongest for the least demanding indicator (incomplete secondary education), and especially for the youngest age cohorts. Once one compares the equalization of higher educational attainment and skilled manpower, whether for the entire nationalities or for their urban and rural populations separately, one observes significant remaining dispersion among nationalities,” Brian D. Silver, “Levels of Sociocultural Development Among Soviet Nationalities: A Partial Test of the Equalization Hypothesis,” American Political Science Review, 68 (1974): 1618-37.

4. Ellen Jones and Fred W. Grupp, “Dimensions of Ethnic Assimilation in the Soviet Union,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, New Haven, Connecticut, October 10-13, 1979.

5. In discussing measurement problems, we do not deal here with the use of republic statistics as indicators of change among nationalities. The major difficulty with that approach is the fact that root nationalities compose only a portion of the population in each republic. Indeed, according to the 1979 census in two of the fifteen republics, the titular nationality constitutes less than half of the population, in eight other republics less than three-fourths.

6. Partiinoe stroitel'stvo, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1971), p. 69.

7. Ibid. Population figures are found in Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1970 goda, 7 vols. (Moscow, 1972-73), 4: 9-11.

8. Age-specific membership data for Uzbekistan and Belorussia indicate that less than 1 percent of the membership of both republics’ party organizations is below the age of twenty. See Kommunisticheskaia partiia Uzbekistana v tsifrakh (Tashkent, 1979), p. 326 and Kommunisticheskaia partiia Belorussii v tsifrakh (Minsk, 1978), pp. 121-23.

9. Jewish age-distribution data are available for the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic only. Slightly less than 40 percent of all Soviet Jews resided there in 1970. The age distribution of Jews in figure 1 is based on those data.

10. Rigby, T. H., Communist Party Membership in the USSR, 1917-1967 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 356 Google Scholar and Terry McNeil, “The Party and the People: A Profile in Political Recruitment,” Radio Liberty report no. 364/76, July 20, 1976. Other examples of the use of Communist Party data without accounting for age-group structure include: Leonard, Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 479-80, 589–90Google Scholar; Grey, Hodnett, Leadership in the Soviet National Republics: A Quantitative Study of Recruitment Policy (Ontario, Canada: Mosaic Press, 1978), p. 40Google Scholar; H61ene Carrere d'Encausse, Decline of an Empire: The Soviet Socialist Republics in Revolt (New York: Newsweek Books, 1979), pp. 133-38; David, Lane, Politics and Society in the USSR (New York: Random House, 1970, pp. 132–34 Google Scholar; and Zev Katz, Rosemarie Rogers, and Frederic Harned, eds., Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities (New York: Macmillan, 1975, p. 449 Google Scholar. One noteworthy exception is Hough, Jerry and Fainsod, Merle, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 352Google Scholar, where percentage of party membership is based on the population twenty years of age and older.

11. Silver, “Levels of Sociocultural Development,” pp. 1627-28.

12. Lewis, Rowland, and Clem standardize both secondary specialists and specialists with higher education to the population, aged sixteen to fifty-nine. Because the number of teen-agers who have completed higher education is very small, our scores for specialists with higher education were computed using the population aged twenty-five to fifty-nine (Robert H. Lewis, Richard H. Rowland, and Ralph S., Clem, Nationality and Population Change in Russia and the USSR: An Evaluation of Census Data, 1897-1970 [New York: Praeger, 1976], p. 337Google Scholar).

13. Hodnett, , Leadership, pp. 98–112Google Scholar.

14. Age-group data for Kazakhstan are available in Itogi, 2: 32-33. Age-specific nationality data for Kazakhstan are found in Itogi, 4: 378.

15. Zev Katz and Frederic Harned, “Comparative Tables for the Major Soviet Nationalities,” in Katz, Roger, and Harned, eds., Handbook, pp. 435-66. Katz and Harned also use these (uncorrected) scores to create rankings for political vitality, sociocultural development, and overall development. For other examples of inappropriate use of student data, see Rakowska-Harmstone, “Dialectics of Nationalism,” p. 5; M. Mobin Shorish, “Who Shall Be Educated: Selection and Integration in Soviet Central Asia,” in Edward, Allworth, ed., The Nationality Question in Soviet Central Asia (New York: Praeger, 1973, pp. 86–99 Google Scholar; and Jonathan Pool et al., “Education,” in Ellen, Mickiewicz, ed., Handbook of Soviet Social Science Data (New York: Free Press, 1973, p. 153 Google Scholar. One study that does standardize student population to a young age group is that of Lewis, Rowland, and Clem. The comparison group used by Lewis and his coauthors for both specialized secondary students and students with higher education is the group aged sixteen to twenty-four (Nationality and Population Change, pp. 340-41). We employ this comparison group in computing specialized secondary scores only.

16. Our decision to employ the group aged seventeen to twenty-nine as the student-age pool for higher education is based on the limited available data on age of students. Age breakdowns for survey samples of full-time students suggest that 85 to 90 percent are between eighteen and twenty-four (V. T. Lisovskii and A. V. Dmitr'ev, Lichnost’ studenta [Leningrad University, 1974], pp. 5–8 ; S. N. Ikonnikova, Molodezh — sotsiologicheskii i sotsial'no-psikhologicheskii analiz [Leningrad University, 1974]; L. A. Zelenov et al., “Esteticheskie vzgliady i vkusy sovremennogo studenchestva,” in A. A. Terent'ev, ed., Molodezh i sovremennost'. Opyt konkretno-sotsiologicheskikh issledovanii [Gor'kii, 1976], pp. 35–45 Google Scholar). Other studies of students have sampled age groups aged eighteen to twenty-three, seventeen to twenty-three, and seventeen to twenty-nine (see V. P. Mikhailova, “Vliianie razlichnykh faktorov na dlitel'nost’ posledstviia,” in Sovremennye psikhologopedagogicheskie problemy vysshei shkoly [Leningrad, 1974], pp. 30-35; G. I., Akinshchikova, “Morfo-fiziologicheskie osobennosti studencheskogo vozrasta,” Sovremennye psikhologo-pedagogicheskie problemy, pp. 36-41Google Scholar; and M. D. Dvoriashchina, “O sootnosheniiakh uspevaemosti i dinamiki intellektual'nogo razvitiia studentov vuzov,” Sovremennye psikhologo-pedagogicheskie problemy, pp. 49-58). As Soviet authors point out, the average age of full-time day students is much younger than that of evening and correspondence students (see B. G. Anan'ev, “Psikhofiziologiia studencheskogo vozrasta i usvoenie znanii,” Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1972, no. 7, pp. 17–26Google Scholar). National statistics on the age-structure of students in all divisions indicate that less than 5 percent are under eighteen, but do not provide information on the upper bounds (see Vestnik statistiki, 1973, no. 10, p. 96). Because the nationality data includes evening and correspondence students as well as day students, we decided to employ a somewhat older comparison group (seventeen to twenty-nine) for the college data.

17. Sawyer, Thomas E., The Jewish Minority in the Soviet Union (Westview Press, 1979), pp. 46–47 Google Scholar.

18. The participation rate for 1974 to 1975 has been adjusted to account for emigration during the seventies.

19. Murray Feshbach and Stephen Rapawy, “Soviet Population and Manpower Trends and Pplicies,” in Soviet Economy in a New Perspective (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 128.

20. Jeremy R. Azrael, “Emergent Nationality Problems in the USSR,” in Jeremy R. Azrael, ed., Soviet Nationality Policies and Practices (New York: Praeger, 1978, p. 367 Google Scholar.

21. Ibid., pp. 372-73.

22. M. Ellen Jones, “Soviet Civil-Military Relations: A Focus on the Military District,” in The Soviet Military District in Peace and War: Manpower, Manning, and Mobilization (Washington, D.C.: General Electric Company Tempo, Center for Advanced Studies, 1979), pp. P1-P40Google Scholar. This monograph is a summary report of the proceedings and results of a workshop held April 9-11, 1979.

23. Itogi, 4: 20-27.