MN: Moscow, a City of Ethnic Diversity
Reply-To: [email protected]
Sender: [email protected]
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 08:02:26 +0300 (EEST)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: MN: Moscow, a City of Ethnic Diversity
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Felix Corley <[email protected]>
MN: Moscow, a City of Ethnic Diversity
Moscow, a City of Ethnic Diversity
by Yevgenia Obukhova Vremya MN
Moscow News
April 24, 2002
Only the upcoming census will show what ethnic groups live in the
Russian capital, and how large they are
Don't Trust Statistics
During the 13 years since the latest census, Moscow city authorities
have not bothered to get even a rough picture of the capital's ethnic
mix or an estimate of the size of each ethnic group living here. Here
is just one example: A 1994 micro-census taken in the capital showed
that Russians accounted for 90.5 percent of the population. Yet some
experts believe that, compared to 1989, the proportion of Russians has
declined while others are convinced that the opposite is true.
"Various figures are being cited: Say, there are two million ethnic
Azeris or one million Armenians or 40,000 Chechens in Moscow," says
Djana Logasheva, Cand. Sc. (Hist.), deputy chief of the Moscow House
of Ethnic Culture Information and Analysis Department. "But where do
these figures come from? Who made the calculation?" According to
Valentin Nikitin, chairman of the State Duma Nationalities Committee,
since 1989 random sampling of the capital's ethnic groups has been
conducted on a regular basis. What, then, is the origin of myths about
the share of a particular ethnic group in the city's population?
"The trouble is that there is now a vast number of quasi-research
firms in the sphere of ethnic sociology that specialize in conducting
polls on commission," explains Vasily Filippov, section chief at the
Russian Academy of Sciences Center for Cultural and Regional Studies.
"Information coming from such firms cannot be trusted: It is virtually
impossible to conduct a representative ethno-sociological survey in
Moscow. There is no credible information about the ethnic or
demographic mix of Moscow's population. Anyone claiming to have such
information is either misled or deliberately tries to mislead the
public."
The core problem is illegal migration. According to the Interior
Ministry, there are between 1.5 million and three million illegal
aliens in Moscow. This wide disparity of estimate shows that neither
the authorities nor law enforcement agencies or ethnographers have any
reliable information. A way out is a target-specific research project.
"Expert appraisal procedure is an American invention," Vasily Filippov
says. "It is based on informed intuitive judgment by experts. The
algorithm is simple. First, information is gathered and collated from
various state and government agencies such as the police, internal
visa and registration departments, the migration committee, and so
forth. These departmental statistics are shown to experts who assess
the data credibility and offer substantiated estimates of the size of
particular ethnic groups. Then the experts study each other's
estimates, upon which mean estimates are obtained. This is far cheaper
and more effective than polling people in the street."
Will Census Help?
But there is no need for this kind of study now, it seems. With the
census not far off, we will soon learn what ethnic groups live in the
capital, what proportion of the total population they constitute, and
so forth. Or will we?
"It is not known how many ethnic groups are represented in the
capital," Djana Logasheva says. "The list of ethnic groups that
Muscovites are to choose from in defining their ethnic identity in the
course of the census has yet to be finalized; not even the concept of
ethnicity per se has been defined. Take, for instance, Bulgars. Are
they a separate ethnic group or are they Tatars?"
Last March, the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology did submit to
the Duma Nationalities Committee a list of 171 ethnic groups. Now,
prior to approval, it is to be reduced to 158-160. Minor ethnic
communities will also be covered by the census, but then they will be
incorporated into larger ethnic groups.
Arguably the biggest snag that will come up in the course of the
census is the problem of ethnic identity. If someone wants to be
recorded as an ethnic Korean, Korean it will be. No one can predict
how children of mixed parentage will identify themselves or how the
question about the native tongue will be answered by, say, Moscow's
ethnic Armenians or Daghestanis, who speak only Russian but are sure
that their native tongue is the language of their people. If the
correlation of various ethnic groups has drastically changed, compared
to 1989, the cause could be not so much migration as the freedom to
choose one's ethnic identity. After all, whereas in the past it paid
to be a Russian, now people are no longer sure about that.
The bottom line is that we don't know anything about the people we
live side by side with, and neither do the city authorities. Nothing
is known about the settlement patterns of various ethnic groups in
Moscow (old settlement boundaries are now blurred) or about the ethnic
breakdown of various social and professional groups. So all myths
about the so-called ethnic crime are just that - myths.
MN File
Moscow city population according to census
1979 1989
Total population 8 057 395 8 875 579
Russians 7 265 601 7 963 246
Twenty-eight main ethnic groups of more than 1,000 members, including
(%)
Ukrainians 2,6 2,85
Jews 2,77 1,98
Tatars 1,64 1,78
Belarusians 0,75 0,82
Armenians 0,4 0,5
In all, more than 120 ethnic groups
--
==============================================================
MINELRES - a forum for discussion on minorities in Central&Eastern
Europe
Submissions: [email protected]
Subscription/inquiries: [email protected]
List archive: http://www.riga.lv/minelres/archive.htm
==============================================================