Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 46 (4) 2018   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2018.46.4.114-122

Annotation:  Ivory Figurines and the Symbolic Context of a Paleolithic Dwelling at Kovrizhka IV on the Lower Viti On the Interpretation of Stelae in the Cult Complexes of Northern Mesopotamia During the Pre-Pottery A Study of Finds from Excavation I at Suchu Island, the Lower Amur (the 1974 Field Season) Jade Artifacts from Bronze Age Cemeteries in the Cis-Olkhon Area, the Western Coast of Lake Baikal Sherubai-1: An Andronovo (Fedorovka) Cemetery in Central Kazakhstan Technologies Involved in Manufacturing Wooden Horns for the Ceremonial Masks of Horses from the Pazy On the Time and Context of the Earliest Bronze Mirrors in the Northern Pontic Region Procession of Horsemen on a Gold Plaque from the Siberian Collection of Peter I A Mongolian Era Female Headdress from the Upper Ob Basin Ancient Irrigated Soils of the Bozok Archaeological District, Northern Kazakhstan (11th to 12th Cent Chthonic Animals in the Traditional Buryat Culture Reconstruction of Wooden and Earthen Buildings in 17th to 18th-Century Russian Forts in Siberia: The Application of the Blue-Intensity Method for Dating Wooden Buildings in Siberia The Eastern Slavic Population of Central Asia After the Collapse of the USSR: Ethno-Demographic Proc An Unusual Burial of a Xiongnu-Sarmatian Era Warrior in the Western Siberian Forest-Steppe: Results Armed Violence Among the Altai Mountains Pastoralists of the Xiongnu-Sarmatian Age “Abandoned, Tied, Flexed”: An Anthropological Study of an Unusual Late Sarmatian Burial in the South   

The Eastern Slavic Population of Central Asia After the Collapse
of the USSR: Ethno-Demographic Processes

A.V. Shustov

Yaroslavl Demidov State University, Sovetskaya 14, Yaroslavl, 150003, Russia

At the end of the Soviet period, Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians) made up over one fifth of the population of Central Asia. In the USSR, Eastern Slavs were the leading ethnic group, playing the key role in the multinational state. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Slavs, in essence, became an ethnic minority. The new ethno-political situation had a negative effect on their natural increase, which dropped below population replacement level; whereas emigration from Central Asia showed an abrupt rise. As a result, the absolute numbers of Eastern Slavs decreased by half, and their proportion in the population decreased by nearly two thirds. Before the collapse of the USSR, their share in this region was 1/4 to 1/5; by the mid-2010s it dropped to 1/12 to 1/13. In Kazakhstan, the decrease was much slower than in other Central Asian republics, so Kazakhstan has become the place where three quarters of Central Asian Eastern Slavs concentrate. This republic therefore has a good chance to remain the most “Slavic” in the region, whereas in other republics of Central Asia the future preservation of the Slavic population is problematic.

Keywords: Central Asia, Eastern Slavs, population dynamics, ethnic policy, depopulation, emigration