Expert explains the criteria of determining an indigenous group in Russia
Deputy Director for Research of the Institute of International Relations Vadim Kozlov says the name of the science of peoples itself has changed throughout Russian history, “From mid-19th century to 1917, ethnography was the most popular option, although not the only. Sometimes ethnology was used as well. In the first Soviet decade, the second word became more and more popular, emphasizing the need to formulate theoretical approaches to studying ethnic groups, not just describing them. The next milestone was in the late 1920s, when ethnology was claimed a bourgeois term. Finally, this word was once again claimed the more suitable option in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
In 1917, the Commission on the Studies of the Tribal Composition of the Border Provinces of Russia, or CSTC for short, was established at the Russian Academy of Sciences. It mostly concentrated on studying the ethnic groups of the Russian Far North. In 1930, it became the Institute of the Studies of the Peoples of USSR, and then the Institute of Ethnography and Anthropology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
In the definition of the United Nations, indigenous people (the official term preferred by the organization) are local people of a country or terrirtory who are a minority in relation to the contemporary population and preserve their cultural identity. There are no formal criteria, but among the important factors are the group’s links to its territory, cultural uniqueness, and the status of a minority (which may or may not be legally defined).
Based on this, the Russian legislators formalized the necessary criteria in the federal law On the guarantees of the rights of indigenous minority peoples of the Russian Federation, first promulgated in 1999.
The law, in particular, specifies the number of no more than 50,000 representatives of the ethnic group for it to be considered an indigenous minority. There are currently 47 groups in the list, mostly inhabiting the Russian Far North, Far East, and Siberia.
As per the latest census (2021), the smallest indigenous ethnicity is Kerek (Chukotka Autonomous Okrug), with 23 people. There are several more groups with only a few dozen people. Since the list was first approved, none of the indigenous peoples has disappeared from it.