Population and Society of The --Soviet Union--
The Soviet Union is one of the world's most ethnically diverse countries, with more than 150 distinct ethnic groups within its borders. The total population is estimated at over 719 million in 2007. In the last years of the Soviet Union, the majority of the population were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%). Other ethnic groups included the Belorussians, Georgians, Wikipedia:Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Tajiks, Chechens, Hungarians, and others. Mainly because of differences in birth rates among the Soviet nationalities, the share of the population that is Russian steadily declines in the post-World War II period.
Nationalities
The extensive multinational empire that the Bolsheviks inherited after their revolution was created by Tsarist expansion over some four centuries. Some nationality groups came into the empire voluntarily, others were brought in by force. Generally, the Wikipedia:Russians and most of the non-Russian subjects of the empire shared little in common—culturally, religiously, or linguistically. More often than not, two or more diverse nationalities were collocated on the same territory. Therefore, national antagonisms built up over the years not only against the Russians but often between some of the subject nations as well.
For many years, Soviet leaders maintained that the underlying causes of conflict between nationalities of the Soviet Union had been eliminated and that the Soviet Union consisted of a family of nations living harmoniously together. In the 1920s and early 1930s, the government conducted a policy of korenizatsiya (indigenisation) of local governments in an effort to recruit non-Russians into the new Soviet political institutions and to reduce the conflict between Russians and the minority nationalities. One area in which the Soviet leaders made concessions perhaps more out of necessity than out of conviction, was language policy. To increase literacy and mass education, the government encouraged the development and publication in many of the "national languages" of the minority groups. While Russian became a required subject of study in all Soviet schools in 1938, in the mainly non-Russian areas the chief language of instruction was the local language or languages. This practice led to widespread bilingualism in the educated population, though among smaller nationalities and among elements of the population that were heavily affected by the immigration of Russians, linguistic assimilation also was common, in which the members of a given non-Russian nationality lost facility in the historic language of their group.
The concessions granted national cultures and the limited autonomy tolerated in the union republics in the 1920s led to the development of national elites and a heightened sense of national identity. Subsequent repression and Russianization fostered resentment against domination by Moscow and promoted further growth of national consciousness. National feelings were also exacerbated in the Soviet multinational state by increased competition for resources, services, and jobs, and by the policy of the leaders in Moscow to move workers -- mainly Russians -- to the peripheral areas of the country, the homelands of non-Russian nationalities.
By the end of the 1980s, encouraged in part by Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, unofficial groups formed around a great many social, cultural, and political issues. In some non-Russian regions ostensible green movements or ecological movements were thinly disguised national movements in support of the protection of natural resources and the national patrimony generally from control by ministries in Moscow.
Religious groups
Although the Soviet Union is officially atheist and once suppressed religion, according to various Soviet and Western sources, over one-third of the people in the Soviet Union profess religious belief. Christianity and Islam had the most believers. The state was separated from church by the Decree of Council of People's Comissars on January 23,1918. Two-thirds of the Soviet population, however, have no religious beliefs. About half the people, including members of the CPSU and high-level government officials, professed atheism. Official figures on the number of religious believers in the Soviet Union were not available in 2006.
Christians belonged to various churches: Orthodox, which had the largest number of followers; Catholic; and Baptist and various other Protestant sects.
Government persecution of Christianity continued unabated until the fall of the Brezhnev regime and are still accusations today, with Stalin's reign the most repressive. Stalin is quoted as saying that "The Party cannot be neutral towards religion. It conducts an anti-religious struggle against any and all religious prejudices." However in World War II the repression against the Russian orthodox Church temporarily ceased as it was perceived as "instrument of patriotic unity" in the war against "the western Teutonics". Repression against Russian Orthodox restarted from ca. 1946 onwards and more forcibly under Nikita Khrushchev. In 1914, before the revolution, there were over 54,000 churches, while during the early years of Stalin's reign that number was counted in the hundreds. By 1988 the number had decreased to roughly 7,000, only to rise at 8,000 by 2005.
Although there are many ethnic Jews in the Soviet Union, actual practice of Judaism is rare. In 1928, Stalin created the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the far east of what is now Russia to try to create a "Soviet Zion" for a proletarian Jewish culture to develop.
The overwhelming majority of the Islamic faithful are Sunni. The Azerbaijanis, who were Shiite, were one major exception. Because Islamic religious tenets and social values of Muslims are closely interrelated, religion appeared to have a greater influence on Muslims than on either Christians or other believers. The largest groups of Muslims in the Soviet Union reside in the Central Asian republics (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Wikipedia:Uzbekistan) and Kazakhstan, though substantial numbers also resided in Central Russia (principally in Bashkiria and Tatarstan), in the North Caucasian part of Russia (Chechnya, Dagestan, and other autonomous republics) and in Transcaucasia (principally in Azerbaijan but also certain regions of Georgia).
Other religions, which are practiced by a relatively small number of believers, include buddhism, lamaism, and shamanism, a religion based on spiritualism. The role of religion in the daily lives of Soviet citizens thus varied greatly.
