Originally from The Journal of Eurasian Law (JEL)

I. Introduction

The huge Eurasian landmass that today contains the fifteen independent former Soviet republics has always been home to a vast number of different nationalities.1 The first (and only) census of the Russian Empire, conducted in 1897, did not directly ask respondents about their nationalities, but rather was designed to identify the ethnographic makeup of Russia by asking respondents about their native languages.2 According to the data gathered in the 1897 census, approximately 100 different native languages were reported as spoken in the Russian Empire.3 The last census of the Soviet Union—conducted in 1989, two years before the USSR disintegrated—listed 128 different nationalities in the USSR.