The article analyzes statistical data taken from the materials of the population censuses of the Russian Federation since 1970. The aim was to analyze the dynamics of the number of ethnic groups in the Orthodox Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and other cultures. The connection between ethnic and confessional affiliation is reasoned, which enabled to use for the analysis the data of Soviet censuses, in which not confessional, but the national affiliation was specified. It is necessary to take into account a certain religious heterogeneity of Russian ethnic groups. A detailed analysis of the dynamics of population of Orthodox Christian culture, non-Orthodox Christian ethnic groups, Muslim culture and other non-Christian ethnic groups is presented starting from the 1970s. The main trends of changing the ethno-religious structure of the population are revealed. Reduction in the number of the Russian population was mainly at the expense of the peoples that make up the Orthodox-Christian ethno-religious collectivity. In this connection, first of all, we talk about the Russian people that acts as the nucleus of not only this collectivity, but the entire Russian civilization. The Muslim peoples are constantly increasing their numerical composition. As a result, we can state a stable trend towards a change in the ethno-religious structure of the Russian Federation’s population, associated with a marked increase in the share of the Muslim ethno-religious community. The reasons for this are probably retention of the religion’s important role among Muslims in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods and a high level of migration. In the Buddhist-East Asian ethno-religious community, the diasporas of countries of the far abroad show the highest growth. The research has been a base to set the tasks of harmonization of interethnic and interreligious relations in the country: to prevent destruction of the Russian Orthodox nucleus of the multinational Russian people by correcting the ethno-demographic situation in the regions that make up the center of historical Russia; strengthening the positions of traditional Russian Islam having centuries of historical experience of peaceful coexistence with the Orthodox majority in one state; development of tolerant good-neighborly relations between ethnic and religious communities; streamlining migration flows from the CIS and far abroad.

ethnos, nationality, religious belonging, ethnic structure, Islamic nations, Orthodox nations, religious factor, ethnoreligious structure

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