ABSTRACT
The numbers of people are in the major ethnic groups of the Soviet Union. It is apparent that the Muslim-Turkic peoples have been growing in numbers faster than any other group, at about 2.4 times the national rate from 1959 to 1970, and at about 2.6 times the national rate between 1970 and 1979. Virtually every major ethnic group gained population at a slower rate between 1970 and 1979 than it did between 1959 and 1970. As a result of the varying growth rates among ethnic groups, changes occurred in their shares of the total population of the Soviet Union. This was most noticeable among the Baits and the Slavs, whose growth rates in the second period were less than 60 percent of those in the first. Among individual ethnic groups, as of January 1979, Russians ranked first, with 52.4 percent of the total population of the USSR, followed by Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Belorussians, Kazakhs, Tatars and Azeris.
