Thanks
Most interesting (to me anyway) seem to be...
1. Tatars - 5.55 mln. All over Russia but mostly along the Volga. Roughly half in the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan. Turkic, Sunni Muslim (except for the 27 thousand Kryashenlar - literally, "Christians" in Tatar).
7. Mordvins - 843 thousand, along the Volga, "title ethnicity" in the autonomou Republic of Mordovia in the Volga area. Finnic language, Christian Orthodox and Animist.
8. Avars - 814 thousand. Actually an amalgamation of closely related groups in the Dagestan area of the North Caucasus, the largest ethnic group in the multi-ethnic Republic of Dagestan. Northeast-Caucasian language, Sunni Muslim.
24. Tuvins 243 thousand. The "original Turks" (or, at least, the Turks who live in the original Turkish homeland in the Southern Siberia, just North of Mongolia). Turkic language, Tibetan Buddhist religion. Until 1943 this was an independent, though Soviet-dominated" state (they even declared war on Germany in 1941). Russians never formed even a third of the population there, and post-1991 most of them fled, leaving a largely ethnic Tuvin, if struggling and lawless and still not independent, Republic of Tuva (after the brief period in the 1990s the calls for independence seem to have subsided).
25. (European/Ashkenazic) Jews - 230 thousand still in Russia. Bizarrely, there is even a Jewish Autonomous Region in Southeastern Siberia, on the Chinese border, though few Jews live there. Almost all Jews in Russia speak Russian these days, Yiddish being on its deathbed. Obviously, religiously mostly Jewish.
