Russians in Tajikistan

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Capital city, Dushanbe is the city where most ethnic Russians live in.

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St. Nicholas Cathedral in Dushanbe, the Cathedral church of the Russian Orthodox Eparchy of Dushanbe and Tajikistan

Russians in Tajikistan are a minority ethnic group numbering about 29,000 individuals as of 2020 Census, representing 0.3% of the population. In 1989 census, ethnic Russians made up 7.6% of the population. The population of ethnic Russians in Tajikistan is rapidly declining due to low fertility rates and emigration.

Distribution

Most ethnic Russians reside in the capital city of Dushanbe. Regardless of this situation, Russian is provided with the status of a co-official language with Tajik and a status of a "language of interethnic communication", and since Soviet times remains widely used on many levels of the society and the state. Both Russian and Persian (Tajik) are Indo-European languages, the former is a Slavic language and the latter belongs to the Indo-Iranian language family.

Religion

Russians in Tajikistan are mostly followers of the Russian Orthodox Church, under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Eparchy of Dushanbe and Tajikistan.

Notable Russians in Tajikistan

Political figures

• Yuri Ponosov, First Deputy Prime Minister of Tajikistan from 1996–1998
• Alexander Shishlyannikov, the first Minister of Defence of Tajikistan

Sportspeople

• Vladislava Ovcharenko
• Kristina Pronzhenko
• Andrei Drygin
• Yuri Lobanov
• Sergey Zabavsky
• Katerina Izmailova
• Sergey Babikov
• Lidiya Karamchakova
• Natalia Ivanova
• Galina Mityaeva
• Anastasiya Tyurina

See also

• Russia–Tajikistan relations
• Christianity in Tajikistan
• Demographics of Tajikistan
• Russians in post-Soviet States
• Dushanbe