National and Religious Diversity of Siberian Regions

Abstract

The paper testes hypothesis about higher ethnic and religious heterogeneity of Siberian population. Estimations of the national and religious diversity for the Siberian regions are obtained based on the census of 2002 and 2010 years and data on religious preferences for 2012 and 2015 years in Russian and in Siberia. The analysis is based on the indexes of diversity and polarization. The resultsdo not confirmed the assumption that Siberia has high national diversity; moreover the region demonstrates more rapid decrease of the ethnic heterogeneity comparing with Russia. Heterogeneity of the religious structure of the Siberian population is higher than in the whole country, but tendency toward homogeneity is more pronounced.