Social distance of Russian minorities from titular population in former soviet republics

This chapter aims to examine social distance of Russian minorities from the titular population in five former Soviet republics by considering individual-level and contextual-level factors of ethnic competition and earlier assimilation. Ethnic competition theory posits that competition between ethnic groups over scarce resources such as property, jobs, money and power, increases negative attitudes towards the competing outgroups, next to reinforcing ingroup identification. The authors expect that contextual-level factors of mutual assimilation such as the proportion of ethnically mixed marriages of Russians and titulars and the proficiency in the language of the other group, facilitate intergroup contact and thereby reduce the social distance of Russians from titulars. Analysis of variance shows that there is a significant variation in social distance from titulars among Russians across republics. The social distance is greater in Moldova and Kazakhstan than in Belarus, and is the smallest in Ukraine and Georgia.