The Ethnic Composition of the Divnogorsk City District Population in 1970–1989

The paper examines the dynamics of changes in the ethnic composition of the population of two settlements of the Divnogorsk urban District: Divnogorsk itself and the workers' village of Ovsyanka in the period from 1970 to 1989 based on census materials of the corresponding years. Divnogorsk and the Divnogorsk urban District appeared in the Krasnoyarsk Region in 1963. Their emergence was associated with the construction of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station. Its construction was truly of an all-Union nature. The construction of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station, like Divnogorsk, was called an all-Union project, so it was assumed that specialists from all over the country took part in it. But, despite this, according to the 1970 census, the majority of the population, both in the city of Divnogorsk and in the working-class village of Ovsyanka, considered themselves Russians, followed in number by Ukrainians, Belarusians and Germans. Over the next 26 years, the structure of the local population has undergone virtually no changes. The most noticeable dynamics was the increase in the proportion of Russians in relation to all other ethnic groups, which was a consequence of the development of mixed marriages, the children of which most often identified themselves as Russians, who were perceived in the eyes of society as the titular Soviet nation. Moreover, according to the 1989 census, the proportion of the Russian population in Divnogorsk was even higher than the average for the Krasnoyarsk Region, which destroys the idea of an all-Union construction project.