1970 Soviet census

[4] While there was speculation that ethnic Russians would become a minority in the Soviet Union in 1970,[5] the 1970 census recorded 53% (a bare majority) of the Soviet population as being ethnic Russians.

[3] In terms of total numbers, there were 129,015,140 ethnic Russians in the Soviet Union in 1970.

[3] The Jewish population in the Soviet Union unexpectedly declined (by about 5%; from about 2,279,000 to about 2,167,000)[2] between 1959 and 1970, in part due to strong assimilation (especially in the Russian SSR and in the Ukrainian SSR, where three-fourths of all Soviet Jews lived).

[6] The Muslim population in the Central Asian SSRs increased at a faster rate than the ethnic Russian population between 1959 and 1970 due to its higher birth rate.

[6] The ethnic Russian population in the Latvian SSR and in the Estonian SSR rapidly increased between 1959 and 1970 (in total numbers and as a percentage of their populations), while the ethnic Russian population increase in the mostly Roman Catholic Lithuanian SSR during this time period was much smaller.