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Revision as of 23:09, 9 June 2004 by Jiang (talk | contribs) (rm tag - no reason given in talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Russians (Русские) are an ethnic group of East Slavic people, which live primarily in Russia and neighboring countries.
Note: sometimes the term Russian is used to refer to any citizen of Russia. In the Russian language there are two separate words, one for an ethnic Russian and one for a person of any ethnicity that holds a Russian citizenship. Ethnic Russians make up about 82% of the population of Russia.
Population
Russians are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world with a population of about 150 million people worldwide. Roughly 120 million ethnic Russians live in Russia and 28 million more live in the near abroad, countries neighboring Russia. A relatively small number of Russians, around 2 million, live elsewhere in the world, mostly in North America and Western Europe.
Religion
Russians are predominantly of the Orthodox Christian faith. More specifically, most belong to the Russian Orthodox Church.
Russians outside of Russia
China
Russians are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China (as the Russ), and there are approximately 10,000 Russian Chinese living mostly in northern Xinjiang, and also in Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang.