All of the native peoples have intermixed and influenced each other for many centuries.
The Tungus groups in Siberia are separated by populations that are far more numerous and for the most part urbanized and industrialized. Among these, two native peoples (Yakut and Buryat), established in compact settlements, have here and there intermixed with and borrowed from their Tungus neighbors. In the northwestern part of Yakutia, metissage between Nganassan, Tungus and Yakut gave rise to a group that now claims its own identity, the Dolgan.
The overwhelming majority of the Siberian population, however, is of Slavic origin. The virtually uninterrupted flow of immigrants from Russia since the 17th century has a varied composition: missionaries, administrators, political exiles, ordinary prisoners, concentration-camp deportees, miners, etc. This immigration reached high points with the abolition of serfdom in Russian (1861), the construction of the Trans-Siberian railroad (1891ñ1906) and of the BAM (BaikalñAmur) railroad in the 1970s. There are also many immigrants of other nationalities: Ukranians, Poles, Tatars, Jews, Koreans, etc. Most live in cities but do not form ethnic communities. Others have clustered in villages where they live together, sometimes even managing to keep their own language and some of their customs.
The actual extent of this mixing was long masked by the obligation for every Soviet citizen to declare a nationality on his or her internal passport. This obligation was forced on several generations. It entailed large variations in the successive censuses, depending on whether it was more or less advantageous to put down a minority nationality (Evenk, Even, Yukaghir, etc.) or a nationality synonymous with the eponymous nationality of an Autonomous Republic (Buryat, Yakut) or Russian. In the present context, marked by the influence of a theory of ìethnic purityî, metissage is one more factor adding to the devalorization and the jeopardy that is the lot of these ìlittle peoplesî. (cf. Marine Le Berre-Semener 2002)