Mixed marriages

The share of cross-ethnic marriages is quite interesting for demographers. It is also of some interest for genealogists, if one wish to estimate the probability that an ancestor had a spouse of different ethnic origin. I have no information about mixed marriages for the Russia Empire, but for Latvia these data are available in statistical sources.

Mixed marriages in Latvia 1930

Ethnicity of the husband	Ethnicity of the wife
Ethnicity of the husband	Latvian	German	Russian	Jewish	Polish	Lithuanian	Estonian	Other	Total
Latvian	11434	157	313	5	253	119	37	10	12 328
German	191	395	48	8	30	3	2	5	682
Russian	233	28	1 765	1	104	14	3	1	2149
Jewish	6	1	8	850	1	-	-	1	867
Polish	140	16	99	3	416	31	2	1	708
Lithuanian	102	7	3	-	30	137	-	-	279
Estonian	29	2	3	-	3	-	19	-	56
Other	15	10	5	-	5	2	-	21	58
Total	12 150	616	2 244	867	842	306	63	39	17 127

This information is from the Statistical Yearbook for 1930. The number of marriages contracted in the same ethnicity is 15037, what is 87.8% of all of them.

The rates of mixed marriages for 1930 by ethnicity are calculated in the following table:

Ethnicity	Married in their own ethnicity	Married women	Married men	Percentage of women married in their own ethnicity	Percentage of men married in their own ethnicity
Latvian	11 434	12 150	12 328	94.1	92.7
German	395	616	682	64.1	57.9
Russian	1 765	2 244	2149	78.7	82.1
Jewish	850	867	867	98.0	98.0
Polish	416	842	708	49.4	58.8
Lithuanian	137	306	279	44.8	49.1
Estonian	19	63	56	30.2	33.9
Other	21	39	58	-	-
*Total*	15 037	17 127	17 127	87.8	87.8

The figures show that only the most part of Jews and Latvians married in their own ethnicity. Other ethnicities were gradually dissolving in Latvians.

Mixed marriages in Latvia 1937.

Ethnicity of the husband	Ethnicity of the wife
Ethnicity of the husband	Latvian	German	Russian	Jewish	Polish	Lithuanian	Other	Total
Latvian	10299	128	391	14	320	176	49	11377
German	128	353	39	1	20	4	5	550
Russian	272	19	1700	3	127	29	3	2153
Jewish	4	5	6	839	-	1	2	857
Polish	135	13	117	1	336	22	1	625
Lithuanian	95	2	32	-	58	135	-	322
Other	26	7	9	1	2	1	41	87
Total	10959	527	2294	859	863	368	101	15971

It follows of the table that 13662 marriages, or 85.5 %, were contracted in the same ethnicity. The source (Latvija Skaitļos 1938) asserts that there were no serious differences in the analogous figures for 1936.