--- On Thu, 8/7/08, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Tatars. There was
> very little if any intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews
> prior to the
> Russian Revolution, but a great deal of it afterwards.
[WS:] One of the key reasons was that prior to the Revolution, registry of births, marriages etc. were in the hands of organized religion rather than the state. In case of inter-ethnic or rather inter-religious marriages, someone would have to convert to be married, for no priest or rabbi would marry people of different faiths.
So any inter-faith (which is the same as inter-ethnic in Eastern Euurope) marriages would not be visible in population statistics, because by defintion marriages were of the same faith (by birth or conversion) as the church officiating a marriage. That changed only after the communists took that power away from organized religion and transfered it to the state. Consequently, people could marry without converting, hence the increased number of inter-faith marriages.
Wojtek