Ethnonyms: Ainu, Айны [Ainy], Kurile, Kuriles, Курилы [Kurily], Kamchatka Kurile, Kamchatka Ainu, Камчатские курилы [Kamchatskie kurily]; Eine, Эйны [Einy], Enchiw.
Ethnolinguistic classification: Ainu
Homeland: the Russian Far East
Regions with significant populations: Cape Lopatka, Shumshu and Paramushir, Urup, Kunashir, and Iturup, Sakhalin
Languages and dialects: Russian, Kamchatka Ainu, Northern Kuril Ainu, Southern Kuril Ainu, Sakhalin Ainu, Itelmen, Nivkh
Religion: Ainu religion, the Russian Orthodox Church
Related ethnic groups: Kamchadals, Nivkhs, Itelmens
Ainu in Russia refers to the small, historically deep-rooted Ainu-descended population of the Russian Far East, especially in Kamchatka, the Kurils, and Sakhalin, where Ainu lands were gradually absorbed into Russian imperial expansion at different moments: Kamchatka became a Russian possession in 1607, the Kurils were added in 1721, Sakhalin was jointly held from 1854, and the southern Sakhalin/Kurils changed hands repeatedly between Russia and Japan before ending up under Soviet, then Russian, control after 1945. Historically, the Ainu of Kamchatka and the northern Kurils were not isolated inland peoples but a coastal and maritime society tied to fishing, hunting, boat use, and interethnic exchange; Russian accounts describe the Kamchatka Ainu—often called “Kuriles” by colonists—as living in several settlements around Cape Lopatka, numbering nearly 500 in 1738, then being weakened by epidemics and famine, and gradually being absorbed into Kamchadal communities, with the old ethnonym fading from documents during the 19th century. On Sakhalin, census-style records also show a substantial 19th-century presence, with the 1897 count listing hundreds of Ainu men and women in the Korsakovsk District and along the Tatar Strait coast, yet by the modern era the community had become tiny and difficult to enumerate; a 2026 scholarly synthesis reports that 109 people identified as Ainu in the 2010 Russian census, predominantly in Sakhalin, while many descendants in Russia have historically identified instead as Kamchadal, Russian, or another local group. Culturally, Russian ethnographers noted that Kamchatka Ainu dwellings and customs were strikingly close to those of the Kamchadals, and they recorded details such as body tattooing, bark- or skin-based clothing, and local knowledge shared with neighboring northern peoples; today, however, the Ainu language is extinct as a spoken language in Russia, so the community survives more through ancestry, historical memory, and occasional cultural reassertion than through an everyday vernacular speech community.
