Demographics

Different clans and territorial groups of neighboring peoples contributed to the emergence of today’s Tungus-Manchu peoples of the Amur River region, Primorye, and Sakhalin, including the Oroch. Those peoples brought their characteristic endonym that, with time, became the Oroch’s official ethnonym. This circumstance adds major confusion to determining the numbers of the Oroch in the Amur.

As a result, Soviet censuses significantly exaggerated the numbers of the Oroch. In reality, their real numbers are quite hard to determine. It appears that all those listed as Oroch in the Khabarovsk and Primorye Territories are indeed Oroch. The 1926 census puts their number at 646 persons, all of them living in the Khabarovsk Territory, while the 1959 census puts their number at 783 persons (464 persons in the Khabarovsk Territory). The 1970 census recorded 1.037 Oroch (522); the 1979 Census recorded 1.2 Oroch (460); the 1989 recorded 915 Oroch (492). The 2002 and 2010 censuses recorded 686 and 596 Oroch in Russia, respectively.

The total number of Orochi, according to the 2020 All-Russian Population Census, is 530 people (232 men and 298 women).