The article outlines the results of studying census cards used in the 1920 All-Russian
Population Census for the Ufa region, which arguably represented one of the more democratic forms of the population’s self-idenitification. This had to do with the fact that the influence of the older social stratification system on ethnic identities was substantially weakened in the region; this led to the emergence of a variety of mixed identities (such as “new Bashkir”, “Muslims”, etc.) among the Turkic-Muslim population. The Census reflected not only the dynamics of population but also the changes in ethnic identities. It registered a number of cases when entire villages moved from the administrative jurisdiction of one district to those of other districts, while some villages went as far as to unite under the authority of newly formed administrative units, which may be regarded as attempts at political self-definition in the situation when administrative borders were often changing.