Using data from a socio-demographic survey conducted in 1985 in the USSR, fertility parity-progression tables were constructed for the 17 most populated Soviet nationalities. These tables give the probability of a woman who gave birth to a child between 1970 and 1974 to have her next child by the time of the survey. Using World Fertility Survey data, the model of natural fertility by parity was built and two subgroups of women were identified: those who control family size and those who do not. Nationalities differ considerably by the proportion of women who control childbearing (from 17% for the Tajiks to 99% for the Jews), and by TFR for those who control family size (from 4.2 for the Tajiks to 1.5 for the Jews)
