the resignation of Magomedov). On 3 October 2017, Vladimir Vasilyev was appointed as head. Demographics Because its mountainous terrain impedes travel and communication, Dagestan is unusually ethnically diverse and still largely tribal. It is Russia's most heterogeneous republic. Dagestan's population is rapidly growing. Population Life expectancy Dagestan has the second highest life expectancy in Russia. Higher duration of life is observed only in Ingushetia. Settlements Vital statistics Source: Russian Federal State Statistics Service Ethnic groups The people of Dagestan include a large variety of ethnicities. According to the 2021 Census, Northeast Caucasians (including Avars, Dargins, Lezgins, Laks, Tabasarans, and Chechens) make up almost 75% of the population of Dagestan. Turkic peoples, Kumyks, Azerbaijanis, and Nogais make up 21%, and Russians 3.3%. Other ethnicities (e.g. Tats, who are an Iranian people) each account for less than 0.4% of the total population. Such groups as the Botlikh, the Andi, the Akhvakhs, the Tsez and about ten other groups were reclassified as Avars between the 1926 and 1939 censuses. Languages More than 30 local languages are commonly spoken, most belonging to the Nakh-Daghestanian language family. Russian became the principal lingua franca in Dagestan during the 20th century; Over 20 of Russia's 131 endangered languages as identified by UNESCO can be found in Dagestan. Most of these endangered languages have speakers in the mountainous region on the Dagestan-Georgia border. Prior to Soviet rule, the literary lingua-franca status to some extent belonged to Classical Arabic. The northern Avar dialect of Khunzakh has also served as a lingua franca in mountainous Dagestan where Avar-related peoples lived. And throughout centuries the Kumyk language had been the lingua-franca for the bigger part of the Northern Caucasus, from Dagestan to Kabarda, until the 1930s. Kumyk also had been an official language for communication of the Russian Imperial administration with the local peoples. The first Russian grammar written about a language from present-day Dagestan was for Kumyk. Author Timofey Makarov wrote: Religion According to a 2012 survey which interviewed 56,900 people, 83% of the population of Dagestan adheres to Islam, 2.4% to the Russian Orthodox Church, 2% to Caucasian folk religion and other native faiths, 1% are non-denominational Christians. In addition, 9% of the population identify as "spiritual but not religious", 2% as atheist, and 0.6% as other and no answer. Islam Dagestanis adherents of Islam are largely Sunni Muslims of the Shafii rites. On the Caspian coast, particularly in