The end of the cold war prompted most of the former Soviet republics to face ethnic issues that had remained latent or intangible for decades. Whilst some ethnic groups were actively campaigning for their rights, some others seemed uninterested in being represented politically. The recent theory of hot and cold ethnicity has been conceived to explain modalities of ethnolinguistic vitality so to identify a pattern and reasons behind activism of an ethnic group in contrast with another. This paper engages with the debate in two ways. First, it questions how to measure ethnolinguistic vitality in order to get a picture that reckons not only with official narratives of a state but also gives an idea of how things are happening in practice. Second, it tries to answer the question by presenting a case study based on the city of Odessa. It will be suggested that informal policies, and informal engagement with policies, may be as relevant as formal ones and have an equally important impact. This paper advocates for a broader, and more inclusive, approach to data collection and analysis. This, in the end, will contribute to a better understanding of what ethnolinguistic vitality of a group means.