Abstract
The aims of this chapter are (1) to overview the statistical systems and methods of maintaining population statistics in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation; (2) to provide population statistics in territorial units comparable to the Russian Federation based on primary materials; and (3) to take a general view of long-term population dynamics from the late Imperial era to the new Russian Federation. The gap between previous research dealing with population during the imperial period and that which examines the period after the October revolution is very large, and few studies utilized primary data in investigating population figures of the imperial era. Thus, this chapter provides fundamentally necessary information for investigating historical development processes in Russia.
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- 1.
As an example of the modernization that occurred during the imperial era, the volume of domestically produced steel for railways overtook the volume of imports of such steel during the late 1800s. See Falkus (1972).
- 2.
However, some say that 5 per cent or less of the total population was missed (Valentei 1985), and given that they provide an otherwise unavailable insight into the period between from the early eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, they are well worth looking at.
- 3.
- 4.
The same can be said of studies by Vodarskii (1973), Vishnevskii (2006), and other researchers. Many studies rely completely on Rashin (1956) for their descriptions of population from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. In author’s view, none of the research on population dynamics in this period has surpassed Rashin’s (1956) approach of constructing almost all of his data from publications from the Imperial Central Statistical Committee.
- 5.
The areas of provinces in the imperial era were calculated using maps produced by organizations such as the Imperial Geographic Society. See MVD RI (1858, 1863). For this chapter, the author attempted, for the early imperial era, to use changes in regional areas to estimate changes in administrative divisions and then use these estimates to investigate the changes in administrative divisions. However, the author abandoned this approach because it could be predicted that the numbers would change due to differences in the precision of the maps.
- 6.
These “administrative divisions” refer to economic regions (ekonomicheskie raioni).
- 7.
The biggest differences were with the vast yet sparsely populated West Siberia economic region (4.13 per cent, 1897) and the Southern economic region (3.22 per cent, 1926), which centres on modern Ukraine. The effect of the former difference is likely to be small, and the latter region is not a part of the modern Russian Federation.
- 8.
It gives the total population at the time of the 1917 revolution as 91,000,000. Even ignoring the fact that this figure is too simplistic in comparison with those of other years, it is difficult to believe that it is possible to obtain reliable population statistics for that year. The tsentralnii statisticheskii komitet MVD (1918) describes the 1917 population figure as a “preliminary” figure. In February 2007, when the author checked the 1917 population statistics using archived historical materials from the Russian State Economic Archive RGAE, he found that this population figure was described as the “possible population in 1917” (veroiatnaia chislennost naseleniia) (RGAE, F.1562, O.20, D.1a). Then, on July 31, 2007, when the author interviewed four population statisticians on this matter at the headquarters of Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat), they said that the 1917 figure published in Goskomstat Rossii (1998) was an estimate. However, Goskomstat Rossii (1998) makes no mention of this. There is also no mention of the fact that populations for each region based on the 1937 population census were affected by personnel such as border guards and soldiers being treated differently in the statistics. In addition, the figures for the total populations of the republics in 1937 differ from those disclosed elsewhere. Although it claims that the number of soldiers etc., which were only recorded for the federation as a whole, were not just added to the estimate of the population of the Russian Republic, it does not mention that the estimation method was, obviously, based on estimates. Moreover, it presents figures representing the results of the 1897 population census of imperial Russia that have been converted to match the present territory of Russia. According to these figures, the population of the territory of the present Russian Federation (excluding Kaliningrad, the Kurile Islands, and southern Sakhalin) in 1897 was 67,473,000. Among the historical materials that the author examined at the Russian State Economic Archive was the TsSU SSSR (1941), which calculates the 1897 populations of the administrative divisions as they were in 1941 using detailed area proportions. Using these figures to calculate the total population of the territory of modern Russia gives a figure of 66,314,000, which casts doubt over the accuracy of the figure presented in Goskomstat Rossii (1998), for which the methods of calculation used are not explained at all clearly.
- 9.
The results of the 1937 population census have not been officially made public by the statistical authorities. Zhiromskaia (2000) conducted her study using archived historical materials. TsSU SSSR (1937) tells one that not only was a figure for total population calculated but that tables of data showing things like occupations by educational attainment and domicile (i.e. urban or rural) were also produced.
- 10.
Ispov (2001) deals with the 1941–1945 (i.e. World War II) period but does not adjust the territories (or mention this lack of adjustment) of the Crimean Autonomous Republic (then part of Russia, now part of Ukraine) and the Karelo-Finnish Republic (then a Soviet republic separate from Russia, now part of Russia).
- 11.
From here onwards all dates until 1917 use the Russian calendar.
- 12.
It has been posited that household-based taxation encouraged households to band together to form new households, so as to reduce the tax burden of the individuals they comprised (Kluchevsky 1918).
- 13.
Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, sobranie 2, tom 9, otdelenie 2, 7684.
- 14.
Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, sobranie 2, tom 33, otdelenie 1, 32,826.
- 15.
Nevertheless, some writers have pointed out that a fully functioning, centralized statistical system did not really exist (Goskomstat Rossii 1998; Yamaguchi 2003). The predominant view is that the activities that the zemstvo statistical bureaus conducted independently were extremely useful in gathering regional statistics. However, while the zemstvo statistical bureaus achieved a lot of success in compiling statistics on agriculture, its compilation of population statistics probably did not surpass that of the regional statistical bureaus that were under the supervision of the Central Statistical Committee. This is partly because zemstvo statistical bureaus were only established in a limited number of provinces. They were originally only established in 34 provinces, and even at the outbreak of World War I, they only existed in 43 provinces, which covered only around half of the territory of the empire (Goskomstat Rossii 1998).
- 16.
“Confessions” normally refers to admitting and repenting for sins. In this context, however, “confessions” (ispovedanie) appears to have a broader meaning, which includes the act of believers reporting births, deaths, etc. to the church. It is rendered as “confessions” because the term used in Russian is “ispovedanie”.
- 17.
The reports that were sent to the tsar were handwritten. They contained from several dozen to several hundred pages, and schedules of statistics were included at the back of them. These schedules listed the number of births, deaths (for each sex), and marriages in each of the province’s uezds (districts). See, for example, Otchet o sostoianii Iaroslavskoi gubernii za 1864 g.
- 18.
Like those based on the parish registers of the Orthodox Church, statistics based on the parish registers of Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church are believed to be fairly accurate. However, it must be noted that it was the date of baptism, not the date of birth, that was recorded, such that infants who died before they were baptized were not recorded, and also that it was the date of burial, not the date of death, that was recorded (MVD RI 1866). The reports sent to the tsar by provincial governors recorded the population of the region for the year to which they related. See, for example, Otchet o sostoianii Sankt-peterburkskoi gubernii za 1864 g.
- 19.
The separatists (Old Believers, raskolniki) left the Orthodox Church after opposing the changes in rites that were made by the Church in the 1650s. Some of their sects rejected all contact with other sects and lived in the interior of Russia, making it very difficult to gain information about them.
- 20.
Statistics were not compiled from the surveys. They were merely intended to supplement the household censuses by recording information on things like people who had moved house (MVD RI 1866).
- 21.
Sobranie ukazov, 1866, st. 141.
- 22.
Obviously, there may have been a large number of problems with the methods used when conducting the fieldwork for this, Russia’s first, population census. Although labelled as a self-administered survey, Valentei (1985) has pointed out that because of the low level of literacy at the time, the investigators conducting the surveys often filled in the forms themselves.
- 23.
Dekret soveta narodnikh komissarov o gosudarstvennoi statistike ot 25 iulia 1918.
- 24.
<Polozhenie ob organizatsii mestnikh statisticheskikh uchrezhdenii> ot 3-go sentiabria 1918 g.
- 25.
<Postanovleniia korregii TsSU> ot 17-go iulia 1923.
- 26.
For example, the population census carried out in 1920 only managed to cover the European parts of the Soviet Union. Other regions could not be surveyed.
- 27.
However, only a single volume of tables of data from the 1939 population census was published. It included populations by region and sex, the number of workers by level of educational attainment (i.e., graduation from junior or senior high school) and sex, working populations by region and industry, working populations by sex and region, and population composition by region and ethnic group. See Poletaev and Polskii (1992).
- 28.
See Clem (1986) for more information on population censuses in the Soviet Union.
- 29.
ZAGS is an organization that registers matters such as births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. It retains the same name in modern Russia that it had during the Soviet era and is under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice. See <Kodeks o brake i seme RSFSR ot iunia 1969 goda>. The decision to establish ZAGS was made between 1917 and 1918, with the organization intended to replace the parish registers that had been used until then. Apparently, however, because of factors such as the turmoil of the civil war, it was not until the end of 1919 that the cities of European Russia introduced the new system, and even in 1923, the system still only covered urban areas, albeit throughout the entire nation (TsSU SSSR 1928a). By 1926 the system seems to have been functioning throughout the whole of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic, given that the number of infants under one year recorded in the 1926 census nearly matched the number of births minus infant mortalities derived from the ZAGS records. However, it is posited that the ZAGS system remained inadequate in the following regions: Yakutia Autonomous Republic, Bashkortostan Autonomous Republic, Dagestan Autonomous Republic, and Ingush and Chechen autonomous oblasts, and other parts of the North Caucasus, Sakhalin and Kamchatka, and central Asia and the Caucasus (TsSU SSSR 1928b; TsSU RSFSR, 1928).
- 30.
Obzor Federalnogo zakona No,143-FZ ot 15. 11. 97 <Ob aktakh grazhdanskogo sostoianiia> (v redaktsii Federalnikh zakonov ot 25. 10. 2001; N138-F3 ot 29. 04. 2002 N44-F3 ot 22. 04. 2003; N46-F3 ot 07. 07. 2003 N120-F3).
- 31.
Residency registration (propiska) is under the purview of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. <Polozhenie o pasportnoi sisteme v SSSR> ust. Postanovleniem SM SSSR ot 28 avgusta 1974 g. N677 (s izmeneniiami ot 28 ianvaria 1983 g., 15 avgusta 1990 g.); Postanovlenie pravitelstva RF ot 17 iulia 1995 g. N713 (v redaktsii ot 16 marta 2000 g.). Residency of half a month or more in the Soviet era, and 10 days or more in modern Russia, needed to be reported within three days. In the Soviet era (from 1974 onwards), failure to register residency was punishable by a fine between 10 and 50 roubles. However, the propiska system only became effective in 1932 (Andreev et al. 1998).
- 32.
Although the registers of births, deaths, etc., and residency registers cannot record everything, people obviously have various incentives to report events and changes in their lives. See Matthews (1993).
- 33.
Infant mortality rates can be calculated from tables showing the number of deaths by age in months (there are no tables showing the number of deaths of infants up to one year old). Rates for the other events (births, deaths, etc.) can be calculated as long as a figure for total population, that is, the denominator, can be obtained. Unfortunately, however, figures for total population were only provided in a limited number of years.
- 34.
When calculated by extrapolating from crude death rate and crude birth rate statistics, the total registered population in European Russia in 1897 was around 94,800,000. The census, meanwhile, gives a figure of just over 93,400,000 for European Russia.
- 35.
As described, the method used here is an extremely simple one, involving the application of dynamic statistics on the whole of imperial European Russia to the modern Russian Federation. The Appendix contains alternative estimates of the total population made using the ratio between the European and non-European parts of the present Russian Federation for years for which actual data could be obtained.
- 36.
Leasure and Lewis (1966) also calculated the proportions of the land areas of imperial Russian gubernias outside European Russia (the Caucasus, Siberia, the Far East, etc.) that were included in the territory of the RSFSR. They used these proportions to calculate the 1916 total population of regions outside European Russia.
- 37.
Although the Far East covers a vast area, development there began in earnest not at the end of the nineteenth century but after the twentieth century had begun. Until then, its population was extremely small. Even in 1904, the entire population east of Lake Baikal was less than 1.2 million (Tsentralnii statisticheskii komitet M. V. D. 1905).
- 38.
A part of the Konigsberg region that was broken up and combined by Poland and the Soviet Union after World War II. It was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 and currently exists as a Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.
- 39.
Because the author could only obtain by-region birth and death statistics for some of the years between 1867 and 1890, they abandoned efforts to harmonize the old and new territory. Crude birth rates and crude death rates for imperial European Russia were always included in the preamble to the official statistics described earlier.
- 40.
However, the author obtained the total population for 1937 not from official statistics or archived historical materials, but from Poliakov et al.’s (2007) collection of archived historical materials relating to the 1937 population census. This is because throughout the period from the beginning of our study to writing this chapter, the tables of results of the 1937 census were out on loan to some officials of the RGAE, and the author was therefore unable to examine them. Obviously, however, the author examined all the other historical materials personally.
- 41.
Sulkevich (1940) provides a short summary of this.
- 42.
The decline in the crude death rate from 1891 is statistically significant, while the crude birth rate shows no clear upward or downward trend.
- 43.
Rashin (1956) produced and discussed processed statistics for periods five years apart.
- 44.
Although the author was able to obtain dynamic statistics for 1927–1938 and dynamic and population statistics for 1942–1945 from the Russian State Economic Archive, data was lacking for some regions for every one of the years. (See the notes to Table 3.1.)
- 45.
At the time of writing in October 2007, the historical materials they used are archived as “RGAE, Fond 1562, Opis 33 s, Delo 2638”. The “s” following the Opis series number stands for sekretno, which means “classified”, and it is unclear how they were able to access them. The author was refused such access.
- 46.
According to RGAE, F. 1562, O. 20, D. 626, L. 2–3 (1946) and RGAE, F. 1562, O. 20, D. 684 (1947), the population was 90,295,000 at the beginning of 1946 and 94,661,000 on February 1, 1947. However, compared with the 1950 population of 101,438,000, these figures are too small. Moreover, the difference between the figures for 1946 and 1947 is too large. Between 1946 and 1949, increases/decreases due to inter-Union republican and international migration were tiny, so the author decided that one could not rely on the total population figures for these years. Note also that the author was unable to find out the total population in 1948–1949 using archived historical materials. (The Delo list in the Soviet Union’s Central Statistical Board’s Opisi 20 series of population statistics did not contain any population statistics.)
- 47.
In this chapter, the author did not use the statistics for 1856 and 1858. This was because population statistics for these two years relied entirely on data from the household census, and the Ministry of the Interior’s Central Statistical Committee noted that they were incomplete (MVD RI 1858, 1863).
- 48.
According to documents discovered by Zemskov (2000) in the Russian State Historical Archive, between 700,000 and 1,300,000 people were sent to labour camps each year between 1935 and 1940. (Note, however, that the author has not examined these documents.)
- 49.
During World War II, the eastern front shifted frequently, and TsSU SSSR (1942), which presents population statistics for the first day of every month in 1942, shows that the occupied regions for which data was lacking changed from month to month.
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Appendix: Time Series of Alternative Estimates of the Total Population of the Territory Covered by the Present Russian Federation in the Imperial Era
Appendix: Time Series of Alternative Estimates of the Total Population of the Territory Covered by the Present Russian Federation in the Imperial Era
As the author said in the main text, it possible to produce a time series for the population of European Russia that meets certain standards, with the problem being the populations of regions outside European Russia such as the Caucasus, Siberia, and the Far East. Here the author makes alternative estimates based on the statistics for European Russia during the imperial era.
-
(1)
The populations of each province during the imperial era can be obtained as (a) actual data only for certain years, namely 1867, 1870, 1883, 1885, 1886, and 1891 and after. In addition, because data on births and deaths for each province exists for every year from 1867, it is possible to extrapolate (b) estimated populations for the other years by subtracting figures for natural increase from the populations in 1916. Furthermore, it is possible to adjust the actual data for the years mentioned above to the area of the European part of the present Russian Federation. The population of the present territory of European Russia was between 60 and 63.5 per cent of the population of imperial European Russia, but the trend was for this percentage to decline. For the other years, meanwhile, only the total population (not the population of each province) of Imperial European Russia could be obtained. For these total populations, the author adopted a (c) procedure whereby the author focused on years for which it was possible to make adjustments for area and applied, with some leeway, the ratio of the total population of the present territory of European Russia and the total population of imperial European Russia and calculated means for years for which both total and by-province populations were available. The author used this procedure to calculate the total population of the territory covered by modern European Russia.
-
(2)
The populations of the non-European territory of the present Russian Federation in the imperial era were obtained from (a’) actual data for 1885 and 1904 and after. Although statistics do not exist for other years, it is possible to produce a (b’) time series for cases where the rate of increase was exactly the same as that of imperial European Russia. The total population of this territory as a proportion of the total population of the territory of modern European Russia increased continuously from 1885, when it was 18.3 per cent, to 1916, when it was 26.9 per cent. Here, (c’) for 1885 and earlier, the author fixed the total population of this territory as a proportion of the territory of modern European Russia at 18 per cent, steadily increased this percentage for the years that followed, and then applied actual percentages once again to 1904 and after, in order to calculate hypothetical populations for the non-European parts of the present Russian Federation. In doing this, the author calculated the base total populations of European Russia using both (b) and (c).
Next, the author puts the above figures together to present a time series for the total population of the territory covered by the present Russian Federation. The results are shown in Fig. 3.4 alongside the estimated (main) time series from the main text, and one can see that the two series are similar. This is because both series are based on dynamic statistics for imperial European Russia, and because during the imperial era, the total population of the non-European part of the present Russian Federation as a proportion of the total population of the territory of the present Russian Federation was always less than 23 per cent. However, neither method accurately takes into account the population dynamics of non-European part of the present Russian Federation. If it were possible to use time series for indicators such as grain yields, it would obviously be better to use such figures. Again, though, the problem is whether such data could be obtained.
Comparison of substitute time series of estimates of the total population of the territory covered by modern Russia
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Kumo, K. (2019). Population. In: Kuboniwa, M., Nakamura, Y., Kumo, K., Shida, Y. (eds) Russian Economic Development over Three Centuries. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8429-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8429-5_3
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