Abstract
A long-delayed population census was held at the beginning of 1937. The findings were disappointing from the perspective of a regime that saw a large, rapidly growing population as an indicator of its own success. Factors contributing to the failure of the Soviet population to grow as expected included a long-term decline in the birth rate and the large excess mortality of the 1933 famine, an event that had been concealed from the public. The outcome was a collision between the professional expertise of the demographic statisticians and the political authority of the party leaders. The findings were suppressed and many of those responsible were arrested. A second census, held in 1939, again found too few people, but on this occasion Stalin and Molotov were persuaded to accept the findings after relatively minor manipulation.
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- 1.
Popov (1918). P. I. Popov was born in 1872 and died in 1950. Born into the family of a clerk, he worked as a local government (zemstvo) statistician until March 1917, when he joined the Ministry of Food of the Provisional Government. Lenin appointed him the foundation director of the USSR Central Statistical Administration (TsSU) in July 1918; Stalin dismissed him in December 1925. Popov worked in the Central Statistical Administration of the Russian Republic in the late 1920s and then headed the Agricultural Department of the Russian Republic’s Gosplan from 1931 until his retirement in 1948 when, against all odds, he became one of the few people in our story to collect his pension.
- 2.
This might have reflected the Red Army’s concerns about the quality and quantity of cavalry mounts, the same logic that led the Tsarist government to carry out regular military horse censuses. Marshal Budennyi was temporarily appointed to the collegium of the Agriculture Commissariat at this time: SZ (1931), no. 12: art. 171 (August 1, 1931).
- 3.
Osinskii (1932b): 15 (based on his speech in TsUNKhU on February 17, 1932). For Osinskii’s dismissal from TsSU in 1928, and his return to carry out a short statistical renaissance in TsUNKhU in 1932, see Vol. 4: 201–202.
- 4.
Osinskii (1932a): 22 (authorised for printing on July 7, 1932).
- 5.
RGAE, 1562/329/279: 114 (February 21, 1939).
- 6.
Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR (1932): 401.
- 7.
One of the advantages of 165.7 million as a figure for the end of 1932 was that it was so close to the 165.6 million figure previously planned for the first of the same year. Thus, Vtoroi pyatiletnii plan 1 (1934): 501 gives 165.7 million for 1932 and at the same time switches from a January 1 basis to a December 31 basis.
- 8.
Stalin, Sochineniya, 13 (1951): 335 (report to the XVII Party Congress, January 26, 1934).
- 9.
See Golod v SSSR, 3 (2012): 719–772 (S. G. Wheatcroft); the Voznesenskii report of August 10, 1934 is reproduced in the same volume as document 503. The charges of sabotage were repeated in a decree of Sovnarkom and the Central Committee ‘On the situation of accounts of the natural movement of population’, dated September 21, 1935 (SZ (1935), no. 53: art. 432, also reproduced as document 512 in Golod v SSSR, 3 (2012): 640–641).
- 10.
SZ (1935), no. 53: art. 432 (August 21, 1935). The decree gave Yagoda and Vyshinskii one month to prepare the appropriate registration certificates, but nearly a year passed before TsIK affirmed them on July 26, 1936 (SZ (1936), no. 44: art. 369). For Yezhov’s involvement, see RGASPI, 671/1/71: 121–133. In response to Yezhov’s query, Kraval’ wrote to him that there were no official figures other than those published; all data after 1933 were secret. Kraval’ added that the data were bound to be approximate, given the passage of nearly ten years from the last census. He stated, perhaps warily, that after the poor harvests of 1931 and 1932 the number of births in 1933 had been low, but the situation was now better. He noted that the next census, due on July 1, 1936, would give full results. He concluded that, in Osinskii’s absence, ‘we are not able to give a full response.’ But the file contains nothing from Osinskii.
- 11.
Soveshchanie peredovykh kombainerov (1935): 118.
- 12.
Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1937 g., 1/e (1991): 4 (V. B. Zhiromskaya and I. N. Kiselev). The authors assert that Stalin chose the final date, but do not provide a source.
- 13.
As reported by Yakovlev in his report following the census: RGASPI, 82/2/531: 47–55.
- 14.
Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1937 g., 2/e (2007): 21 (Zhiromskaya).
- 15.
Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1937 g., 2/e (2007): 17 (Zhiromskaya).
- 16.
RGAE, 4372/92/161: 40.
- 17.
Plan (1936), no. 21: 8 (Kraval’). The author noted the importance of the census and cited Stalin’s speech to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the advances experienced by the Soviet population and its growth in recent years.
- 18.
Izvestiya, January 9, 1937 (‘Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya: Stalinskoe zadanie vypolnit’ v tochnosti’).
- 19.
Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1939 g. (1992): 4 (V. B. Zhiromskaya).
- 20.
Izvestiya, January 4, 1937.
- 21.
Izvestiya, January 5, 1937 (‘Khuliganskoe napadanie na schetchika’).
- 22.
Izvestiya, January 6, 1937. Under the heading ‘It is necessary to correct mistakes’, a special correspondent from Bryansk notified readers that some non-religious respondents were being wrongly classified as believers. Despite official claims that census returns would be used only for statistical purposes, the correspondent had been given names of persons who had been recorded as believers. On investigation, he found that the records were erroneous. As an example, the census taker asked a young man whether he was an Orthodox Christian. The youth retorted that he was obviously not a Tatar (and so perhaps Muslim). The census taker, who ought to have explained that ethnicity does not decide religion, recorded this as a ‘Yes’. Another article on the same day explained how well the census was going in the Arctic region.
- 23.
Izvestiya, January 8, 1937 (‘Kak proshla perepis,’ by A. Popov).
- 24.
Izvestiya, January 10, 1937 (‘60 tomov materialov perepisi’).
- 25.
Blum and Mespoulet (2003): 135.
- 26.
Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1939 g. (1992): 4 (V. B. Zhiromskaya).
- 27.
Harris, ed. (2013): 725–728 (S. G. Wheatcroft).
- 28.
RGASPI, 82/2/538: 5 (Yezhov to Molotov, February 2, 1937); 6–17 (Bel’skii to Yezhov, January 27, 1937). The TsUNKhU and NKVD estimates of births and deaths in 1935 and 1936 are compared directly in Table A-26: Kraval’ (January 5, 1937), and Bel’skii (January 27, 1937). The next row of this table (Sautin, February 1937) shows that, in the following month, with Kraval’ arrested, his successor Sautin signed off on new TsUNKhU estimates of the natural increase that raised the estimated numbers of both births and deaths in 1935 and 1936, but raised births by more, more or less in line with the NKVD prescription.
- 29.
For the documents, see Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1937 g. (1991).
- 30.
‘On the natural movement of the population in the period between the censuses of 1926 and 1937’, reproduced in Vsesoyuznaya perepis’ naseleniya 1937 goda, 2/e (2007): 285–288. See also Davies et al., eds. (1994): 75 (Wheatcroft and Davies).
- 31.
Blum and Mespoulet (2003): 159, 161.
- 32.
Volkov (2014): 152.
- 33.
We know this not directly, from Kraval’, but indirectly, from Yakovlev, who wrote to Stalin and Molotov on May 18, 1937, to refute Kraval’s charges (RGASPI, 82/2/537: 124). For the Kurman gap, see Table 1.
- 34.
These notes in Popov’s personal file (RGAE, 1562/105/1/10: 1–9; 105/1/441a: 1–12) are consistent with the position he took in January 1939, discussed below.
- 35.
RGAE, 1562/105/1/82: 1–16 (February 1937).
- 36.
RGASPI, 82/2/537: 124 (May 18, 1937).
- 37.
RGASPI, 82/2/531: 47 (letter of transmission from Yakovlev to Molotov); 48–55 (the report of the Redens commission). The first page of the report lists the commission members as Redens, Grossman, and Gegechkor. Strangely, the letter of transmission names Peters in place of Redens. At this time S. F. Redens was chief of the Moscow province NKVD, whereas A. A. Peters (Zdebskii) was an NKVD officer in charge of police matters in the Ukrainian province of Chernigov, an unlikely position from which to be assigned this task.
- 38.
О. А. Kvitkin (1874–1937) joined the Bolshevik Party in 1904, and was a delegate to the third, fourth, and fifth party congresses, but had allowed his membership to lapse in 1908. He had worked in zemstvo statistical offices from 1901, but then went abroad and graduated in mathematics from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1913. He returned to Moscow in 1915 and revived links with his former statistical colleagues (but not his former party comrades). In 1919 he joined the Soviet statistical administration and took a lead in the urban censuses of 1920 and 1923 and the national 1926 censuses. A most valuable skill was his understanding of mechanical data processing. In the early 1930s Trilisser had tried to have him dismissed but Osinskii and Kraval’ kept him in charge of the census office.
- 39.
For Kraval’s arrest, see Golod v SSSR, 3 (2012): 857. Volkov (2014): 151, reports that he was suspended from his position on May 23 and dismissed on June 2.
- 40.
I. D. Vermenichev (1899–1938), born in Turkestan of peasant origin, served in the Cheka and as a political commissar in Central Asia during the Civil War. Afterwards he entered the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, graduating in 1926, before joining both Rabkrin (the government inspectorate) and TsSU and also the editorial boards of the agricultural newspaper and the party newspaper Pravda. From February 1933 he was deputy chief of Rabkrin and a member of the Presidium of the Party Control Commission. From 1934 he worked in Gosplan as head of the Departments of Agriculture and State Farms. In 1937, as head of TsUNKhU and deputy head of Gosplan from May 31 until his arrest on December 4, he was active in purging TsUNKhU in Moscow and the localities. Volkov (2014): 152–153, provides a list of regional statisticians purged at this time.
- 41.
RGASPI, 82/2/531: 56–60 (June 11, 1937).
- 42.
Pravda, September 26, 1937, reproduced in Polyakov et al. (2007): 288.
- 43.
Ivan Vasil’evich Sautin (1903–1975), of peasant origin, served in the Red Army Air Force in the 1920s and then trained as a teacher, joining the party in the process. In the early 1930s he taught in a teacher training college, and a technical college, and then became a deputy director of a Leningrad party distance learning college, responsible for the teaching of political economy. In 1935 he became an affiliate of the Institute of Red Professors and in 1937 became its deputy director for teaching. Nothing in this early career seems to have prepared him professionally for sudden elevation to the chief statistician of the Soviet Union. He was chief of TsUNKhU for the best part of three years, from January 7, 1938, to October 10, 1940. Unlike his predecessors he was not arrested, but spent the rest of a long career in less prestigious roles. At TsUNKhU he was replaced by his deputy, V. N. Starovskii, who was chief of the census office during the 1939 census. Starovskii remained in charge of TsUNKhU (renamed TsSU in 1948) until 1975.
- 44.
Izvestiya, December 3, 1938.
- 45.
The ‘control measures’ adopted in 1939 to avoid double-counting are discussed in Vsesoyuznaya perepi’ naseleniya 1939 goda, (1992): 12 (T. Labutova).
- 46.
Izvestiya, December 15, 1938 (A. Vaganov).
- 47.
Izvestiya, December 23, 1938. The article was signed by ‘Professor Starovskii’, most likely V. N. Starovskii, deputy head of the census office at the time, who had been made a professor in 1934.
- 48.
Kornev (1993): 121.
- 49.
RGAE, 1562/329/279: 58–61 (Popov to Stalin and Molotov, January 15, 1939), reproduced in Golod v SSSR 3 (2013): 647–650.
- 50.
As described by Kotkin (1995): 198–237.
- 51.
Scholasticism: here Popov echoed a charge that Lenin had levelled at him in 1921: ‘Statisticians must be our practical assistants and not scholastic’. For his self-criticism, see Vestnik statistiki (1924), no. 1–3: i–viii (Popov). Popov had recalled the episode in Izvestiya as recently as January 8, 1937, in an article ‘Kak proshla perepis’.
- 52.
RGAE, 4372/92/161: 36 (January 26, 1939).
- 53.
Stalin’s meetings day by day, at the Melbourne Gateway to Research on Soviet History, http://www.melgrosh.unimelb.edu.au/.
- 54.
RGAE, 1562/329/279: 10–11 (Sautin to Stalin and Molotov). This is more than a week before the report of February 9 which Zhiromskaya gives as the date of the first communication to the leadership.
- 55.
The ‘special contingents’ and their role in the 1939 census are discussed by Bogoyavlenskii (2013) at http://demoscope.ru/.
- 56.
Stalin’s meetings day by day, at the Melbourne Gateway to Research on Soviet History, http://www.melgrosh.unimelb.edu.au/. The meeting was held in Stalin’s office. Stalin, Molotov, Mikoyan, and Zhdanov were already present when Voznesenskii and Sautin arrived at 00:15; Kaganovich joined them at 00:30. Voznesenskii and Sautin left at 02:00, and the others remained to discuss matters with Stalin for a further 25 minutes.
- 57.
See Table 2. By convention the draft document as typed was not dated; the date would be entered by hand when the draft was accepted—in this case, on March 21. But the draft found in the TsUNKhU files shows a handwritten instruction dated March 13 (RGAE, 1562/329/256: 43) to circulate five copies (to Stalin, Molotov, Voznesenskii, and Sautin, and to the file). Most likely the issue was so sensitive that Voznesenskii and Sautin wanted to ensure that their recommendations would be acceptable to Stalin and Molotov, who saw and approved them before the document was signed on March 21. See also RGAE, 4372/92/161: 43–49 (this version, from the Gosplan files, includes a draft Sovnarkom decree announcing that the census had been correctly carried out).
- 58.
Bogoyavlenskii (2013) at http://demoscope.ru/.
- 59.
RGAE, 7971/16/54: 1–263 (‘Chislennost’ naseleniya SSSR na 17 yanvarya 1939 g. po raionam, raionnym tsentram, gorodam, rabochim poselkam i kruppnym sel’skim naselennym punktam: po dannym Vsesoyuznoi perepisi naseleniya 1939 g.’ (1941)); the 1940 revision is explained on p. 3.
- 60.
Andreev et al. (1993): 57.
- 61.
On the effects of the ban, see Vinogradov, Rukovodstvo, 1 (1974): 85 (E. Sadvokasava). Based on a study of 400,000 spontaneous and induced abortion in 30 Russian provinces, Sadvokasava concluded that the law resulted in widespread illegal abortions. There was also a temporary increase in the number of births, but this reflected an increase in the number of unwanted or untimely pregnancies, risking the health and sometimes the life of mother and child.
- 62.
Filtzer (2010).
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Davies, R.W., Harrison, M., Khlevniuk, O., Wheatcroft, S.G. (2018). The Soviet Population and the Censuses of 1937 and 1939. In: The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 7: The Soviet Economy and the Approach of War, 1937–1939. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36238-4_5
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