Russian Empire Census
The Russian Imperial Census of 1897 was the first and the only census carried out in the Russian Empire (Finland was excluded). It recorded demographic data as of 28 January [O.S. 15 January] 1897.
Previously, the Central Statistical Bureau issued statistical tables based on fiscal lists (ревизские списки).
The second Russian Census was scheduled for 1915, but was cancelled because of the World War I (and never happened in the Russian Empire because of the Russian Revolution of 1917).
Organization
The census project was suggested by famous Russian geographer and chief of the Central Statistical Bureau Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky in 1877, and was approved by Tsar Nicholas II in 1895.
The census was performed in two stages. In the first stage (December 1896 — January 1897) the counters (135,000 persons: literate soldiers, teachers and priests) visited all households and filled in the questionnaires, which were verified by local census managers. In the second stage (9 January 1898 [O.S. 28 December 1897]) the counters simultaneously visited all households to verify and update the questionnaires.
The data processing took 8 years using Hollerith card machines. Publication of the results started in 1898 and ended in 1905. In total, 119 volumes for 89 guberniyas, as well as a two-volume summary, were issued.
The questionnaire contained the following questions:
- Family name, given name, patronymic or nickname (прозвище)
- Sex
- Relation with respect to the head of the family or household
- Age
- Marital status
- Social status: sosloviye (estate of the realm), rank or title (сословіе, состояніе, званіе)
- Place of birth
- Place of registration
- Usual place of residence
- Notice of absence
- Faith
- Mother language
- Literacy
- Occupation (profession, trade, position of office or service), both primary and secondary
In the census summary tables, nationality was based on the declared mother language of respondents.
Census results
The results of the census are too broad to publish, but its online Russian version can be found here: demoscope.ru.
The total population of the Russian Empire was recorded to be 125,640,021 people (50.2 % female, 49.8 % male ; urban 16,828,395 ).
By native tongue
The most spoken languages, from which nationality was determined were:
- Slavic tongues:
- Russian language: 83,933,567
- Polish: 7,931,307
- Other Slavic tongues: 224,859
- Lithuanio-Latvian tongues: 3,094,469
- Lithuanian: 1,210,510
- Zhmud (Samogitian): 448,022
- Latvian: 1,435,937
- Romance tongues: 1,143,000
- Moldavian and Romanian: 1,121,669
- Germanic tongues: 1,813,717
- Yiddish (ru:Еврейский): 5,063,156
- Kartvelian (South Caucasian) tongues: 1,352,535
- Caucasian mountain tongues: 1,091,782
- Other Indo-European languages: 2,190,597
- Tajik and Persian: 382,120
- Finnish tongues: 3,502,147
- Turkic-Tatar tongues: 13,373,867
- Other languages: 925,018 (from this 57,000 Chinese)
- Total Russian Empire: 125,640,021
By religion
- Pravoslavs (Greek Orthodox) 69.34%
- Mohammedans (Muslims) 11.07%
- Roman Catholics 9.13%
- Jewish 4.15%
- Lutherans 2.84%
- Old Believers and others split from Pravoslavs 1.75%
- Armenian Gregorians & Armenian Catholics 0.97%
- Buddhists, lamaists 0.34%
- Other Protestants 0.15%
- Karaites 0.01%
[1]
Population by modern day countries
- Russia 67,475,000 (from this Siberia 5,758,822)
- Ukraine 23,430,407 (from this Crimea 1,447,790)
- Poland (Vistula basin) 9,402,253
- Belarus 6,927,040
- Kazakhstan 4,000,000
- Lithuania 3,135,771
- Georgia (country) 2,109,273
- Uzbekistan 2,000,000
- Bessarabia (Moldova) 1,935,412
- Azerbaijan 1,705,131
- Latvia 1,486,115
- Estonia 900,000
- Armenia 829,556
- Kyrgyzstan 750,000
- Tajikistan 646,000
- Turkmenistan 350,000
Largest cities
Largest cities of the Empire according to the census:
- Saint-Petersburg — 1,264,900
- Moscow — 1,038,600
- Warsaw — 626,000
- Odessa — 403,800
- Łódź — 314,000
- Riga — 282,200
- Kiev — 247,700
- Kharkov — 174,000
- Tiflis (Tbilisi) — 159,600
- Wilno (Vilnius) — 154,500
- Saratov — 137,100
- Kazan — 130,000
- Rostov-on-Don — 119,500
- Tula — 114,700
- Astrakhan — 112,900
- Katerynoslav (Dnipropetrovsk) — 112,800
- Baku — 111,900
- Kishinev (Chişinău) — 108,500
- Helsinki — 93,000
- Nikolaiv — 92,000
- Minsk — 90,900
- Nizhny Novgorod — 90,100
- Samara — 90,000
- Orenburg — 72,400
- Yaroslavl — 71,600
- Vitebsk — 65,900
- Yekaterinodar (Krasnodar) — 65,600
- Tsaritsyn (Volgograd) — 55,200
- Ivanovo-Voznesensk (Ivanovo) — 54,200
- Tomsk — 52,200
- Omsk — 37,300
Assessment
As many other census in the era of nationalism, the results of this census are biased and skewed towards the nationality preferred by the authorities, in this case, Russian, in order to inflate the numbers of population of Russian ethnicity.[2] Thus for example, the number of Poles is underrepresented.[3][4] Imperial officials also classified Ukrainian and Belarusian languages as belonging to Russian group and labeled those nationalities as Little Russian for Ukrainians and White Russian for Belarusians.[2]
Notes
- ^ http://demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/rus_rel_97.php?reg=0
- ^ a b Anna Geifman, Russia under the last tsar: opposition and subversion, 1894-1917, Wiley-Blackwell, 1999, ISBN 1-55786-995-2, Google Print, p. 118-119
- ^ Piotr Eberhardt, Jan Owsinski, Ethnic groups and population changes in twentieth-century Central-Eastern Europe, M.E. Sharpe, 2003, ISBN 0-7656-0665-8, Google Print, p.27
- ^ Jerzy Borzęcki, The Soviet-Polish peace of 1921 and the creation of interwar Europe, Yale University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-300-12121-0, Google Print, p.10
References