Soviet Census (1937) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Soviet Census held on January 6, 1937 was the most controversial of the censuses taken within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. The census results were destroyed and its organizers were sent to the Gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

as saboteurs

Sabotage

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...

because the census showed much lower population figures than anticipated.

Delays

After the First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union

First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union

The First All Union Census of the Soviet Union took place in December 1926. It was an important tool in the state-building of the USSR, provided the government with important ethnographic information, and helped in the transformation from Imperial Russian society to Soviet society...

of 1926 the next census was planned to be held in 1933. On March 15, 1932 the formal commission on census organization, chaired by V. V. Osinsky was created by the Statistical Commission (Tsentral'noye Upravleniye Narodno-Khozyaystvennogo Uchyota, TsUNKhU) of Gosplan

Gosplan

Gosplan or State Planning Committee was the committee responsible for economic planning in the Soviet Union. The word "Gosplan" is an abbreviation for Gosudarstvenniy Komitet po Planirovaniyu...

. On 22 April 1932 Sovnarkom adopted the decision On Conducting the all-Union Census in December 1933. On 15 April 1933 Sovnarkom moved the date for the census to the beginning of 1935. On 23 June 1934 Sovnarkom further delayed the census to January 1936. On 15 June 1935 the census date was moved to December 1936. Finally the census was conducted on January 6, 1937.

The multiple delays were most probably explained by the reluctance to show the catastrophic demographic results of collectivization and the Famine of 1932-1934, including the Holodomor

Holodomor

The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...

. The Soviet leadership had fanned great expectations of population growth.

High expectations

On 26 January 1934 Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

reported to the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (b)

17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (b)

The 17th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held during 26 January - 10 February 1934. The congress was attended by 1,225 delegates with a casting vote and 736 delegates with a consultative vote, representing 1,872,488 party members and 935,298 candidate members.Nicknamed "The...

as one of the main achievements "Growth of population from 160.5 millions in the end of 1930 to the 168 millions in the end of 1933".
On 1 December 1935 Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

made a speech, on the Meeting of Kolkhozniks with the Soviet and Party leaders:
Combining his reports, one could have expected to have a population of about 180 million in 1937.

Official statistics based on the registered birth and death rates implied that the 1937 census should show a population of 170-172 million. On 21 September 1935 Sovnarkom adopted a decision On the organization of registration of natural population changes (О постановке учета естественного движения населения) most probably authored by Stalin:

In fact, as discussed by A. G. Volkov, the idea that a significant number of people received multiple death certificates for the same person is absurd. On the other hand, not registering deaths, especially those who died during the 1930s famines and prison inmates, was common. For example, during the Holodomor

Holodomor

, starving peasants tried (despite the official ban) to escape to the cities where they could earn or beg for food. Many of them died in the streets. In 1933, the street-cleaning service of Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

picked up 9,472 dead bodies. Only 3,991 of them were officially registered while 5481 were disposed of without formal registration according to the instructions of the prosecutor's office.

Preparation

The official commission for the preparation of the census was formed on 16 September 1935. It included:

Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...

, the Chairman of Sovnarkom
Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin.-Early life:Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire...

, Narkom for transport
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Armenian Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the rules of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev....

, Narkom for the food industry
N.K. Antipov, Vice Chairman of Sovnarkom;
Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Bulganin
Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin was a prominent Soviet politician, who served as Minister of Defense and Premier of the Soviet Union . The Bulganin beard is named after him.-Early career:...

, Chairman of Mossovet
Mossovet
Mossovet , an abbreviation of Moscow Soviet of People's Deputies, was the informal name of *parallel, shadow city administration of Moscow, Russia run by left-wing parties in 1917*city administration of Moscow in Soviet period...
Emmanuil Kviring, Vice Chairman of Gosplan
Gosplan
Gosplan or State Planning Committee was the committee responsible for economic planning in the Soviet Union. The word "Gosplan" is an abbreviation for Gosudarstvenniy Komitet po Planirovaniyu...
I.A. Kraval, the chief of TsUNKhU
A.S. Popov, deputy to the chief of TsUNKhU.

Later the commission was joined by

Valery Mezhlauk, the Chairman of Gosplan
Gosplan
Gosplan or State Planning Committee was the committee responsible for economic planning in the Soviet Union. The word "Gosplan" is an abbreviation for Gosudarstvenniy Komitet po Planirovaniyu...

, who chaired the commission.

All the documents related to the census were prepared by TsUNKhU and edited personally by Joseph Stalin. A.G. Volkov speculates that never in modern history was such a routine technical matter as a census so micromanaged by such high officials.

A comparison between the two variants is shown in the table below:

Comparison between the TsUNKhU proposal and the final (by Stalin) census forms

TsUNKhU proposal

|Stalin's edit

Order

Question

Order

Question

Relations with the person that provides the main income (wife, son, aunt, foster child, etc.)

removed

If temporarily absent than:

a) mention "temporarily absent"

b) state the reason (vacations, business trip, visiting, etc.

c) for how long (days, months) absent

removed

If lives temporarily state "lives temporarily"

removed

Sex (male - 1, female - 2)

Sex (male, female)

How many years since birth? For children younger than one year - months? Younger than one month - days?

How many years or months since birthday

Ethnicity

Nationality

Mother tongue

Mother tongue

Religion

If foreign citizen then of what state?

Citizen of what state?

Was born here?

removed

If was not born here, then state:

A) Where was born?

a) Republic or oblast
Oblast
Oblast is a type of administrative division in Slavic countries, including some countries of the former Soviet Union. The word "oblast" is a loanword in English, but it is nevertheless often translated as "area", "zone", "province", or "region"...

b) Uyezd

Uyezd

Uyezd or uezd was an administrative subdivision of Rus', Muscovy, Russian Empire, and the early Russian SFSR which was in use from the 13th century. Uyezds for most of the history in Russia were a secondary-level of administrative division...

c) Raion
Raion
A raion is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet countries. The term, which is from French rayon 'honeycomb, department,' describes both a type of a subnational entity and a division of a city, and is commonly translated in English as "district"...

?

d) Name of the town, settlement?

B. For how long lives here (in this town or settlement)

removed

a) Whether able to read and write, or only read, or completely illiterate?

b) If literate then in what languages?

Whether literate?

Where do you study? Name of school, courses, etc. For the children going to a nursery, kindergarten, etc. state "kindergarten", "nursery", etc.

In what school do you study - primary, secondary or tertiary?

What grade are you in?

Where have you studied? Name of the highest school (those graduated state grad., those who have not graduated state the grade or class they dropped)

Have you graduated from secondary or tertiary school?

Main occupation

a) Type of the occupation or job, position, profession, specialization

b) Award category (for workers)

c) Position in the main occupation: worker, white collar, apprentice, member of a collective farm, commune, co-operative, small business owner, etc.

d) Name of the office or enterprise (kolkhoz

Kolkhoz

A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...

, sovkhoz

Sovkhoz

A sovkhoz , typically translated as state farm, is a state-owned farm. The term originated in the Soviet Union, hence the name. The term is still in use in some post-Soviet states, e.g., Russia and Belarus. It is usually contrasted with kolkhoz, which is a collective-owned farm...

, factory, plant, shop, etc.)

Type of occupation in present

What social group do you belong: workers, white collars, kolkhozniks, individual farmers, artisans, people of free professions, priests of a cult or nonworking elements?

Place of work (name of the enterprise, kolkhoz, office)

Secondary occupation

a) Type

b) Award category (for the workers)

c) Position

d) Name of the enterprise and its address

removed

If you have income not from the occupation state what type of income (pension, scholarship, from rent, etc.)

removed

If have no own income then who provides for you (Number of the person on the list and if not present state occupation, position and type of the enterprise)

removed

If married then for how many years?

Are you married?

While his Soviet contemporaries praised Stalin's clarity and brevity in the design of these forms, modern scholars have observed a significant dumbing-down of the original proposals. A lot of information, e.g., about the social structures and income, and migration, could not be deduced from the new forms. Some questions (like the social category) were extremely vague and allowed different interpretations. Volkov argues it was done deliberately. Stalin removed the double accounting (of those present at the time of census and of those permanently living at an address), thus significantly reducing the accuracy of the calculations. It was coupled with a very maladroit time for the census: the night of January 5–6 – that is, the eve of Russian Orthodox

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

, when people are extremely mobile.

The main new question introduced by Stalin was the question about religion. According to Volkov, Stalin expected the great majority of people to self-identify as atheists.

Census

The census was held on January 6, 1937; in addition to the general census in the cities, towns and villages, a special census was held by the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

in the Gulag

Gulag

camps and among the border guards; by the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

, which took a census of military personnel; and the railroad, which took a census of passengers. When the data was first processed, it soon became obvious that the final enumeration would be no more than 162 million people. The worst disagreement between the expected and the obtained data were in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

, Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

, North Caucasus

North Caucasus

The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....

and the Volga region, the areas that were the strongest hit by the Soviet famine of 1932-1934. Also, despite the expected number of living prisoners of the Gulag to be 4 million, only 2.6 million were accounted for.

On January 11 the chief of TsUNKhU Kraval sent telegrams requesting a total recount of a whole settlement if any doubt arose that somebody might be missing there. Still, despite the total recount in 25,000 settlements, only 4,887 previously unenumerated persons were found. The preliminary result of the census, reported to the Stalin in middle of March 1937, was 162,039,470 people, much lower than the "criminally decreased" registered numbers of 170-172 million or Stalin's expectation of 180 million people.

Another serious blow was a very high percentage of people who stated that they were religious. 55.3 million or 56.7% of those who provided answers stated they were religious (the question was asked only of people older than 16 years old), 42.2 million stated they were atheists and around 1 million refused to give an answer. Historian V. B. Zhiromskaya stated that people expected to be persecuted if they declared themselves as belonging to a religion but considered the answer to be important: If many people would say they are religious, the authorities would have to open the churches, was a common attitude. The Soviet authorities were so upset by the results of the census that they did not include a question on religion in any future censuses.

Aftermath

In March 1937 the four main statistical professionals working on the Census in TsUNKhU – the chief of the Sector for Population, Mikhail Kurman; chief of the Census Bureau, Olimpy Kvitkin; his deputy, Lazar Brand; and the chief of the Sector for transportation and communication, Ivan Oblomov, were arrested and imprisoned. Soon they were joined by the Chief of TsUNKhU, Ivan Kraval, and the chiefs of most of the regional statistical centers. Many statisticians, newly-appointed in place of those arrested, were soon arrested themselves. There is evidence that many managers appointed to lead the statistical organization tried to avoid starting their new jobs in desperate attempts to escape persecution.

On 25 September 1937 there was a special Sovnarkom decision proclaiming the census invalid and setting a new one for January 1939. A Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....

editorial stated that the "enemies of the people

Enemy of the people

The term enemy of the people is a fluid designation of political or class opponents of the group using the term. The term implies that the "enemies" in question are acting against society as a whole. It is similar to the notion of "enemy of the state". The term originated in Roman times as ,...

gave the census counters invalid instructions that led to the gross under-counting of the population, but the brave NKVD under the leadership of Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov was a senior figure in the NKVD under Joseph Stalin during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovshchina" , "the Yezhov era", a term that began to be used during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s...

destroyed the snake's nest in the statistical bodies".

Stalin had to agree with the lower numbers of population growth. In his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party(b) he said:

The new Soviet Census (1939) showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match exactly the numbers stated by Stalin in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party. No other censuses were conducted until 1959.

Today there is a consensus that the results of the 1939 census were adjusted (0.5 to 1.5 million persons were added to the reported population). Some historians consider the 1937 census the only more or less reliable source of demographic data for the period 1926-1959. However, demographers do not consider it as such. The data became influential for evaluating the number of victims of the Great Purge

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

, World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, and the 1930s famines, including the Holodomor

Holodomor

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