Before the 1917 Revolution, about one hundred and thirty thousand people of Finnish origin lived on Russian territory on the south shore of the Gulf of Finland—from the Narva River in the west to the Neva River in the east, and in the region north of St. Petersburg. Their numbers remained fairly constant during the 1920s and early 1930s, but, after the Second World War, a great decrease was evident in the total Finnish population of the region, with only about twentyfour thousand recorded in the 1970 Soviet census. This drop in population is attributable not only to the ravages of the war but also to movements of people, including deportations that took place during the 1930s and 1940s.