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The Russian Census of 1897: Some Observations on the Age Data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Don Karl Rowney  and
Edward G. Stockwell
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The most common Russian population records of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—the revisii—were the product of the state's effort to keep track of the population primarily for tax purposes. The narrowness of this approach to documenting the size and distribution of the population—particularly the absence of socioeconomic data—gradually led to replacement of the revisii by more comprehensive statistics, including the census. Unlike the revisii, the census of 1897 was to be a statement of population size and characteristics on a specific date of record, a “single-day” census (odnodnevnaia perepis’). In addition, the census collected relatively broad data on the population, including items ranging from age, sex, and place of birth to items such as class, literacy and schooling, employment, and so forth. Finally, it was the aim of the census to collect and publish these data for the entire population of the empire regardless of social class, tax status, or place of residence.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 217 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1978

References

1. Troinitskii, N. A., ed., Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii 1897 g. : Izdanie Tsentral'nago statisticheskago komitcta Ministerstva vnutrennikh del, 89 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1899-1905)Google Scholar.

2. A phrase not much used by the census takers, but used by some of their critics (see St-k, , “Vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia i razrabotka eia rezul'tatov,” Russkoe ekonomicheskoe obosrenie, 5 [1900] : 52 Google Scholar). The official date of the census was January 28, 1897 (see Adrianov, S. A., ed., Ministerstva vnutrennikh del : Istoricheskii ocherk [1802-1902], 3 vols. [St. Petersburg, 1901], 1 : 224 Google Scholar).

3. An exceptionally long biographical note by Iu. Shokal'skii is found in Brokgauz, F. A. and Efron, I. A., eds., Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', 86 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1890-1907), 29 : 435-36.Google Scholar

4. The Statistical Division in the Ministry of Internal Affairs was established in the 1830s and was reorganized in 1857 as the Central Statistical Committee. The Committee's responsibilities are defined in Svod sakonov, vol. 1, part 2 : “Uchrezhdenie ministerstv, “ articles 415-420.

5. For example, the Statisticheskii vremenik rossiiskoi imperii (St. Petersburg, 1867-84).

6. Spisok vysshikh chinov tsentral'nykh ustanovlenii Ministerstva vnutrennikh del, part 1 (St. Petersburg, 1905), “Statisticheskii Sovet : Troinitskii, Nikolai Aleksandrovich… .“

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. There are directories, or bibliographies, of Ministry of Internal Affairs publications in this area. See, for example, Spisok izdanii Tsentral'nago statisticheskago komiteta (St. Petersburg, 1914).

10. St-k, “Vseobshchaia perepis',” p. 52. Similar credit is given to Semenov by Shokal1-skii in his article in the Brokgauz-Efron encyclopedia (Entsiklopedicheskii slovar1', 29 : 436). Semenov himself discussed the census in “Kharakternye vyvody iz pervoi vseobshchei perepisi, “ Isvestiia imperatorskago rossiiskago geograficheskago obshchestva (St. Petersburg, 1897), cited by Shokal'skii (Brokgauz and Efron, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar1, 29 : 436).

11. See, for example, Adrianov, Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del, vol. 1, pp. 223 ff.

12. See, for example, Troinitskii, “Predislovie,” Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis', vol. 37 : Gorod S.-Peterburg, book 1. Evidently his pride was justified. The 1897 census was certainly the largest undertaking of its kind in Europe up to that time. Moreover, the Russian effort preceded a similar effort in China by several years. Ping-ti Ho states that a Directorate of Statistics was created in 1908 and that it worked out a plan for a modern-style census. Ho concludes : “Because of immediate political exigency, this six-year plan was ‘completed' in four. Theoretically, therefore, China had taken her first modern census by 1911” (Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953 [Cambridge, 19S3], p. 73).

13. In addition to the previously mentioned articles by Semenov and St-k, these include A. Lositskii, “Etiudy o naselenii Rossii po perepisi 1897 goda,” Mir boshii, 1905, no. 8, pp. 224-44; and V. G. Mikhailovskii, “Fakty i tsifry iz russkoi deistvitel'nosti : Naselenie Rossii po pervoi vseobshchei perepisi,” Novoe slovo, June 1897, cited by Rashin, A., in Naselenie Rossii za 100 let (1811-1913 gg.) : Statisticheskie ocherki (Moscow, 1956), p. 20 Google Scholar. A short article in English was published in 1897 ( Volkhovsky, F, “The Census,” Free Russia, 8, no. 7 [1897] : 50-52Google Scholar). Population data, from their inception, evidently have not only been subject to error— and thus prone to belie their apparent numerical exactness—but the error has been obvious enough for many who would use the data to notice it. A recently published work on eighteenth-century Russian urban history, for example, has argued that estimates of the Russian urban population in the eighteenth century are off by as much as half, and that these errors are more the result of misinterpretation of the enumeration data than of internal inaccuracy (see Gilbert, Rozman, “Comparative Approaches to Urbanization : Russia, 1750- 1800,” in Michael F. Hamm, ed., The City in Russian History [Lexington, Ky., 1976], pp. 73–79 Google Scholar).

14. Articles in both Russkoe ekonomicheskoe obosrenie and Mir bozhii emphasized inadequacies in the interpretative or analytic quality of the work, but Volkhovsky's note in Free Russia heavily emphasized descriptions of the collection process that were unlikely to be productive of accurate results (Volkhovsky, “The Census,” pp. 50-51).

15. Troinitskii, “Predislovie,” Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis1, vol. 1 : Arkhangel'skaia gubemiia, book 1.

16. St-k, “Vseobshchaia perepis',” pp. 54-55.

17. Statisticheskii eshegodnik Rossii or Ezhegodnik Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1904—15), published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and not to be confused with Ezhegodnik of the Ministry of Finance or other, privately published, yearbooks.

18. See, for example, Lositskii, “Etiudy,” pp. 226 ff.; and St-k, “Vseobshchaia perepis', “ pp. 57 ff.

19. St-k, “Vseobshchaia perepis',” pp. 59-60.

20. See, for example, A. Rashin, Naselenie Rossii, pp. 20-21; and Robert A. Lewis, Richard H. Rowland, and Clem, Ralph S., Nationality and Population Change in Russia and the USSR : An Evaluation of the Census Data, 1897-1970 (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, especially chapter 2.

21. Robert J., Myers, “Errors and Bias in the Reporting of Ages in Census Data,” Transactions of the Actuarial Society of America, no. 104 (October 1940), p. 395.Google Scholar

22. Edward G., Stockwell, “Digit Preference and Avoidance in the 1960 Census of Mexico,” Estadistica : Journal of the Inter-American Statistical Institute (September 1965), pp. 440-41Google Scholar.

23. Edward, G. Stockwell and Jerry, W. Wicks, “Age Heaping in Recent National Censuses,” Social Biology, 21, no. 2 (Summer 1974) : 163–67 Google Scholar, and “Age Heaping in Recent National Censuses : An Addendum,” Social Biology, 22, no. 3 (Fall 197S) : 279-81. It should also be noted that these studies offer an explanation for overselecting certain “convenient“ digits which are defined as “multiples of the divisors of the base of the number system.” This explanation, verified by the data presented on thirty-seven national censuses, is based on interpretations offered earlier by Turner, Stanley H., “Patterns of Heaping in the Reporting of Numerical Data,” Proceedings of the Social Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association (Washington, D.C., 1958), pp. 248-51.Google Scholar

24. United, Nations, Demographic Yearbook, 1971 (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

25. Stockwell and Wicks, “Age Heaping in Recent National Censuses,” p. 164.

26. U.S. Census of Population : 1960. Detailed Characteristics : United States Summary, Bureau of the Census, PC (1) -ID (Washington, D.C., 1963), p. xii.

27. Symbolically : N ( N - 1 ) + (N + 1) Where : N = total enumerated at any specified age; N — 1 = sum of enumerated at five preceding ages; N + 1 = sum of enumerated at five succeeding ages; x = 10

28. Volkhovsky states that “in towns, where, as a rule, it was expected that everybody would put the necessary information about himself in writing personally, the illiterate portion of the population had recourse to scribes for whom they had to pay” (Volkhovsky, “The Census,” pp. 50-51). If this is so, it may offer a partial explanation for improved accuracy of age reporting in the cities : in cases where records were, in fact, available they could be read, if not by the subject, then by a scribe.

29. This observation was made by critics of the census in. its own time (see St-k, “Vseobshchaia perepis',” p. 52).

30. See, for example, Miller, Morton D., Elements of Graduation (Chicago, 1946).Google Scholar