CENSUS IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 89, 12 October 1938, Page 16

CENSUS IN RUSSIA

FRESH ONE TO BE HELD

A new census of the entire Soviet population is to be taken next January, says the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post." The results of that taken in January, 1937, did not satisfy the authorities, who have never published them. The last one published was in January, 1933. The population was then given at 165,847,100.

It is declared that the Central Statistical Bureau was last year in the hands of a "gang of wreckers," headed by Professor Kraval, who not only falsified the actual count, but even introduced "wrecking" principles in drawing up a list of questions to be asked of all citizens to establish their nationality and religion.

The people were allowed, for example, to state what "National culture" they claimed to belong to instead of declaring their race by birth. Thus a Jew or a Soviet Pole might claim to be a "Great Russian" or a Ukrainian.

.In the next census they will be cqmpelled, as in all Russian censuses before 1937, to disclose their race by birth and their native language.

Again in the census of 1937 all citizens were invited to declare their "religion." A surprisingly large number seem to have declared themselves to be "Russian Orthodox," under the misapprehension, based on the traditional habit of mind of the old regime, that all "Great Russians" proper and all Ukrainians belonged by race to that communion, just as German Russians were necessarily Lutheran, Calvinist, or Mennonite and Polish Russians were necessarily Roman Catholic.

Next time only those professionally employed as priests will be compelled to declare their religious convictions.

Another interesting point about the 1937 census is that Kraval and his fellow "wreckers" in the Central Statistical Bureau' seem to have made a grossly exaggerated estimate of the population in 1934, because they failed to take into account the wastage of population during the hungry years. By next year, however, the full effects of the repeal in 1936 of the law permitting free abortions and the severe penalties which were then imposed on those practising such operations will have become evident in a great increase in births ancl therefore in the population.

These will counter-bahSnee the losses in earlier years in the grand total, although, of course, there will be a higher proportion of infants to men of fighting age.