SOVIET CENSUS

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 February 1938, Page 8

SOVIET CENSUS

RESULTS KEPT SECRET. The Soviet Government has announced its decision not to publish the results of the' all-Union census, says the “Daily Telegraph and Morning Post.” It will undertake a fresh census in January, 1939. Although the population of the. Soviet Union was officially, but rather dubiously, estimated at 168,000,000 in January, 1934, no real census figures have been issued since December, 1926. For the decision two official reason are given. One is that the methods used last January “violated every elemental rule of statistics,” the othei' that those taking the census disobeyed the Government’s instructions. Kraval, the head of the Central Statistical and Vice-Commissar for State Planning, has been dismissed, with several of his assistants, for “wrecking activities” discovered in the department. What this “wrecking” consisted of was not indicated, but one theory is that the Central Statistical Institute, in its pre-census estimates of the present population, failed to take into account the exceptionally heavy human wastage during the hungry years 1932-33. Owing to the measures taken in the summer of 1936 to prevent “illegal operations” and otherwise encourage big families, the Soviet population is now growing again faster than ever.

' The questionnaire submitted to all citizens during the census was, moreover, clumsily drafted from the Soviet Government standpoint. For instance, one question was: “Are you religious, and, if so, to what Church do you belong?” Since under the old regime the terms “Russia” and “Orthodox” had become almost synonymous, this led to an abnormal number of old-fashion-ed people declaring themselves “Orthodox Christians.”