CENSUS IN RUSSIA

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 6 January 1927, Page 5

CENSUS IN RUSSIA

FIRST SINCE 1897 COMPLETED BY SOVIET SOME REVELATIONS. BY CABLE —PEES 9 ASSOCIATION— COPYRIGHT Received 11.5 a.m. to-day. LONDON, Jam 5. The Riga correspondent of tin? T»r<--s says The Soviet has comp eted the first entire census since 1897. The compilers have had most curious adventures, even in the big towns, where the people suspected the authorities of attempting a new political experiment. Many country districts were agitated by the revival of a legend current smce Peter the Great organised the liret census, that the anti-Christ was number ing the people before the end of the world. The census revealed that even in Moscow and Leningrad, the extreme degradation of the great- proportion or the population, especially in family relations, also in children’s squalor and vice. The first figures show that the population and birth rate had catastrophically declined after the revolution, but- increased again after 1923. There was a great drift towards the towns, and Moscow’s popuation is 2_,018,000, as compared with 1,027.000 in 1920; Leningrad’s 1,611,000, doube what it was in 1920. —Times.