The 1937 Soviet census held on January 6, 1937, was a censuses taken within the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. The census showed lower population figures than anticipated, although it still showed a population growth from the last census in 1926, from 147 million to 162 million people in 1937. After 10 days, the results of the census were announced to be "harmful" and the workers who were responsible for it were arrested and repressed.

Delays

After the First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union of 1926, the next census was planned to be held in 1933.Ye. M. Andreyev, L. Ye. Darsky, and T. L. Kharkova ''On the trails of the deleted census''
Originally published in Население Советского Союза. 1922–1991. М.: Наука. 1993. с. 23–29. On 15 March 1932, the formal commission on census organization, chaired by Valerian Osinsky was created by the Statistical Commission (Tsentral'noye Upravleniye Narodno-Khozyaystvennogo Uchyota, TsUNKhU) of

Gosplan The State Planning Committee, commonly known as Gosplan ( ), was the agency responsible for economic planning, central economic planning in the Soviet Union. Established in 1921 and remaining in existence until the dissolution of the Soviet Unio ...

. On 22 April 1932, Sovnarkom adopted the decision ''On Conducting the all-Union Census in December 1933''. On 15 April 1933, Sovnarkom moved the date for the census to the beginning of 1935. On 23 June 1934, Sovnarkom further delayed the census to January 1936. On 15 June 1935, the census date was moved to December 1936. Finally, the census was conducted on 6 January 1937. The multiple delays were most probably explained by the reluctance to show the demographic results of the famine of 1932–1933. The Soviet leadership had fanned great expectations of population growth.

High expectations

On 26 January 1934,

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

reported to the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (b) as one of the main achievements "Growth of population from 160.5 millions at the end of 1930 to the 168 millions at the end of 1933". On 1 December 1935,

made a speech, on the ''Meeting of Kolkhozniks with the Soviet and Party leaders'': Combining his reports, one could have expected to have a population of about 180 million in 1937. Official statistics based on the registered birth and death rates implied that the 1937 census should show a population of 170–172 million. On 21 September 1935, Sovnarkom adopted a decision ''On the organization of registration of natural population changes'' () most probably authored by Stalin: Historian A. G. Volkov, claims that the idea that a significant number of individual deaths were double-counted is absurd, but Soviet historians claimed otherwise. On the other hand, not registering deaths, especially those who died by famine or incarceration, was common. For example, during the

Holodomor The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a mass famine in Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Holodomor was part of the wider Soviet famine of 1930–193 ...

, starving peasants tried (despite the official ban) to escape to the cities where they could earn or beg for food. Many of them died in the streets. In 1933, the street-cleaning service of

Kiev Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

picked up 9,472 dead bodies. Only 3,991 of them were officially counted as deaths on state records, while 5,481 were disposed of without formal registration, per instructions from the prosecutor's office.

Preparation

The official commission for the preparation of the census was formed on 16 September 1935. It included: *

Vyacheslav Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (; – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician, diplomat, and revolutionary who was a leading figure in the government of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s, as one of Joseph Stalin's closest allies. ...

, the Chairman of Sovnarkom, *

Lazar Kaganovich Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (; – 25 July 1991) was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates. Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ...

, Narkom for transport, * Anastas Mikoyan, Narkom for the food industry, * Nikolay Antipov, Vice Chairman of Sovnarkom, *

Nikolai Bulganin Nikolai Alexandrovich Bulganin (; – 24 February 1975) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1955 to 1958. He also served as Minister of Defense (Soviet Union), Minister of Defense, following service in the Red Army during World War II. ...

, Chairman of Mossovet, * Emmanuil Kviring, Vice Chairman of

, * Ivan Kraval, the chief of TsUNKhU, * A. S. Popov, deputy to the chief of TsUNKhU. Later the commission was joined by * Valery Mezhlauk, the Chairman of

, who chaired the commission. All the documents related to the census were prepared by TsUNKhU and edited personally by Joseph Stalin. A. G. Volkov speculates that never in modern history was such a routine technical matter as a census so micromanaged by such high officials. A comparison between the two variants is shown in the table below: Image:Census1937 projecttsunkhu.gif, Form for the census, project TsUNKhU, common data on the family Image:Census1937 project TsUNKhU reverse.gif, Form for the census, project TsUNKhU, data on family members Image:Census 1937.gif, Final variant for the form While his Soviet contemporaries praised Stalin's clarity and brevity in the design of these forms, modern scholars have observed a significant dumbing-down of the original proposals. A lot of information, e.g., about the social structures and income, and migration, could not be deduced from the new forms. Some questions (like the social category) were extremely vague and allowed different interpretations. Volkov argues that it was done deliberately. Stalin removed the double accounting (of those present at the time of the census and of those permanently living at an address), thus significantly reducing the accuracy of the calculations. It was coupled with a very maladroit time for the census: the night from 5 to 6 January – that is, the eve of

Russian Orthodox The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...

, when people are extremely mobile. The main new question introduced by Stalin was the question about religion. According to Volkov, Stalin expected the great majority of people to self-identify as

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

Census

The census was held on 6 January 1937. In addition to the general census in the cities, towns and villages, a special census was held by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

in the

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

camps and among the border guards; by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

, which took a census of military personnel; and the railroad, which took a census of passengers. When the data was first processed, it soon became obvious that the final enumeration would be little more than 162 million people. The worst disagreement between the expected and the obtained data were in

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

North Caucasus The North Caucasus, or Ciscaucasia, is a subregion in Eastern Europe governed by Russia. It constitutes the northern part of the wider Caucasus region, which separates Europe and Asia. The North Caucasus is bordered by the Sea of Azov and the B ...

and the

Volga The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

region, the areas that were the strongest hit by the

famine. On 11 January, the chief of TsUNKhU Kraval sent telegrams requesting a total recount of a whole settlement if any doubt arose that somebody might be missing there. Still, despite the total recount in 25,000 settlements, only 4,887 previously unenumerated persons were found. The preliminary result of the census, reported to Stalin in the middle of March 1937, was 162,039,470 people, much lower than the "criminally decreased" registered numbers of 170–172 million or Stalin's expectation of 180 million people. Another serious blow was a very high percentage of people who stated that they were religious. 55.3 million, or 56.7%, of those who provided answers stated that they were religious (the question was asked only of people older than 16-years old), 42.2 million stated that they were atheists, and around 1 million refused to give an answer. Historian Valentina Zhiromskaya stated that people expected to be persecuted if they declared themselves as belonging to a religion, but considered the answer to be important: ''If many people would say that they are religious, the authorities would have to open the churches'', was a common attitude.V. B. Zhiromskaya
''On the religiosity of people in 1937 (using the census data)''
Исторический вестник, №5 (1, 2000) . The Soviet authorities were so upset by the results of the census that they did not include a question on religion in any future censuses.

Aftermath

In March 1937, the four main statistical professionals working on the Census in TsUNKhU – the chief of the ''Sector for Population'', Mikhail Kurman; chief of the ''Census Bureau'', Olimpiy Kvitkin; his deputy, Lazar Brand; and the chief of the ''Sector for transportation and communication'', Ivan Oblomov, were arrested and imprisoned. Soon they were joined by the Chief of TsUNKhU, Ivan Kraval, and the chiefs of most of the regional statistical centers, and executions followed. Many statisticians, newly appointed in place of those arrested, were soon arrested themselves. There is evidence that many managers appointed to lead the statistical organization tried to avoid starting their new jobs in desperate attempts to escape persecution. On 25 September 1937, there was a special Sovnarkom decision proclaiming the census invalid and setting a new one for January 1939. A ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'' editorial stated that the "

enemies of the people The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and the social-class opponents of the power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, can be subjected to political repression. ...

gave the census counters invalid instructions that led to the gross under-counting of the population, but the brave NKVD under the leadership of

Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Николай Иванович Ежов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet Chekism, secret police official under Joseph Stalin who ...

destroyed the snake's nest in the statistical bodies". Stalin had to agree with the lower numbers of population growth. In his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) he said: The new Soviet Census (1939) showed a population figure of 170.6 million people, manipulated so as to match exactly the numbers stated by Stalin in his report to the 18th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party. No other censuses were conducted until 1959. Today there is a consensus that the results of the 1939 census were adjusted (0.5 to 1.5 million persons were added to the reported population). Some historians consider the 1937 census the only more or less reliable source of demographic data for the period 1926–1959. However, demographers do not consider it as such. The data became influential for evaluating the number of victims of the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, and the 1930s famines, including the

.For example: * Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver. 1985. "Demographic Analysis and Population Catastrophes in the USSR", ''

Slavic Review The ''Slavic Review'' is a major peer-reviewed academic journal publishing scholarly studies, book and film reviews, and review essays in all disciplines concerned with "Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, past and present". ...

'', 44(3): 517–536; Steven G. Wheatcroft * More Light on the Scale of Repression and Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, ''

Soviet Studies ''Europe-Asia Studies'' is an academic peer-reviewed journal published 10 times a year by Routledge on behalf of the Institute of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, and continuing (since vol. 45, 1993) the journal ''Soviet S ...

'', Vol. 42, No. 2 (April, 1990), pp. 355–367. * Tsaplin V. V., ''Statistics of stalinism victims in 30s'', ''Voprosy istorii'', 1989, N 4. pp. 177–178. * Catherine Merridale, "The 1937 Census and the Limits of Stalinist Rule", '' The Historical Journal'', Vol. 39, No. 1 (March, 1996), pp. 225–240. *
Demographic catastrophes of the 20th century
, a chapter from ''Demographic Modernization in Russia 1900–2000'', ed. A. G. Vishnevsky, 2006 ().Stanislav Kulchytsky, ''"How many of us perished in Holodomor in 1933"'', Zerkalo Nedeli, November 23–29, 2002. Available onlin
in Russian
an
in Ukrainian

originally published in Перепись населения СССР 1937 года. История и материалы/Экспресс-информация. Серия «История статистики». Выпуск 3–5 (часть II). М., 1990/ с. 6–63.

References

{{USSRCensus Censuses in the Soviet Union Political repression in the Soviet Union 1937 in the Soviet Union Soviet ethnic policy