The 1937 census and the limits of stalinist rule

Historical Journal

Volumn 39, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 225-240

  Merridale, Catherine ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85011485076     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X00020744     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. More on their fate, and a discussion of the reasons for it, was published in F. D. Livshits, Perepis' naseleniya 1937 goda. Demograficheskie protessy v SSSR (Moscow, 1990).
2. Documents published in Ukraine in 1992 demonstrate the extent of police reporting of the famine, and also the weight of petitions and pleas to Moscow to alleviate conditions in the famine areas. Kolektivizatsiya i golod na ukraini 1929–1933, zbimik dokutnentiv i materially (Kiev, 1992).
3. See RGAE 1562/329/107, 184–9, for example.
4. The ZAGS data showed a population loss for 1933 of 1,315,200 people in the USSR as a whole, mostly (71.5%) in the countryside, and mostly in the Ukraine. E. Osokina, ‘Zhertvy goloda 1933 goda: Skol'ko ikh? (analiz demograficheskoi statistiki TsGANKh SSSR)’, Istoriya SSSR,v (1991), 18–26.
5. Molotov entered ‘chairman’. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya (hereafter SI), vi (1990), 4.
6. Plan (the journal of Gosplan, the state planning commission), x (1936), 24.
7. See Yu. A. Polyakov, V. B. Zhiromskaya and I. N. Kiselev, ‘Polveka molchaniya’, SI, vii (1990).
8. Plan, xxiii (10 Dec. 1936), 13.
9. See Kraval's article on the census, published in both Bol'shevik and Plan (10 Nov. 1936).
10. RGAE 1562/329/143, 40.
11. RGAE 1562/329/143.
12. RGAE 1562/329/143.
13. RGAE 1562/329/143, 29–31.
14. The famous ‘Kurman gap’ and later revisions of it. See Kurman's note on undercounting, RGAE 1562/329/152, 16–20
15. E. Andreev, L. Darskii and T. Kharkova, ‘Opyt otsenki chislennosti naseleniya SSSR 1926–41’, Vestnik statistiki, v (1990).
16. Plan (25 Feb. 1937).
17. RGAE 1562/329/152, 8–9.
18. William Krunskal, Research and the census (1984), cited by Nathan Keyfitz in his address to the opening of the population research centre, university of Groningen, 1991.
19. Pravda (2 Jan. 1937), p. 1.
20. A. Popov, writing in Plan, xxiii (10 Dec. 1936).
21. writing in Plan.
22. Plan, II (25 Jan. 1937), 2.
23. RGAE 1562/329/117, 2.
24. RGAE 1562/329/116, 24.
25. For examples, see Plan, IV (26 Feb. 1937), 50–2.
26. Plan, ii (25 Jan. 1937), 40.
27. This kind of picture is presented, classically, in Merle Fainsod, How Russia is ruled (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), although his own local study of Smolensk suggested a more chaotic and imprecise relationship between centre and localities.
28. For a discussion of the issue, see my ‘Centre-local relations during the rise of Stalin: the case of Moscow, 1925–1932’, in David Lane (ed.) Elites and political power in the USSR (London, 1988).
29. SI, vi (1990), 9.
30. Pravda (5 Jan. 1937).
31. Examples of all these difficulties were cited by enumerators working in Moscow, Leningrad, Ufa and Kiev. Pravda (5 and 6 Jan. 1937).
32. SI, vii (1990), 68.
33. SI, vii.
34. Pravda (5 Jan. 1937).
35. Both the 1926 and 1937 censuses used self-identification as the criterion for nationality. The 1897 census had used first language. For the implications of this for one national group, see S. L. Guthier, ‘The Belorussians: national identification and assimilation, 1897–1970, Part I’, Soviet Studies, xxix (1977), no. 1.
36. RGAE 1562/329/116, 149. The note was dated 2 Feb. 1937.
37. See below, note 56.
38. RGAE 1562/329/143, 51 ff. Report to Kraval from Belorussia.
39. RGAE 1562/329/143, 52.
40. RGAE 1562/329/143, 114.
41. Pravda (5 Jan. 1937)
42. RGAE 1562/329/143, 64.
43. See also SI, vii (1990).
44. Viktor Fink's account of the 1897 census is in Pravda (6 Jan. 1937).
45. Pravda (6 Jan. 1937).
46. Pravda (10 Feb. 1937).
47. Plan (25 Feb. 1937).
48. Plan (10 Apr. 1937).
49. Plan (25 Apr. 1937), 7–8.
50. Cited in SI, vii (1990), 8.
51. RGAE 1562/329/143, 6–10.
52. This was M. V. Kurman's figure, suggesting an undercount of 0.5 or 0.6%. Andreev et al., Vestnik statistiki, v (1990), 36.
53. See Andreev et al., p. 36. Interestingly, the findings of the 1926 census were not questioned.
54. RGAE 1562/329/107, 144 (report from Kaplun to Kraval covering the period from 1930).
55. RGAE 1562/329/152, 152.
56. Andreev, Darskii and Khar'kova suggest roughly 8 million excess deaths in 1932–3
57. S. Maksudov, Poteri naseleniya SSSR (New York, 1989)
58. F. Lorimer, The population of the Soviet Union: history and prospects (Geneva, 1946), both writing before the 1937 census data were available, gave 9.8 million plus or minus 3 million (again depending on the ‘ normal’ birth and death rates) and 4–5 million respectively.
59. V. V. Kondrashin, ‘Golod 1932–1933 godov v derevnyakh Povolzh'ya’, Voprosy istorii, vi (1991), 176–81.
60. Osokina, ‘Zhertvy goloda 1933 goda’, pp. 19–20.
61. This is Maksudov's point, which he takes as evidence that recorded deaths were relatively accurate in the period 1927–32, Poteri naseleniya SSSR, pp. 217–233.
62. The difficulties this posed in the early 1920s are discussed in Kniga 0 golode (Saratov, 1922).
63. Russian centre for the preservation of documents of contemporary history (formerly central party archive), fo. 16, op. 60 d.77, 98–9.
64. RGAE 1562/329/107, 157.
65. RGAE 1562/329/107, 159.
66. Kondrashin, ‘Golod 1932–1933’, pp. 177–178.
67. RGAE 1562/329/107, 157.
68. The under-registration of deaths from ‘starvation’, as opposed to diseases arising from undernourishment, was common to the 1921 and 1933 famines. See A. G. Kovalevskii, Ocherki po demogrqfii Saratova (Saratov, 1928), p. 147.
69. Kondrashin, ‘Golod 1932–1933).
70. ‘Golod 1932–1933. pp. 178–180.
71. Victor Kravchenko, I chose freedom (London, 1947).
72. RGAE 1562/329/143, 147.
73. SI, viii (1990). The figure cited in the NKVD's own records for deaths in 1932–3 was 241,355 persons.
74. The figure cited in the NKVD's own records for deaths in 1932–3.
75. The classic example is Robert Conquest, The harvest of sorrow (London, 1988).
76. See, for example, D. Slovji, The Golgotha of the Ukraine (New York, 1953)
77. The black deeds of the Kremlin, A White Book. I-II (Detroit, 1955)
78. V. Hrysko, Ukrjinskyi holokost 1933 New York-Toronto, 1978).
79. RGAE 1562/329/107, 171–3 (unsigned memorandum of 31 Mar. 1934).
80. Figures from RGAE 1562/329/143, 143, 14 Jan. 1937.