Russian Empire Census

For other uses, see Russian Census.

The first general census of the population of the Russian Empire in 1897 (pre-reform Russian: Пе́рвая всео́бщая пе́репись населе́нія Россíйской импе́ріи 1897 го́да) was the first and only nation-wide census performed in the Russian Empire (the Grand Duchy of Finland was excluded). It recorded demographic data as of 28 January [O.S. 15 January] 1897.

Previously, the Central Statistical Bureau issued statistical tables based on fiscal lists (ревизские списки).

The second Russian Census was scheduled for December 1915, but was cancelled because of World War I, which had begun during 1914.^[1] It was not rescheduled before the Russian Revolution. The next census in Russia only occurred at the end of 1926, almost three decades later.

Organization

The census project was suggested during 1877 by Pyotr Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, a famous Russian geographer and director of the Central Statistical Bureau, and was approved by Czar Nicholas II in 1895.

The census was performed in two stages. For the first stage (December 1896 — January 1897) the counters (135,000 persons: teachers, priests, and literate soldiers) visited all households and filled in the questionnaires, which were verified by local census managers. For the second stage (9 January 1898 [O.S. 28 December 1897]) the counters simultaneously visited all households to verify and update the questionnaires. The census was performed during winter as the population was less mobile then.^[2] Despite this being the only imperial census, historians are able to estimate the Russian Empire's population during earlier times by collecting city censuses.

The data processing required 8 years using Hollerith card machines. Publication of the results started during 1898 and ended in 1905. In total, 119 volumes for 89 guberniyas, as well as a two-volume summary, were issued.

Data fields

The questionnaire contained the following questions:

• Family name, given name, patronymic or nickname (прозвище)
• Sex
• Relation with respect to the head of the family or household
• Age
• Marital status
• Social status: sosloviye (estate of the realm), rank or title (сословіе, состояніе, званіе)
• Place of birth
• Place of registration
• Usual place of residence
• Notice of absence
• Faith
• First language (родной язык)
• Literacy
• Occupation (profession, trade, position of office or service), both primary and secondary

In the census summary tables, nationality was based on the declared primary language of respondents.^{[citation needed]}

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  The first page of a census form from Kiev Governorate.

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  The second page of a census form from Kiev Governorate.

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  The third page of a census form from Kiev Governorate.

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  A description page for a census form from Kiev Governorate.

Census results

The total population of the Russian Empire was recorded to be 125,640,021 people, 62,477,348 or 49.73% of whom were men and 63,162,673 or 50.27% were women—the median age was 21.16 years.

By native language

 

Map of subdivisions of the Russian Empire by largest ethnolinguistic group (1897)

Linguistic composition of the Russian Empire^[3]

Language	Urban		Rural		TOTAL
	Native speakers	%	Native speakers	%	Native speakers	%
Russian^[a]	8,825,733	52.45	46,841,736	43.05	55,667,469	44.31
Ukrainian^[b]	1,256,387	7.47	21,124,164	19.41	22,380,551	17.81
Polish	1,455,527	8.65	6,475,780	5.95	7,931,307	6.31
Belarusian^[c]	171,383	1.02	5,714,164	5.25	5,885,547	4.68
Jewish	2,502,217	14.87	2,560,939	2.35	5,063,156	4.03
Kyrgyz-Kaisak	46,827	0.28	4,037,312	3.71	4,084,139	3.25
Tatar^[d]	417,727	2.48	3,319,900	3.05	3,737,627	2.97
German	418,533	2.49	1,371,956	1.26	1,790,489	1.43
Latvian	230,719	1.37	1,205,218	1.11	1,435,937	1.14
Bashkir	13,844	0.08	1,307,519	1.20	1,321,363	1.05
Lithuanian	43,136	0.26	1,167,374	1.07	1,210,510	0.96
Armenian	272,801	1.62	900,295	0.83	1,173,096	0.93
Romanian	64,134	0.38	1,057,535	0.97	1,121,669	0.89
Mordovian	14,022	0.08	1,009,819	0.93	1,023,841	0.81
Estonian	139,544	0.83	863,194	0.79	1,002,738	0.80
Sartic	204,046	1.21	764,609	0.70	968,655	0.77
Chuvash	6,051	0.04	837,704	0.77	843,755	0.67
Georgian	98,503	0.59	725,465	0.67	823,968	0.66
Uzbek	91,750	0.55	634,784	0.58	726,534	0.58
Samogitian	8,946	0.05	439,076	0.40	448,022	0.36
Other Turkic dialects	156,348	0.93	284,064	0.26	440,412	0.35
Votyak	2,245	0.01	418,725	0.38	420,970	0.34
Mari	2,191	0.01	373,248	0.34	375,439	0.30
Tajik	103,240	0.61	247,157	0.23	350,397	0.28
Buryat	2,038	0.01	286,625	0.26	288,663	0.23
Turkmen	2,687	0.02	278,670	0.26	281,357	0.22
Imeretian	17,181	0.10	256,005	0.24	273,186	0.22
Mingrelian	11,539	0.07	228,086	0.21	239,625	0.19
Yakut	3,890	0.02	223,494	0.21	227,384	0.18
Chechen	871	0.01	225,625	0.21	226,496	0.18
Avar-Andean	5,533	0.03	207,159	0.19	212,692	0.17
Turkish	13,378	0.08	195,444	0.18	208,822	0.17
Karelian	2,791	0.02	205,310	0.19	208,101	0.17
Kara-Kyrgyz	270	0.00	201,412	0.19	201,682	0.16
Kalmyk	1,263	0.01	189,385	0.17	190,648	0.15
Greek	33,621	0.20	153,304	0.14	186,925	0.15
Bulgarian	14,371	0.09	158,288	0.15	172,659	0.14
Ossetian	5,907	0.04	165,809	0.15	171,716	0.14
Kyurin	5,146	0.03	154,067	0.14	159,213	0.13
Komi	6,340	0.04	147,278	0.14	153,618	0.12
Finnish	25,610	0.15	117,458	0.11	143,068	0.11
Dargin	1,847	0.01	128,362	0.12	130,209	0.10
Teptyar	579	0.00	117,194	0.11	117,773	0.09
Permyak	366	0.00	104,325	0.10	104,691	0.08
Karakalpak	46	0.00	104,228	0.10	104,274	0.08
Kurdish	1,148	0.01	98,801	0.09	99,949	0.08
Kabardian	523	0.00	98,038	0.09	98,561	0.08
Tat	4,099	0.02	90,957	0.08	95,056	0.08
Kazi-Kumukh	1642	0.01	89,238	0.08	90,880	0.07
Kumyk	3,529	0.02	79,879	0.07	83,408	0.07
Abkhaz	343	0.00	71,760	0.07	72,103	0.06
Evenki	192	0.00	66,078	0.06	66,270	0.05
Nogai	299	0.00	63,781	0.06	64,080	0.05
Chinese	24,794	0.15	32,665	0.03	57,459	0.05
Taranchin Uyghur	10,789	0.06	45,680	0.04	56,469	0.04
Mishar Tatar	657	0.00	53,190	0.05	53,847	0.04
Czech	8,375	0.05	42,010	0.04	50,385	0.04
Ingush	541	0.00	46,868	0.04	47,409	0.04
Circassian	1,660	0.01	44,626	0.04	46,286	0.04
Romani	6,551	0.04	38,031	0.03	44,582	0.04
Talysh	1,035	0.01	34,256	0.03	35,291	0.03
Persian	18,976	0.11	12,747	0.01	31,723	0.03
Karapapakh	9	0.00	29,893	0.03	29,902	0.02
Karachay	45	0.00	27,178	0.02	27,223	0.02
Korean	1,716	0.01	24,289	0.02	26,005	0.02
Chud	117	0.00	25,703	0.02	25,820	0.02
Khanty	179	0.00	19,484	0.02	19,663	0.02
French	12,966	0.08	3,467	0.00	16,433	0.01
Samoyedic	127	0.00	15,750	0.01	15,877	0.01
Svan	94	0.00	15,662	0.01	15,756	0.01
Kashgar Uyghur	139	0.00	14,799	0.01	14,938	0.01
Swedish	6,969	0.04	7,230	0.01	14,199	0.01
Izhorian	37	0.00	13,737	0.01	13,774	0.01
Chukchi	8	0.00	11,787	0.01	11,795	0.01
Mansi	9	0.00	7,642	0.01	7,651	0.01
Kipchak	6	0.00	7,601	0.01	7,607	0.01
Udi	11	0.00	7,089	0.01	7,100	0.01
English	5,746	0.03	1,308	0.00	7,054	0.01
Gilyak (Nivkh)	14	0.00	6,180	0.01	6,194	0.00
Koryak	31	0.00	6,027	0.01	6,058	0.00
Assyrian	1,307	0.01	4,046	0.00	5,353	0.00
Italian	3,824	0.02	936	0.00	4,760	0.00
Kamchadal (Itelmen)	6	0.00	3,972	0.00	3,978	0.00
Manchu	54	0.00	3,340	0.00	3,394	0.00
Japanese	1,855	0.01	794	0.00	2,649	0.00
Serbo-Croatian	1,197	0.01	618	0.00	1,815	0.00
Sámi	41	0.00	1,771	0.00	1,812	0.00
Arabic	93	0.00	1,603	0.00	1,696	0.00
Norwegian and Danish	1,031	0.01	609	0.00	1,640	0.00
Ainu	6	0.00	1,440	0.00	1,446	0.00
Eskimo	1	0.00	1,098	0.00	1,099	0.00
Yenisei-Ostyak (Ket)	6	0.00	988	0.00	994	0.00
Hungarian	699	0.00	262	0.00	961	0.00
Yukaghir	0	0.00	948	0.00	948	0.00
Albanian	70	0.00	866	0.00	936	0.00
Mongolian	84	0.00	733	0.00	817	0.00
Afghan	43	0.00	571	0.00	614	0.00
Aleut	338	0.00	246	0.00	584	0.00
Chuvan	190	0.00	316	0.00	506	0.00
Other Lezgic languages	165	0.00	255	0.00	420	0.00
Kist	97	0.00	316	0.00	413	0.00
Dutch	225	0.00	110	0.00	335	0.00
Hindi	236	0.00	76	0.00	312	0.00
Spanish and Portuguese	112	0.00	26	0.00	138	0.00
Other languages	69	0.00	5	0.00	74	0.00
Not indicated	2,142	0.01	2,985	0.00	5,127	0.00
TOTAL	16,828,395	100.00	108,811,626	100.00	125,640,021	100.00

By religion

 

Distribution of Eastern Orthodoxy in the Russian Empire (1897)

Religious composition of the Russian Empire in 1897^[4]

Faith	Male	Female	Both
			Number	%
Eastern Orthodox	42,954,739	44,168,865	87,123,604	69.34
Muslim	7,383,293	6,523,679	13,906,972	11.07
Roman Catholic	5,686,361	5,781,633	11,467,994	9.13
Jewish	2,547,144	2,668,661	5,215,805	4.15
Lutherans	1,739,814	1,832,839	3,572,653	2.84
Old Believers	1,029,023	1,175,573	2,204,596	1.75
Armenian Apostolic	625,592	553,649	1,179,241	0.94
Buddhists	240,739	193,124	433,863	0.34
Reformed	42,877	42,523	85,400	0.07
Mennonite	33,598	32,966	66,564	0.05
Armenian Catholic	20,028	18,812	38,840	0.03
Baptist	18,372	19,767	38,139	0.03
Karaite	6,372	6,522	12,894	0.01
Anglican	2,042	2,141	4,183	0.00
Other Christian denominations	2,371	1,581	3,952	0.00
Other non-Christian denominations	144,983	140,338	285,321	0.23
TOTAL	62,477,348	63,162,673	125,640,021	100.00

Population by modern-day countries

• Russia 67,476,000 (from this Siberia 5,758,822)
• Ukraine 23,430,407 (from this Crimea 1,447,790)
• Poland (Vistula basin) 9,402,253
• Belarus 6,927,040
• Kazakhstan 4,000,000
• Lithuania 3,135,771
• Georgia 2,109,273
• Uzbekistan 2,000,000
• Moldova 1,935,412
• Latvia 1,929,387
• Azerbaijan 1,705,131
• Estonia 900,000
• Armenia 797,853^[5]
• Kyrgyzstan 750,000
• Tajikistan 646,000
• Turkmenistan 350,000

Largest cities

See also: List of cities of the Russian Empire in 1897

Largest cities of the Empire according to the census:

• Saint Petersburg – 1,264,900
• Moscow – 1,038,600
• Varshava (Warsaw) – 626,000
• Odessa – 403,800
• Lod (Łódź) – 314,000
• Riga – 282,200
• Kiev (Kyiv) – 247,700
• Kharkov (Kharkiv) – 174,000
• Tiflis (Tbilisi) – 159,600
• Vilna (Vilnius) – 154,500
• Saratov – 137,100
• Kazan – 130,000
• Rostov-on-Don – 119,500
• Tula – 114,700
• Astrakhan – 112,900
• Ekaterinoslav (Dnipro) – 112,800
• Baku – 111,900
• Kishinev (Chişinău) – 108,500
• Helsinki – 93,000
• Nikolayev (Mykolaiv) – 92,000
• Minsk – 90,900
• Nizhny Novgorod – 90,100
• Samara – 90,000
• Orenburg – 72,400
• Yaroslavl – 71,600
• Dvinsk (Daugavpils) – 69,675
• Vitebsk – 65,900
• Reval (Tallinn) – 64 572
• Libava (Liepāja) – 64,489
• Yekaterinodar (Krasnodar) – 65,600
• Tsaritsyn (Volgograd) – 55,200

Data availability

Each enumeration form was copied twice, with the three copies filed in the Volost (county) archives, the governorate archives, and the Central Statistical Bureau in St. Petersburg. The copies in St. Petersburg were destroyed after they had been tabulated.^[6][2] Most of the copies stored locally and regionally have also been destroyed; however, the complete census for the Arkhangelsk and Tobolsk governorates has been preserved, and the census for portions of several other governorates is also extant.^[7][8]

Assessment

The results may have been influenced by national policy of the authorities: the population of Russian ethnicity was somewhat exaggerated.^[9] Thus for example, the number of Poles is underrepresented.^[10][11] Imperial officials classified the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages as belonging to the Russian group and labeled those nationalities as Little Russian for Ukrainians and White Russian for Belarusians.^[9]

The census did not contain a question on ethnicity, which was deduced from data on mother tongue, social estate and occupation. There was also a 1916 and 1917 "agricultural census" that was carried out throughout the empire (except in some parts of the Caucasus, Eastern Russia, and Siberia), and a 1920 "general census" (except in the Russian far north, far east, Ukraine, and the Caucasus).^[12]

Notes

1. Termed as Great Russian (Великорусский).
2. Termed as Little Russian (Малорусский).
3. Termed as White Russian (Белорусский).
4. Includes Tatar and Azerbaijani.

References

1. История российской государственной статистики: 1811-2011 [History of Russian State statistics: 1811–2011] (PDF) (in Russian). ИИЦ «Статистика России». 2013. p. 70. ISBN 978-5-4269-0029-5. (PDF) from the original on 24 November 2022.
2. "Russia Census". FamilySearch. Retrieved 10 April 2017.
3. Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. Распределение населения по родному языку, губерниям и областям (in Russian). Demoscope Weekly. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
4. . 2010-11-05. Archived from the original on 5 November 2010. Retrieved 2022-03-01.
5. Korkotyan 1932, p. 167. sfn error: no target: CITEREFKorkotyan1932 (help)
6. "Russia, Jewish Families in Russian Empire Census, 1897". Ancestry. Retrieved 17 September 2021.
7. . Find Russian Heritage. Archived from the original on 2018-02-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
8. . Alex Dunai's personal website. Archived from the original on 2019-04-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
9. Anna Geifman, Russia Under the Last Tsar: Opposition and Subversion, 1894-1917, Wiley-Blackwell, 1999, ISBN 1-55786-995-2, Google Print, p. 118-119
10. Piotr Eberhardt, Jan Owsinski, Ethnic groups and population changes in twentieth-century Central-Eastern Europe, M.E. Sharpe, 2003, ISBN 0-7656-0665-8, Google Print, p.27
11. Jerzy Borzęcki, The Soviet-Polish peace of 1921 and the creation of interwar Europe, Yale University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-300-12121-0, Google Print, p.10
12. Anderson 2011, p. 29.

Bibliography

• Anderson, David G., ed. (2011). The 1926/27 Soviet Polar Census Expeditions. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-0-85745-044-9. OCLC 733040240.
• Первая всеобщая перепись населенiя Россійской Имперіи. Под редакцiею Н. А. Тройницкаго. — СПб.: Изданiе центральнаго статистическаго комитета министерства внутреннихъ делъ, 1905. (The First Total Census of Russian Empire. A publication of the central statistical bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Editor N. A. Toynitsky.)
• РОССИЯ. Полное Географическое Описание Нашего Отечества. Под ред. П. П. Семенова-Тян-Шанского. — СПб., 1913. (Semenov-Tyan-Shanskiy, P. P. (Ed.): RUSSIA. Complete Geographical Description of our Fatherland. — St. Petersburg, 1913. This latter work reproduces most of the results of the census, and is a good deal easier to find in western libraries than the original publication.)
• Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. Распределение населения по родному языку и регионам (First General Russian Empire Census of 1897. Population breakdown by mother tongue and regions) (Demoscope.ru) (in Russian)
• The First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897. Breakdown of population by mother tongue and districts in 50 Governorates of the European Russia (1777 territorial units)
• Korkotyan, Zaven (1932). [The population of Soviet Armenia in the last century (1831–1931)] (PDF) (in Armenian). Yerevan: Pethrat. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 February 2022.

Other websites

• A website containing an interactive map with native language, religion, and urbanization data for each Russian district (uyezd) in the 1897 Russian census for a district's total population, urban population, and rural population