Russian Empire Census

The Russian Imperial Census of 1897 was the first and the only census carried out in the Russian Empire (Finland was excluded). It recorded demographic data as of 28 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 the outbreak of World War I one and a half years earlier (in July 1914). It was not rescheduled before the Russian Revolution. The next census to take place in Russia only occurred at the end of 1926, virtually three decades later.

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

The census was performed in two stages. In the first stage (December 1896 &mdash; 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. In the second stage. the counters simultaneously visited all households to verify and update the questionnaires. Despite this being the only census they ever took, Historians were able to find out the Russian Empires population in earlier periods of time still from collecting city censuses.

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

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
 * Mother language
 * Literacy
 * Occupation (profession, trade, position of office or service), both primary and secondary

In the census summary tables, nationality was based on the declared mother language of respondents.

Census results
The results of the census are too broad to publish.

The total population of the Russian Empire was recorded to be 125,640,021 people (50.2% female, 49.8% male; urban 16,828,395 ).

By native tongue
The most spoken languages, from which nationality was determined were:

By religion

 * Pravoslavs (Eastern Orthodox) 69.34%
 * Mohammedans (Muslims) 11.07%
 * Roman Catholics 9.13%
 * Jews 4.15%
 * Lutherans 2.84%
 * Old Believers and others split from Pravoslavs 1.75%
 * Armenian Gregorians and Armenian Catholics 0.97%
 * Buddhists, Lamaists 0.34%
 * Other Protestants 0.15%
 * Karaites 0.01%

Population by modern day countries

 * Russia 67,475,000 (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 (country) 2,109,273
 * Uzbekistan 2,000,000
 * Bessarabia 1,935,412
 * Azerbaijan 1,705,131
 * Latvia 1,929,387
 * Estonia 900,000
 * Armenia 829,556
 * Kyrgyzstan 750,000
 * Tajikistan 646,000
 * Turkmenistan 350,000

Largest cities
Largest cities of the Empire according to the census:


 * Saint-Petersburg – 1,264,900
 * Moscow – 1,038,600
 * Warsaw – 626,000
 * Odessa – 403,800
 * Łódź – 314,000
 * Riga – 282,200
 * Kiev – 247,700
 * Kharkov – 174,000
 * Tiflis (Tbilisi) – 159,600
 * Wilno (Vilnius) – 154,500
 * Saratov – 137,100
 * Kazan – 130,000
 * Rostov-on-Don – 119,500
 * Tula – 114,700
 * Astrakhan – 112,900
 * Yekaterinoslav (Dnipropetrovsk) – 112,800
 * Baku – 111,900
 * Kishinev (Chişinău) – 108,500
 * Helsinki – 93,000
 * Nikolayev – 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

Assessment
As in many other census in the era of nationalism, the results of this census were biased towards the nationality preferred by the authorities. In this case, the population of Russian ethnicity was inflated. Thus for example, the number of Poles is underrepresented. Imperial officials also classified the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages as belonging to Russian group and labeled those nationalities as Little Russian for Ukrainians and White Russian for Belarusians.