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A Critical Note on Estimating Ussr Population From Election Reports

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

George Barr Carson Jr.
George Barr Carson Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

A favorite method of estimating population for the Soviet Union among contemporary specialists is the method used by Theodore Shabad and Harry Schwartz, based on the reported number of election districts. Using the number of election districts reported for the 1950 elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Union, Shabad arrives at a figure of 201,300,000 for the USSR post-war territory. Most subsequent estimates of Soviet population have used that figure as a base.

Further examination of election data suggests some corrections to this method. The 1950 estimate is based on a figure of 671 districts, the normal standard for elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Union being 300,000 inhabitants per district.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 1956 , pp. 173 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1956

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References

1 Shabad, Theodore, Geography of the USSR; a Regional Survey (New York, 1951)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Schwartz, Harry, Russia's Soviet Economy (New York, 1950).Google Scholar.

3 Shabad, p. xv.

4 Ibid., p. 499.

5 See Lorimer, Frank, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects (Geneva, 1946)Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 134.

7 Ibid., pp. 141-43.

8 For 1937 see “Doklad predsedatelja mandatnoj komissii soveta sojuza deputata Shcherbakova A. S.,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 1 (1938), p. 18. In Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 3 (1950), p- 5, the figure 93,639,478 is given for registered voters in 1937. The figure given for the number who balloted was reported at the time to be 96.8 percent of the eligible electors. For 1938 see P. Tumanov, “Itogi vyborov v verkhovnye sovety sojuznykh i avtonomnykh respublik,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 4 (1938), p. 56. This figure for the number who actually balloted is reported as 99+ percent in the several republics. For 1939 see A. Karp, “Novaja blestjashchaja pobeda bloka kommunistov i bespartiinykh,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 1, (1940), p. 5.

9 For example, Dallin, David J. and Nicolaevsky, Boris I., Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New Haven, 1947)Google Scholar, and Jasny, Naum, “Labor and Output in Soviet Concentration Camps,” Journal of Political Economy , LIX (October, 1951), 416 Google Scholar.

10 For column 1, in addition to sources given in note 8: for 1946 and 1950, Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo, No. 3 (1950), p. 5; for 1951, “Triumf sovetskoe demokratija,” ibid., No. 3 (1951). pp. 1-8; for 1954, Literaturnaja gazeta, March 18, 1954. For column 7, number of electoral districts for 1954 elections, report of the Mandate Commission to the Supreme Soviet, in ibid., April 24, 1954.

11 Troinitskij, N. A. ed., Pervaja vseobshchaja perepis naselenija Rossiiskoj Imperii 1897 g, obshchii svod , I (St. Petersburg, 1905), 56;Google Scholar and Lorimer, p. 231.

12 United States, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 74th ed. (Washington, 1953), pp. 8, 32–33.Google Scholar.

13 P . 256.