UDC

94(47)084.6:311.312

Authors

Natal’ya P. Beznosova
Institute of Language, Literature and History, Komi Science Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences; ul. Kommunisticheskaya 26, Syktyvkar, 167000, Russian Federation; e-mail: nbeznosova@mail.ru

Abstract

Demographic processes in the Komi Republic on the eve of World War II and the Great Patriotic War have been studied rather thoroughly. However, no special work devoted to the last pre-war All-Union census of 1939 has yet been written. Meanwhile, the census documents serve as the key source describing the country’s population in the late 1930s and are still used by researchers and the public to estimate human resources and military casualties during the Great Patriotic War. This article aims to examine in detail the preparation, organization and course of the 1939 Census in the Komi Republic, as well as the summary and analysis of its results according to such parameters as population size and ethnic and age-sex composition. The data were compared to the 1926 All-Union Census. The demographics was studied both for the Komi Republic as a whole and separately for its urban and rural population. The author concludes that the socioeconomic and political events which took place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s brought about profound demographic changes in the Komi Republic. In those years the region saw a new system of population formation develop, with the leading role being played by in-migration from other regions of the Soviet Union. Vast masses of the able-bodied population were resettled, sometimes forcedly, in areas of new industrial and transport construction. This external migration significantly increased the population growth rate both in urban and rural areas, as well as caused major transformations in the age, sex and ethnic structure of the population, which was recorded in the 1939 Census.

Keywords

1939 All-Union Census, Komi Republic, external migration, preparation and course of the 1939 census, size and structure of the Komi Republic population

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