Moscow Specialists Project Census Problems There onto Russia as a Whole, Levada Center Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 17 – There are many problems with the current census as with the past one, but evaluations of it so far introduce a kind of distortion that must be recognized and countered, Yekaterina Kozerenko says. They arise from the propensity of Moscow-based specialists to assume that the problems they see in the capital are true across Russia.

            In fact, the Levada Center sociologist says, that is not entirely justified because two distortions seen in Moscow may be less common elsewhere. In Moscow, more people have shown themselves unwilling to answer census takers at all; and census takers to get paid are filling in the forms on their own (levada.ru/2021/12/17/eto-luchshe-chem-nichego-sotsiolog-otvechaet-na-neudobnye-voprosy-o-perepisi-naseleniya/).

            According to Kozerenko, few Russians lie to census takers but many don’t answer them at all. And she says, major distortions are introduced in the data because the state consists of many different groups with many different interests. Census takers want to get paid and so fill in when people refuse to answer. And officials want to show certain results rather than others and modify the results.

            Nevertheless, censuses are absolutely necessary because the state simply doesn’t have any other source of information about society as comprehensive. It knows many parts of the picture from other sources but these sources are not connected anywhere but in the census and so many conclusions cannot be drawn.

            As a result, no census is absolutely accurate and certainly the most recent Russian one isn’t. But it is “better than nothing,” given human limitations; and there is little prospect that the government will do away with it as some in the Russian capital are suggesting. If the Kremlin did that, it would be flying even more blind than it is now.