Russia's birth rate is artificially stimulated by long northern nights, a ban on abortions (abortion was legal in Russia from 1920-36) and cash prizes for prolific mothers. Her death rate is artificially stimulated by purges, famines and Manchukuoan border incidents. What the balance is will now be determined.* Dictator Stalin believes that there are 3,500,000 new Russians every year. Sent out last week to verify this were 400,000 census takers, armed with 16 questions apiece, conveyed by reindeer, camels, sleds cars, airplanes.
It is hoped that mistakes of the 1937 census, which was never published because it was "sabotaged" by "Trotskyist-Bukharinist traitors," will not be repeated. Then some 1,000,000 census-takers set out to make a house-to-house canvass Many thought that the figures turned up then showed: 1) a decrease in population; 2) too many Russians to be religiously minded for Soviet comfort. No question regarding religious belief or disbelief will be asked in the present census, nor will Soviet citizens again be allowed to list themselves as prostitutes, lackeys or tramps. Soviet citizens will be occupationally grouped under broader terms. The classification for priests is "servitor of a cult"; for one who doesn't earn his living, "non-toiler"; for artists, writers etc.,' "members of a free profession."
Major difficulty with census-taking in Russia is that the peasants are census-shy. In the days of the Tsar they fled from or fought with census officials, fearing that their women were about to be carried off or that all the aged and feeble were going to be boiled in soap. Today their fears are less fantastic, more shrewd: they consider counting noses just another way of picking victims for purges, taxation, the army.
*According to last official census (1926) there are 147,000,000 Russians.