Abstract
MORE complete figures relating to the census of the Soviet population taken on January 17, 1939, have been issued by the State Planning Commission of the U.S.S.R. The figures cover the entire population of the Union with the exception of the far north, where the census will be taken in the latter half of this year. The figures issued reveal that on January 17 last, the population of the Soviet Union numbered 170,467,186, including 81,664,981 males and 88,802,205 females. As compared with the census of 1926, the Soviet population has increased by 23,439,271 or by 15·9 per cent, the urban population being 55,909,908 or 32·8 per cent of the total, as against 26,314,114 in 1926, or 17·9 per cent of the total. Owing to a typographical error in the note which appeared in NATURE of June 3 (p. 936), relating to preliminary figures of the Soviet census, it was stated that the entire population had more than doubled. This should have read “the urban population has more than doubled”. The average annual increase of population in the U.S.S.R. during the period 1926–39 was 1·23 per cent. The increase in the birth-rate is illustrated by figures relating to some of the big towns of the Union. In 1938 the average number of births per thousand of population in Moscow was 28·5, Leningrad 27·4, Kiev 27·4, Kharkov 27·7, Baku 33·9. There are 174 towns in the U.S.S.R. with populations of more than 50,000; 82 have populations of more than 100,000 and eleven have populations of more than half a million. The population of Moscow has increased from 2,029,425 in 1026 to 4,137,018 in 1939, or by 103·9 per cent, and that of Leningrad from 1,690,065 in 1926 to 3,191,304 in 1939, or by 88·8 per cent. Four towns are included in the 1939 census which did not figure on the geographical maps in 1926, namely, Karaganda which now has a population of 165,937, Magnitogorsk with a population of 145,870, Stalinogorsk with a population of 76,207, and Komsomolsk-on-Ajnur with a population of 70,746. Dtuing tho period 1926–39, 1,536 new urban centres, 213 of which have been constituted as towns, have sprung up on the territory of the Soviet Union.
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Soviet Census. Nature 144, 67 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144067a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144067a0