J. A. Newth

The 1970 Soviet census

THE information contained in the I970 Soviet census and available at the beginning of I972 indicates that development has continued along the lines which have become familiar in the sixties, and there are no great surprises. The fall in the birth rate seems to have been arrested, but the variations between one area and another have become more clearly emphasized. The consequences for the evolution of Soviet society underlie this analysis, but no attempt is made to explore them in this article, which is confined to an exposition of the data. The Soviet population in January I970 amounted to 241,720,000 persons (as amended from the original count of 241,748,000), an increase of about 33 millions in exactly i years. Let us begin by citing the size and rates of growth of the population in the same territorial area at various dates for which a reasonably precise estimate can be made (in thousands):

The Soviet labour force in the fifties

This note was originally written in November 1959 for use at a seminar. At that date neither of the major statistical handbooks issued in the latter part of that year (Narodnoye khozyaistvo SSSR v 1958 g. and Narodnoye khozyaistvo RSFSR v 1958 g.) was available to the writer, nor of course was the press release of 4 February 1960, which supplies the sex‐ and age‐groupings of the population as at the 1959 census, the specific death‐rates for 1939 and 1959, and the estimated age‐grouping for the notional Soviet population of 1939. Strictly speaking, therefore, the note is already out of date, since the data on which it is based call for some revision. But since the output of Soviet data is so substantial at the present time, this charge could be brought against almost any work in this field; and in any case it is hoped that readers will agree that the revisions required to the authors estimates are of comparatively small dimensions. Some of the revisions are briefly indicated within square brackets, and th...