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Searching for Nationality: Statistics and National Categories at the End of the Russian Empire (1897–1917)
Author(s) -
CADIOT JULIETTE
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
the russian review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.136
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9434
pISSN - 0036-0341
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9434.2005.00369.x
Subject(s) - nationality , national library , empire , library science , history , citation , computer science , immigration , ancient history , archaeology
L 1897 the tsarist administration decided to carry out the first general census of all the people in the Russian Empire. They planned a second census on the same scale for 1915, but cancelled it due to the war. In both instances, administrators came up with a question to determine the language of the citizens of Russia, in order to provide a snapshot of the national (ethnographic) make-up of the country. At the end of the nineteenth century, unlike the categories of estate (soslovie) and religion, which identification documents (parish registers, the passport) recorded, nationality was at best a marginal administrative or legal category in the Russian Empire.' The 1897 imperial census makes clear that the concept of nationality remained weakly defined. Statisticians, in fact, decided not to ask individuals a direct question on nationality, arguing that the population would not know how to respond to such a question, or would answer so poorly that the results would not be a true reflection of "reality."2 After the Revolution of 1905, however, the "national question" became an essential component of the new political life. The late Imperial regime was highly uncertain about how to take into account the multiethnic character of the country. Even though there was no empirewide record of national membership, diverse administrative practices increasingly came to depend on it. In the 1910s the discussions surrounding the organization of a new