Censuses in the Soviet Union and Afterwards

Official statistics have been and continue to be abused by many autocrats to exercise their power. Rulers interested in monitoring their populations generally use different methods for data collection and presentation than independent statistical offices in modern democracies. Control and propaganda with the help of statistical data is the focus in totalitarian states. Those responsible in government and administration want to know the truth and are therefore interested in correct figures. The propaganda aspect consists of the statements made by those in power at party congresses and in the state-controlled media. They do not shy away from falsification to steer their subjects onto the supposedly right path. Data is knowledge of the rulers, and it should be made available to their subjects only to the extent that it serves the interests of a supposedly better society. A chilling example of abuse of power illustrates the fate of Stalin’s leading statisticians, who were doomed by the results of the 1937 census in the Soviet Union. It describes the fate of Ivan A. Kraval and Olimpy Kvitkin, two of Stalin’s leading statisticians. Both met with terrible misfortune in the totalitarian system of the USSR. They were arrested and shot because their “misconduct” was to calculate a lower population figure in the 1937 census than had been previously announced by Joseph Stalin. Another disturbing example describes the recent case of the indictment and conviction of several statisticians in Kazakhstan for alleged misappropriation of state funds in connection with the 2009 census.