published in Eastern Economist #427, April 9, 2002
I came across the most curious bits
of information about demographic changes in Ukraine since the introduction of
the catastrophic political movement known as Bolshevism in 1917.
One
of these was an exerpt from something published in the Kyiv Times/Chas, nearly
a year ago. Written by Anatoliy Mokrenko, the director of the National Opera
theater in Kyiv, it was hardly a scholarly endeavor. But it was intriguing
nevertheless.
Mr.
Mokrenko had got his hands the results of a 1926 soviet census, a process whose results are apparently still a state secret of Russia. He quoted in Russian from
“Towards the Great Construction: a workbook for the third grade studies in
village schools.” The text was published in 1931 by the State Educational
Publishing House in Leningrad.
“Before
my eyes in this textbook are anything-but-secret ‘figures for diagrams,’” Mr.
Mokrenko wrote. In particular, there was a table of figures for “How many
residents of key ethnic groups live in the USSR.” It looked like this:
Russians 77,791,124
Ukrainians 81,194,976
Belarussians 4,738,923
Uzbeks 3,904,622
etc.
Mind
you, Mr. Mokrenko points out, this is without counting Western Ukraine,
Bukovyna and Zakarpattia, which only joined the USSR in 1939 and 1945.
Now,
it’s well known that Josef Stalin fought an ongoing battle with soviet
census-takers. Their figures made the effects of his atrocities all too
evident. He even offed the first folks who did a census in 1937 and then simply
doctored the (similar) numbers the next lot came up with.
But
1926 was before Stalin had secured his hegemony. It was the early, “idealistic”
years of the Bolshevik Revolution. Still, I couldn’t believe that the number
for Ukrainians could have have been 81 million. Maybe 31, or at the most 51,
but not 81.
So
I called Mr. Mokrenko and asked him if I could take a look at this textbook he
referred to.
“I
didn’t really see the original book,” he said. “It was a facsimile a friend in
Sumy sent me.”
“Any
way I can get hold of this friend directly?”
“No.
But I’ve already written him myself to see the original book.”
When
I looked up the same figure in other sources, sure enough, it was given as 31
million. If I ever see that Grade 3 textbook myself, I’ll let you know.
Mr.
Mokrennko went on to compare numbers to the 1979 census, just over half a
century later. It was published in a booklet entitled “Population of the USSR,”
put out by Politizdat in 1983. Here the ethnic figures looked like this, along
with my comparative percentages:
ethnicity population %
of 1926
Russians 137,397,000 177
Ukrainians* 34,000,000 109**
Belarussians 8,604,000 181
Uzbeks 9,200,400 235
*
excluding over 7 million western Ukrainians and taking into account their
growth for the period 1945-1979
**
standard 31mn figure used for 1926.
Now,
even assuming the 1926 figures was doctored – or simply typset incorrectly –
the trend still requires explanation. Russia and Uzbekistan, despite war and
repressions, managed to grow by 77% and 135%, while Ukraine grew at best 9%.
Mr.
Mokrenko wrote: “Where did Ukrainians go to during those 50 years? Were they
destroyed or just ‘re-labeled’? Almost everybody else’s numbers doubled, while
Ukrainians halved [he was using the 81 million figure]. Surely Ukrainians were
breeding like any other ethnic group. But it turns out they were disappearing
in catastrophic numbers in repressions, wars, artificial famines, assimilation,
passportization, and russification.”
Since
Mr. Mokrenko’s speculations were not professionally grounded, I looked at a
couple of other studies. The most current was presented last June at the
European Population Conference in Helsinki. The author is Alexandre Avdeev from
the Center for Population Studies at the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow
State University.
While
progress in healthcare accelerated population growth everywhere in 20th century
Europe, Avdeev writes, Ukraine seems a roadmap of the dramatic crises of the
past. “Among all USSR republics, this country was one of the most severely hit
by awful crises.”
Civil war 1917-20
Famine* 1921-23
Holodomor** 1931-33
World War II† 1939-45
Famine 1946-47
*
especially Southern Ukraine
**
artificial famine during collectivization; affected central and eastern regions the most.
†
including Nazi occupation 1941-1944
And, of course, waves of repression
and mass deportations in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s and 60’s.
In
fact, Avdeev writes, from 1931, when Stalin had total control of the Soviet
Union, to 1954, when Khrushchev established himself, no vital statistics were
published. So Avdeev’s team took it upon themselves to study demographic
changes in Ukraine for the period 1926-1965. To determine births, deaths and
migrations, they used official records, studies on under-registration,
historical works on spontaneous or forced migrations, gulag and deportation
camp statistics, and so on.
They
projected, using the base figures available and normal population trends, where
the population should have grown to, and the implication of those changes for
mortality rates, among others. What they came up with is horrifying.
For
the great famine or Holodomor of the early 1930’s, life expectancy for a
Ukrainian male fell to 7.3 years, and female expectancy to 10.8 years.
During
the height of WWII, mortality did not reach quite such a trough, but it lasted
much longer. These same indicators fell to 14 for males and 21 for females.
This
certainly supports the idea that Ukraine may have lost more people in the 20th
century than any other nation in Europe. But these are numbers no one should
have to sleep on. •
–from
the notebooks of Pan. O
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