OBSERVATION
OF FIRST POST-SOVIET RUSSIAN CENSUS, OCT. 9-16, 2002
General Comments:
I thought that Goskomstat put a lot of
effort into publicizing the census.
There were ads on TV, public transportation (metro, trolly buses, and
trams), public billboards, and signs inside storefronts and other public
buildings. Most people I talked to were
aware that the census was going on, and most said they were planning to
participate.
In my view, the Russian media's coverage
of the census was overly negative. There
were lots of hyperbolic stories about how the census was corrupt, how
Goskomstat was inept, and how the data from the census would be useless. I think these reports are largely
exaggerated. And, I think it's more
symptomatic of the pessimism and cynicism of the Russian media than of the particularities
of the census. The quality of the data
from the census should be judged when it is available. As for the process, my view is largely
positive, given the resource constraints and large challenges (historical
legacies, geography, weak state capacity, etc.) that Goskomstat has to deal
with.
It seemed to me that there might be a problem with over-counting due to people being able to register for their family members. I witnessed people registering for other family members at census offices, and I talked to people who had others register for them. It is not that people would register themselves more than once, but that family members would inadvertently do this for them. However, this potential problem in theory can be solved by cross-checking of forms.
Many people I talked with thought the
Passport Office (passportny stol) has all of
information on people already, or that other state agencies both have
and share information; e.g. that the Ministry of the Interior, the Police, the
Tax authorities, etc., all share information with Goskomstat. This is really remarkable. It shows that most people really have no
understanding the basic boundaries between state organizations. Moreover, if such sharing of information is
actually occurring is suggest a real problem with any sort of "checks and
balances" or protection of citizens' privacy among Russian government
agencies. It's not that I think there
are no problems in the Russian bureaucracy, but sharing of Goskomstat data is a
very serious charge.
A minor point regarding our research
group: Some scholars, from the Institute of Ethnography, thought that the counting of illegal or
unregistered, non-Russian, workers and migrants was the main point of the
census, but I disagree with this. The
Institute of Ethnography, is too concerned with ethnicity rather than other
aspects of the census.
Specific Observations:
I visited 3 different census points; one
in Yugo Zapadnaia, one in Taganska, and one in Mytishchina. All three seemed relatively well
organized. They had new furniture and
office supplies, tea pots and refreshments for employees, and good signage
directing people to the office. The
people working in the offices seemed generally friendly and helpful, and the
respondents coming in and out seemed relatively satisfied. One day, I also went around, with Juliette
Cadiot, with two census enumerators in Mytishchina. And with Juliette Cadiot and Vasilly Filippov
we conducted several interviews with city officials.
Experience with the enumerators:
The job of the Russian census enumerator
is pretty hard work. It was very cold and rainy most of the days of the
census. They had to walk a fair distance
back and forth from the census offices to the buildings where the respondents
were located. When you in the
respondents' buildings, they spent most of their time in the entrance ways
which were dark, unheated, and not very clean; and they were standing up almost
the entire time. This is obviously
tiring after several hours.
The people who answered the doors all
seemed willing and interested in responding to the census. Many invited us in to their apartments. In terms of the questions, amongst the
respondents I observed, the nationality question was not problematic at
all. Most answered "Russian"
and a few gave other replies, but there was no tension or awkwardness in the
answer.
In general there did not seem to be much
problem in answering the questions. I
thought the enumerators didn't bother asking certain questions to which they
thought they knew the answer; e.g. the number of sq. meters in the apartments:
because apartments were standard, knowing the layout of one floor, told you the
information for all floors. I thought
that occasionally the question of which "subject of the federation" one
was born in caused a few problems. Some
times the oblast named had changed and the respondents as well as enumerators
did not know what to write.
My sense was that most of the enumerators
were sort of regular college students.
They did not appear to have independent political agendas or biased
towards any type of answers. The worst
thing one could expect, in my opinion is that they might, as underpaid
over-worked people tend to be, not as careful as one might hope; and therefore
there might be some unintentional mistakes.
I didn't witness anything that looked like a conspiracy to falsify
data. However, these observations are
based only on the enumerators we met from Yugo Zapadnaia and Mytishcha.
Interviews:
We also did interviews with officials in
the Mytishcha administration, the Mytishcha branch of Goskomstat, the Mytishcha
wholesale market, the Prefect of the Zelenograd Administrative Okrug of Moscow
and with Moscow city officials in charge of migration.
Basically, our counterpart from the Institute
of Ethnography, Vasilly Filippov, was interested in finding out about illegal
migration and the rate of responses of ethnically non-Russian inhabitants of
Moscow and its surrounding areas. Much
of the questioning in the interviews focused therefore on issues of how many
ethnically non-Russian, and non-citizens, were expected to respond the census
and what measures were being taken to insure their participation. Most of the interviewees did not think that
undercounting of non-Russians or non-citizens was a major problem. Also, some, like the director of the
Mytishcha wholesale market completely refused to speak in ethnic terms; he
discussed citizens and non-citizens but really was reluctant to consider an ethnic
bias in the type of people who would or would not respond to the census.
The director of the Mytishcha branch of
Goskomstat was totally racist and subjected us to many tales of aggressive,
dangerious, and sexually predatory Chechens in the area. She was of course very interested in the figures
on how many of each ethnic group lived in Mytishcha.
One interesting note from the interview
with the Zelenograd Prefect is that he was under the impression that his okrug
would have all the disaggregated census data, that it would be processed locally,
and that it would then be sent to Goskomstat in Moscow. This is not the case however, as all the
processing (scanning) is being done centrally.
He also suggested that the okrug could get any information it needs by
cooperating with the relevant state organization (tax police, goskomstat,
passport office); meaning that this fluidity of boundaries between state
agencies might exist in practice.
It would have been better to interview
Goskomstat officials, but for a variety of reasons this was not possible.