Contenu du sommaire : Statistique démographique et sociale (Russie-URSS) Politiques, administrateurs et société

Articles

• La statistique démographique et sociale, élément pour une analyse historique de l'État russe et soviétique - Alain Blum, Catherine Gousseff p. 441-455
  Alain Blum, Catherine Gousseff, Demographic and social statistics, element for a historical analysis of the Russian and Soviet state. Demographic and social statistics give a very interesting perspective on the nature of the Soviet state allowing extensive comparison in time. Demographic and social statistics are at the crossroad of committed thinking in Europe of the nineteenth century and of certain tradition which comes undoubtedly from tsarist Russia. It is founded on the convergent thought of the statisticians, concerned with the construction of a "modern state," and the Soviet leaders' wish to centralize the government. Statistics are also the place of greatest contradiction between political thinking and action, which try to deny the society they rule, and a day-by-day observation that reflects the complexity of this society and the violence to which it is submitted. This article, as an introduction to this issue, shows how interesting this viewpoint is and how it fits in the dual contemporary movement in the history of statistics and the of Russia and the USSR.
• Les sources démographiques entre contrôle policier et utopies technocratiques [Le cas russe, 1870-1926] - Alessandro Stanziani p. 457-487
  Alessandro Stanziani, The demographic source materials: Between police controls and technocratic utopianism. The case of Russia, 1870-1926. This paper starts out by recalling the debates, which began in 1865, by the Bolshevik government about the organization of regular censuses in Russia. It considers, in particular, questions concerning the administration of the census files and the criteria for defining the social groups. This paper also describes how the 1867 census was conducted and its impact on the statistical surveys, the economic policies and Russian historiography. The second section of this paper analyzes the 1916 census and the difficulties encountered by the tsarist regime during the First World War in conducting a population count, an essential factor, at that time, for the recruitement of soldiers and the organization of the labor force. The last section examines the setting up of the Soviet demographic and statistical machinery, discusses the controversies which opposed the government administrators to the professional statisticians, and studies the organization of the principal post-revolutionary surveys up to 1926.
• Les relations entre centre et régions au moment de la mise en place des bureaux statistiques des gubernii [L'exemple du gubstatbjuro de Saratov, 1918-1923] - Martine Mespoulet-Buono p. 489-509
  Martine Mespoulet-Buono, The relations between the center and the regions at the time when statistical offices were set up in the gubernii. The example of the gubstatbiuro in Saratov (1918-1923). In the course of establishing the new Soviet state, the government office of statistics was overhauled. This constituted one of the several administrative reforms enacted as from 1918 by the Bolshevik government, and was aimed at unifying the production of statistics that was split between different administration services. Within the context of an increasing state control of society, the establishment of regional offices, as defined by the decree of September 3, 1918, was aimed at improving the comparability and reliability of statistical survey results obtained throughout the Soviet territory and at accelerating their transmission to the CSU (Central Office for Statistics). As was to be expected, the implementation of this decree gave rise to négociations between local authorities and the CSU as well as, at the national level, between the CSU and the executive power. Set against a background in which an unified and a centralized state administration was in the process of being established and the structuring of a profession, already instituted before 1917, was in progress, the history of the first years of the regional offices for Soviet state statistics is also one of seeking a compromise between the scientific and professional aspirations of the former statisticians of the zemstvo and the institutional constraints of the new state administration as represented by the CSU. The case of the guhstatbiuro in Saratov illustrates how the factor of continuity was able to act simultaneously as an accelerator and a brake in this process.
• Le message des données introuvables : L'État et les statistiques du suicide en Russie et en URSS - Gábor T. Rittersporn p. 511-523
  Gábor T. Rittersporn, The message behind the missing data : The state and statistics of suicide in Russia and the USSR. Russian and Soviet state authorities collected fragmentary and incomplete suicide statistics. In this respect, there was a continuity in the methods used by the administration before and after the Revolution. The belief that a close relationship existed between the will to destroy oneself and a socio-political crisis of which suicide was supposedly a revealing factor, prevented the Old Regime as well as its successor from developing statistical methods to measure the size of a problem which would eventually become a taboo for the Soviet state.
• Soviet statistics of nutrition and mortality during times of famine : 1917-1922 and 1931-1933 - Stephen G. Wheatcroft p. 525-557
  Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Soviet statistics of nutrition and mortality during times of famine, 1917-1922 and 1931-1933. This article reviews the available nutrition and mortality data for the Soviet famines of 1917-1922 and 1931-1933. The data are remarkably detailed and are capable of providing a far fuller picture of the geographical coverage and chronology of the complex of famines than is otherwise available. There is a close relationship between mortality and food consumption in the urban and rural areas, and in the different regions in the two famines. There are some indications that food consumption in the rural areas was lower in 1933 than in 1922. There are undoubtedly problems related to the comparability and absolute reliability of these data; but they are probably not as great as is often assumed, provided that the data are carefully handled, and that the claims made for them are not too great. The systematic and large-scale Soviet nutritional data for these periods are probably far more reliable than the accidental small-scale series of data that are available for other societies, before the Second World War.
• À l'origine de la diversité des mesures de la famine soviétique : La statistique des prix, des récoltes et de la consommation - Serge Adamets p. 559-585
  Serge Adamets, Price, crop and consumption statistics at the root of the diversity in the measurement of Soviet famines. There was a spectacular recrudescence of famines in the USSR between the Revolution and the Second World War. The loss in human lives caused by these catastrophes is estimated at several million deaths. To understand their origin, it is important fust to study how one can assess their magnitude in terms not only of reductions in crops and consumption but also in loss of human lives. It seems necessary to explain the diversity of the means used to measure Soviet famines. How did the statistical services observe the phenomena related to the famines? Does the choice of the observation methods applied greatly influence the results of the analyses? This study covers essentially the period 1918-1923, but is continued up to the 1930's. Some retrospective references to the tsarist era make it possible to understand the origin and the nature of the Soviet statistical studies. Three sources of observation are examined in this paper: price, crop and consumption statistics. The statistical data provided by the central and regional offices for statistics as well as by other organisms for statistics, are compared and discussed. The history of the measurements used for crops and for assessing the nutritional status of the population is related in chronological detail, so that the various causes for the differing numerical data obtained can be examined: distrust on the part of the population, the survey methods used, the corrective procedures applied to the initial statistics. The choice of the source of observation and of measurement seems particularly important, especially when discussing regional disparities. An analysis of the 1921-1922 famine may then greatly differ according to the reference basis chosen.
• Passeportisation, statistique des migrations et contrôle de l'identité sociale - Nathalie Moine p. 587-599
  Nathalie Moine, Passportization, migration statistics and social identity controls. This paper analyzes, firstly, the way in which a planned migration of the rural populations is conceived and implemented. Secondly, it will look into how the statistical data-gathering machinery provides a measurement of the migratory population movements. And, finally, the paper will study how the reasoning that lies behind the introduction of an internal passport (in December 1932) and which is further developed throughout the 1930's, relegates to a position of secondary importance concerns related to the planning and counting of population movements. It may be asked whether "passportization" does not in fact denote a will to reinforce the efficiency of the social identity control of individuals. This would therefore be first and foremost a police measure destined to establish individual files on the population without necessarily being related to the census and the population count, and even less to the regulation of its flux.
• Les relations entre le centre et les régions en URSS à travers les débats sur les nationalités dans le recensement de 1926 - Juliette Cadiot p. 601-616
  Juliette Cadiot, The relations between the center and the regions as seen from the debate on nationalities at the time of the 1926 census of the Soviet Union. The young Soviet Union undertakes in 1926 a general census of its population. On that occasion, the people censused are asked to specify their ethnic group (narodnosť) and their mother tongue (rodnoi iazyk). An analysis of the archives of the Central Census Commission shows that only a partial picture provided by the answers collected is available. Those holding a political view of nationality came into conflict with those who wished to view the Soviet population according to strictly ethnographic categories; the form used for the census was the product of a compromise between these two tendencies. The establishment for the census of a list of nationalities gave rise to constant and closely conducted discussion between the administrators at the central level and those at the peripheral regional levels. It is to be noted that the requests submitted by the distant regions in Asia were usually more easily accepted by the center than those emanating from European republics. Finally, the Central Office for Statistics succeeded in imposing the necessary standardization at the expense of a strict control of the entire statistical hierarchy as well as of a certain flexibility. The analysis also shows that the process of négociation was highly important, very frequent and well accepted, particularly by the administrators and the politicians, who thought to apease as much as possible the crises in the relations between the center and the periphery, and to make the best uses possible of the data resulting from the census.
• Note sur les notions de chômage et d'emploi dans les années 1920 et 1930 en URSS* - Cécile Lefèvre p. 617-627
  economy. It was only possible to dispense with this category because the rapid industrialization encountered problems that were mostly linked to labor shortage, thereby doing away with problems of unemployment. It was only in 1991 that the unemployment category officially reappeared.