Soviet Statistics under Stalinism: Reliability and Distortions in Grain and Population Statistics

This essay attempts to understand the history and politics of Soviet grain and demographic statistics, and to show how they were used by the government. It covers the period from Lenin until Stalin’s death. Distortions arose because of over-ambitious planning. Attempts to correct these distortions in 1932 failed because of the cover-up of the famine. Also the results of the census of 1937 were rejected, but the repeat census of 1939 did provide more realistic indicators. For grain, distortions remained to the end of the Stalin period and even increased. The essay argues that the basic statistics available in the archives are reliable and that distortions arose in the reworking of these statistics.