Russia to Use First Post-Soviet Census

 
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia will conduct its first census since the breakup of the  Soviet Union in October of next year, a government commission said Wednesday.

Russian law requires a population report every 10 years, but the count has been postponed twice, apparently for lack of funds. The last census in Russia was in 1989, two years before it became independent with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov urged parliament to adopt amendments to legislation needed to conduct the census, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. The changes are on the agenda for the fall session of the parliament's lower house, or State Duma.

The population survey will take place Oct. 9-16, 2002 across all 11 of Russia's time zones, Tatyana Razbash, a spokeswoman for the prime minister, told reporters after a Wednesday meeting of the state census commission.

The census was originally scheduled for 1999, but was put off until 2000 and then postponed indefinitely, reportedly because the government could not or would not spare the $120 million to conduct it.

The U.S. census in 2000, by comparison, cost about $3 billion.

Demographers, economists and other analysts have expressed concern at the lack of the comprehensive data a census provides, particularly given the jarring social and economic changes that Russia has seen over the past decade.

Russia's population has been falling steadily since the Soviet demise, an extremely rare development for an industrialized country not at war.

Worsening economic conditions and alcoholism have been key factors leading to a high death rate, drop in life expectancy and declining birth rate. The population is estimated at about 145 million.