Red Square May Day Rally 1978
A look at the state and trends of population levels in the USSR in the 1979-1984 period showing its remarkable growth during the socialist era as well as its recovery from the terrible losses of WWII.
Information taken from the countrywide census of 1979, other censuses and current registration of the population’s migration and reported in the Soviet media in 1985.
According to the last census, the Soviet population was 262,436.000 on January 17, 1979, and by the estimates of the Central Statistical Board of the USSR it stood at 275 million on July 1, 1984.
In 1917, the year of the victorious Great October Socialist Revolution, the country's population was 163 million. The Soviet population grew in the conditions of grand social and economic transformations when the country was being turned into an economically and politically strong power. This growth could have been still more considerable but for the heavy losses caused by wars, notably the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 which took a toll of over 20 million lives There were also significant demographic losses caused by a steep decline of the birth rate and growth of mortality, by the disruption of the sex and age structure of the population. The cumulative result of this was that the prewar size of the population (1940) was achieved only in 1955, ten years after the end of the war (see Table).
The population is growing numerically in all Union republics, though at varying rates. From 1950 to 1979 it increased by nearly 50 per cent overall. During this period, the population of the Central Asian republics (Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan and Turkmenia), as well as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia more than doubled. A high population growth, though at a lower rate. was recorded also in Moldavia and Georgia where the increase over this 30-year period constituted 73 and 44 per cent respectively. In the Russian Federation and the Ukraine the population grew during this period in almost equal proportions rising by 36 and 37 per cent. Similarly slight divergences in population growth were noted in the Baltic republics where the growth rate varied from 30 per cent in Latvia to 34 per cent in Estonia.
In Byelorussia, hit hardest by the war. the population was smaller than before the war even in early 1970, numbering 9,002,000 (in 1940 it was 9,046.000) Only in 1971 did it top the prewar level.
In the national republics the population growth mainly reflects the powerful upsurge of their economy. the tremendous improvement of the material well-being in the former borderlands of tsarist Russia and the progress achieved during socialist construction.
By the 1979 census, of the 262.4 million people inhabiting the USSR 73.6 per cent live in the European part of the country and 26.4 per cent in its Asian part. In the period between 1970 and 1978 the population of the Asian part of the country increased by 16.8 per cent and in the European part by 5.9 per cent. The faster population growth in the Eastern regions reflects the results of the policy of the CPSU and the Soviet state aimed at boosting the productive forces there. While the population of the Russian Federation as a whole increased by 6 per cent over nine years, in Siberia and the Far East the growth was 10 per cent. This is explained by the influx of workers and specialists in the 1970s from all areas of the Soviet Union who came to build the fuel and power base and electric power grids, work at new industrial enterprises and construct the Baikal-Amur Railway. The Guidelines for the Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 1981-1985 and up to the Period Ending in 1990 envisage accelerated expansion of the economic potential in Siberia and the Far East. This will increase the population there more rapidly.
High industrial development rates ex plain the urban population's rapid growth. Before the revolution Russia's urban population. according to the first universal census in 1897, was a mere 15 per cent of the total population. By 1939 It had more than doubled rising to 32 per cent. At the beginning of 1982 urban residents made up 64 per cent of the totat population.
It is highly characteristic that in the process of industrial development the urban population in the formerly backward national regions of tsarist Russia grew faster than in the country as a whole. Thus, in Moldavia the number of town dwellers increased by 76 per cent from 1959 to 1969, in Armenia by 68 per cent, Tajikistan by 67 per cent, Kazakhstan by 61 per cent, Uzbekistan and Kirghizia by 58 per cent in each republic.
In the nine years between the 1970 and 1979 censuses the urban population continued to increase, rising from 136 to 164 million, and its share in the total population grew from 56 to 62 per cent. The rural population declined over this period by 6.9 million and its proportion in the total population shrank from 44 to 38 per cent
The number of big towns with a population of 100,000, and more, increased too. In 1982 there were 48 cities with a population exceeding half a million against 1 1 such cities in 1939. At present 55.5 million people live in such cities, while before the Great Patriotic War the figure was just 12.8 million. The overall increase equals 42.7 million or 334 per cent. The population of all other urban communities increased over this period by 68.6 million (144 per cent) . Thus, the high economic and social development rates of the USSR and the advancing technological revolution lead to the rapid growth of towns and the urban population. The highest growth rate is recorded in big and major cities and also in the new towns being built in areas of intensive industrial development. Soviet times saw 1,227 new towns created (19 towns a year on the average).
The tendency for towns to grow and the urban population to increase will continue. However, to better site the productive forces in the USSR, it has been decided to contain the growth of big cities, and promote the economic development of small and medium-sized towns with good prospects, building in them chiefly smaller enterprises and branches and specialized workshops of industrial associations, factories and plants
To improve the social conditions of rural workers, well-appointed housing, schools. pre-school childcare establishments and clubs are being built at an accelerated pace and the medical, commercial and communal services extended and improved. All this is helping to keep the personnel in rural areas, to attract specialists to agricultural production and to lower migration to towns.
From the book Population of the USSR, Political Literature Publishers, Moscow, 1983 (in Russian). Published in Socialism: Theory and Practice 1985.
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