Office of the Historian

861.5011/42

The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Grummon) to the Secretary of State

No. 2383
Moscow, June 7, 1939.
[Received June 27.]

Sir: With reference to the Embassy’s despatch no. 2208 of March 30, 1939,65 I have the honor to inform the Department that the State Plan Commission has published the final results of the census of the population of the Soviet Union which was taken on January 1766 of this year.* According to this census, the total population of the U. S. S. R. consists of 170,467,186 persons as against 147,027,915 in 1926, the year of the last previous census. This represents an increase in population during the last twelve years of 23,439,271 or 15.9 percent.

[Page 770]

The following tables set forth comparative figures for the last two censuses of the population of the eleven constituent republics of the U. S. S. R. and of the ten largest cities of the Soviet Union taken from a published list of 174 cities with a population of more than 50,000.

Population of Constituent Republics of the U. S. S. R.

Name 1926 1939
1. R. S. F. S. R. 93,457,996 109,278,614
2. Ukrainian S. S. R. 29,042,934 30,960,221
3. White Russian S. S. R. 4,983,240 5,567,976
4. Azerbaidzhan S. S. R. 2,313,744 3,209,727
5. Georgian S. S. R. 2,677,233 3,542,289
6. Armenian S. S. R. 881,290 1,281,599
7. Turkmen S. S. R. 998,154 1,253,985
8. Uzbek S. S. R 4,565,432 6,282,446
9. Tadzhik S. S. R. 1,032,216 1,485,091
10. Kazakh S. S. R. 6,073,979 6,145,937
11. Kirgiz S. S. R. 1,001,697 1,459,301
Total 147,027,915 170,467,186

Population of the Ten Largest Cities of the U. S. S. R.

Name 1926 1939
1. Moscow 2,029,425 4,137,018
2. Leningrad 1,690,065 3,191,304
3. Kiev 513,637 846,293
4. Kharkov 417,342 833,432
5. Baku 453,333 809,347
6. Gorki 222,356 644,116
7. Odessa 420,862 604,223
8. Tashkent 323,613 585,005
9. Tbilisi 294,044 519,175
10. Rostov-on-Don 308,103 510,253

Respectfully yours,

Stuart E. Grummon
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. The census was taken in cities between January 17 and 23, 1939, and in rural districts between January 17 and 26. A previous census of January 6, 1937, had been cancelled on September 26, 1937, because of disappointing results induced by errors and culpable shortcomings of the enumerators.↩
  3. Moscow Pravda, June 2, 1939. [Footnote in the original.]↩