Stephen G. Wheatcroft "Demographic Aspects of Soviet History in the first half of the twentieth century"

26 мая состоялся очередной научный семинар Международного центра истории и социологии Второй мировой войны и ее последствий совместно с Научно-Учебной Группой "Социальная история Второй мировой войны", на котором Стивен Уиткрофт выступил с докладом "Demographic Aspects of Soviet History in the first half of the twentieth century"

In the first half of the twentieth century the USSR experienced three major demographic crises, and unparalleled demographic growth as the population was transformed. The government attempted to deny the existence of the central of these crises, and their footprints as revealed in the age structure of the population in later censuses, was for a longtime well hidden. My paper not only analyses the nature of these crises, but tells the story of the struggle over the indicators of population growth and size. Demographers, statisticians and their leaders like Popov and Osinskii emerge as the heroes of this story, and the villain is not so much Stalin but those officials like Voznesenskii and Kraval’ who provided them with politically convenient plan constructivist distortions.