The Three-Hundred-Year Demographic History of Ekaterinburg: Sources and Historiography

Abstract

The paper presents the results of the historical study of the population formation in Ekaterinburg over a 300-year period. Historical sources and the process of accumulating knowledge about the number of city residents were examined. Analysis of population data revealed that the process of collecting demographic information on Russia (and, accordingly, on Ekaterinburg) took a century and a half (from the 18th century until almost the 1870s). The role of the head of the Ekaterinburg mining plants, academician I. F. Herman, in the development of population tables is shown. Since 1873, when the first one-day census of the city’s population was conducted, and then 1887, statistical and demographic information has become representative. The main source for examining the population formation of the city were the censuses of 1897, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1931, 1937, 1939, 1959, 1979, 1989, 2002, 2010, as well as the current population records. A brief review of historical literature showed that the study of the population of Ekaterinburg is in its infancy.