Previous censuses had been recorded for fiscal and military purposes. Until the eighteenth century, population records were sporadic, as in either scribal or census books.
Audits began to be carried out at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and population censuses became relatively regular. Since 1858, the audit had been replaced by administrative and police registration of the population based on data from family lists. In total, three large administrative and police censuses of the population were carried out—in 1858, 1863, and 1885. Running population registrations – including births, marriages, and deaths – were carried out by religious organisations until 1918. All the items mentioned above were characterised by inaccuracy and insufficient completeness. By 1897, significant experience had been accumulated in local, mainly urban, population censuses that had been conducted since the later half of the nineteenth century. Population censuses were performed in separate governorates (
Pskov in 1870 and 1887,
Astrakhan in 1873,
Akmola in 1877, etc.), in which residents in all cities were enumerated. The population in the entire
Courland Governorate was enumerated in 1863 and 1881, and in the
governorates of Livonia and
Estonia in the latter. Registration of the rural population was performed during household and other surveys of
zemstvos. In 1871, under the general editorship of the professor of military statistics,
Nikolai Obruchev, officers of the General Staff published a military statistical collection, the four-volume edition of which contained data on the population of Russia as a whole, and was categorised by governorates and
okrugs. In 1870, the project for an all-Russian population census was discussed at the First All-Russian Congress of Statisticians, and in 1876, at the eighth session of the International Statistical Congress. On 26 February 1877, the draft of "Regulations on the General National Census", which was developed by a commission under the
Ministry of Finance, was submitted to the
State Council; however, it was not discussed there, possibly due to the
Russo-Turkish War that occurred from 1877 to 1878. In the early 80s of the nineteenth century, the
Ministry of Internal Affairs began to receive statements from some
zemstvo assemblies and governors about the need to conduct a population census as soon as possible; this was due to the unbalanced distribution of taxes among peasant families and an increase in arrears in collections from the population. After the
famine of 1891–1892, the question of the obligation to have accurate figures of the population of the empire again arose. ==Organization==