House Registers as an Ethnodemographical Source for Studying the Population of Moscow (1918–1921)

Abstract

Housing registers of Moscow of the Civil War period were a form of registration for citizens and contain various information about them. Many such record books of the period of 1917–1924 are held in the Central State Archive of Moscow. This material has not yet been analyzed in historical researches. The article introduces house registers into scientific use as an ethnodemographical source. The obtained data will be helpful for gaining new knowledge about the population of Moscow in the early 20th century and adding new information about the city and its individual parts. The research is based on 21 house registers, which compile a database of 7,330 entries over the period from 1918 till 1921. The selected addresses are distributed over five militia stations in Moscow. The obtained data made it possible to construct a plot of the dynamics of the total number of inhabitants. The research provides tables of correlation between the local population of Moscow and newly-arrived population; of the sex and age structure and the ethnic makeup. These characteristics were compared to the results of censuses in Moscow in 1918 and 1920. It shows that house registers convey the main tendencies of ethnodemographical processes, but they have certain peculiarities. Unlike censuses, the new source allows to see dynamics of ethnodemographical characteristics and combine multiple indicators. House registers can be used to conduct at different levels, and to obtain data about the ethnodemography of Moscow’s population both for the entire city and localities within it.