Russian Census of 2002 (Russian: Всеросси́йская пе́репись населе́ния 2002 го́да) was the first census of the Russian Federation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, carried out on October 9 through October 16, 2002. It was carried out by the Russian Federal Service of State Statistics (Rosstat).
The census data were collected as of midnight October 9, 2002.
The census was primarily intended to collect statistical information about the resident population of Russian Federation. The resident population included:
All detailed census tables are for the resident population.
All (resident) participants were asked question on their gender, birth date, marital status, household composition, birthplace, citizenship, ethnic or tribal self-identification (национальность), education level, language competence, sources of income, and employment status. A sample of the participants were also asked more detailed questions about their economic and housing situation.
Also, the census also counted two more groups of people:
Foreign citizens present in Russia as employees of foreign diplomatic missions or international organizations, and members of their household, were excluded from the census altogether.
The Census recorded the resident population of 145,166,731 persons, including 67,605,133 men and 77,561,598 women. That included urban population of 106,429,000 (73%) and rural population of 38,738,000 (27%).
The non-resident populations included:
Census participants were asked what country (or countries) they were citizens of. 142,442,000 respondents reported being Russian citizens; among them, 44,000 also had citizenship of another country.
Among Russia's resident population, 1,025,413 foreign citizens and 429,881 stateless persons were counted. [1]
1,269,023 persons did not report their citizenship.
Among the questions asked were "Are you competent in the Russian language?" (Владеете ли Вы русским языком?) and "What other languages are you competent in?" (Какими иными языками Вы владеете?). As the census manual explained, "competence" (владение) meant either the ability to speak, read and write a language, or only the ability to speak it. The questions did not distinguish native and non-native speakers, nor did they try to measure the degree of language competence. For small children, presumably, the recorded answer was based on the language(s) spoken by the parents.