gazeta.ru October 15, 2002 Census casualty list continues to grow By Irina Petrakova
Russia's first major census since the fall of the Soviet Union is drawing to a close. While the official results of the weeklong campaign aimed at quantifying the country's population at the beginning of the 21st century are not expected to be released until autumn next year, the sad statistics of daily attacks on census-takers are likely to be released much sooner.
The first cases of attacks on young census-takers, most of them students, have already been reported. In many regions, residents wary of letting strangers into their homes have set dogs on census-takers. Many other census-takers have been robbed of completed questionnaires, as well as their bags and caps.
The all-Russian census was launched on October 9 and is set to finish on Wednesday. And it seems the State Statistics Committee wasted millions on an intensive public relations campaign, explaining to the citizenry how they should treat census-takers.
For instance, on October 15 a 19-year-old census-worker was attacked in Irkutsk. As he was trudging up the stairwell of an apartment block in his district, a group of criminals attacked him, hit him on the head several times, robbed him of his cap and a briefcase containing 50 completed questionnaires and fled.
On Monday another census-taker, an 18-year-old girl, working in the southwest of Moscow was assaulted after knocking on the door of a 23-year-old man who happened to be very drunk. Undeterred by the man's drunken state she started posing questions. It seems that one of her questions so vexed the drunkard that he hit the girl on the face. The girl immediately reported the incident to the police. The assailant was taken to a police station, where, according to preliminary reports, the man was so drunk that he could not explain why he had hit the girl.
On the same day another young census-taker told of a curious incident, picked up on by Ekho Moskvy radio station. When the girl knocked on the door of a sanitary technician, the man snatched the questionnaire out of her hands and ate it. He later explained that he did so in protest at the US's policy on Iraq.
Another female census-taker was held by force in a respondent's flat in the Siberian town of Blagoveshchensk. A group of drug addicts would not let the woman leave the apartment for several hours. On Monday the local authorities dispatched a police unit to check the flats that she had been scheduled to visit. The police later freed the young woman and arrested her captors.
Similar cases have been registered in many parts of Russia. In Saransk (Mordovia) a group of offenders attacked an 18-year-old student in a dark alley and robbed him of his jacket. The police managed to detain one of the assailants.
Three unknown men battered another 19-year-old student, and relieved him of 300 rubles (approx.$10), a bag with 30 completed and 40 blank questionnaires.
Another incident was registered in the Sergiev-Posad district northeast of Moscow. A 28-year-old monk of the Troitse-Sergieva Lavra (the Monastery of the Holy Trinity) broke into the apartment of a census officer and destroyed the census lists completed in the names of his parents. The young man did not explain why he did it.
Altogether, there have been numerous reports about census-related injuries in Russia. As it was expected, many incidents are caused by dog attacks. In Kursk, for instance, owners of expensive houses in private-housing districts refuse to participate in the census. Sometimes, they set dogs on the most insistent census-takers. Representatives of the military insurance company say that there are no regions in Russia where census-takers, attacked by dogs, did not seek compensation, which ranges from only 100 to 300 roubles.
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