Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The historical family demography is a new research direction today. The complexity here arises from the fact that the research problem lies at the intersection of historical-demographic and socioeconomic studies. The statistical data on familistic processes are the most important sources of information, which allow drawing conclusions about the key aspects of the problem, such as nuptiality, fertility, natality, single motherhood, divorce rates, etc. However, it must be acknowledged that all these indicators were also influenced by the legislative initiatives. One of the most striking examples of such influence in the Russian history of the XX century was the Decree of July, 8, 1944. It was the immediate cause for the incompleteness of statistical data on families for the whole of Russia as well as for the individual regions. 1950s and 1960s witnessed a process of gradual abolition of some paragraphs of this decree. This process was reflected in changing registration forms. The most significant changes were made in the forms of birth registration. Thus, the old and common Form 2 (registration of maternal age and birth order) was replaced with numerous forms assessing the dynamics of lonely mothers by age and social groups (2-b), general information about the mother’s social and age group (2-v), the data about fathers (2-g). Tables of marriage rates were also modified as they no longer contained the data on urban areas with population over 100 thousand people. Changing forms affected the modes of statistical information presentation, as can be seen from the data on Western Siberia. This region included areas with different family dynamics, therefore changing forms of statistical record-keeping led to misinterpretation or loss of information. The article presents an overview of changing forms of keeping family statistics in the context of Western Siberia.