RIO DE JANEIRO, November 20. /TASS/. Results of the population census will be announced earlier than it was originally planned, in December, head of Russia’s statistics authority (Rosstat) Alexander Surinov told TASS on Wednesday.
He praised the good organization of the census, which made it possible to speed up the processing of census papers. He noted that He noted that preliminary results were very much close to his agency’s expectations. “Nonetheless, we can see that the number of Crimean residents is slightly less than we expected. Sevastopol’s population however is somewhat bigger than it was believed,” he said, adding that Crimean residents demonstrated positive attitude towards the census. “There were fewer refusals in Crimea than during the population census in the rest of Russia,” he noted.
He said that census takers had practically no problems “with such traditionally delicate issue for any census as the filling of the “nationality” box.” “Moreover, many representatives of the older generation of the Crimean Tatars did their best to facilitate the casus. They said they were interested in getting a most clear demographic picture concerning their people with its tortuous and tragic past,” Surinov said.
Surinov headed the Russian delegation to a meeting of experts from statistics authorities of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).