The problem is Stalin — not that Yuri voices this to anyone other than Vera, and even then the words feel like traitors in his mouth. Stalin has made it very clear that he expects the census to portray a citizenry whose belief in the revolution is rock-solid. It will show that no one wants or needs religion anymore; indeed, so convinced is Stalin of the success of the campaign against Russian Orthodoxy, he’s insisted that a question about religious affiliation be included for the first time on a national census. Stalin also expects the population of Russia and the Soviet Republics to come in at an absolute minimum of one hundred and seventy million — he actually expects it to be much higher. The population figure is, he says, of the utmost importance. It will provide hard evidence of improved diet and living conditions, as well as better health services and housing; it will reveal an increase in the birth rate and a decrease in the infant mortality rate, and, most importantly, it will demonstrate the success of collectivisation and industrialisation, his signature policies.

Yuri has done some preliminary figures based on the 1926 census, and there is good reason to worry. If there had been no campaign against the kulaks, if there had been fewer enemies of the people, if instead of famine and cholera there really had been better housing and hygiene, it is possible the population might stretch to one hundred and sixty-seven million — still short of what Stalin expects. And with disease, overcrowding and sanitary conditions as bad as ever, Yuri fears there will actually be increases in infant and child deaths, and a seriously blighted birth rate. The scientist in him welcomes the census to set matters straight, but the Russian in him tells him that the science of the All-Union Census has acquired a political agenda.

A mere forty-eight hours after census day, and Yuri knows he has been right to worry. The population figure will fall well short of Stalin’s minimum. But as bad as this is, it is not the only concern. On the census forms, unambiguously defiant, citizens in their millions have described themselves as Christian. (And whose decision was it to include a question about religious belief?) There’s the population problem and the religion problem, but equally shocking is that the census has given voice to the disgruntled whispers that have rustled through Soviet life for so long: in the margins of the census forms citizens have vented their discontent. Complaints and insults, anger and criticisms dirty the perfect results that Stalin requires — the perfect results the enumerators should have elicited. The census is a disaster. The people higher up are informed. No one wants to tell Stalin, no one wants to be the bearer of such news. But of course he must be told.

The All-Union Census of 1937 is immediately buried. Over the next several months the data is collected in secret, analysed in secret, and locked away.