This was announced by the head of Rosstat, Pavel Malkov, referring to the preliminary data of the all-Russian census of October 1, 2021.
The final figures, according to Malkov, can be revised upwards or downwards by 500,000 people.
The 2010 census estimated the population for October 2010, including the population of Crimea at 145.14 million.
The estimated census population was over 1 million higher than the operational administrative estimate of 145.8 million as of October 1, 2021.
According to Malkov, this is a traditional discrepancy, which is mainly due to an error in registering migration: in 2010 the census showed a population of 1 million more than the administrative estimate, and in 2002 — 1.8 million more.
The final estimate of the country’s population will be released in May and all census results will be published by the end of the year.
The head of Rosstat also said that about 25 million census forms were completed online — about 17% of the total population, which turned out to be much better than expected.
The main stage of the census took place from October 15 to November 14, 2021. It was postponed several times due to the pandemic and was originally scheduled to take place in October 2020. The main innovation of the census was the possibility of self-submission by filling in a questionnaire on the public services portal.
