The project describes and explains Soviet population dynamics since World War II from a comparative perspective. It entails evaluation and adjustment of published demographic data and estimation of age distributions, fertility schedules, and life tables for the Soviet Union as a whole, by region, and by ethnic group. Two comparative perspectives are combined: the crossregional and the crossnational. Soviet regional and ethnic subpopulations differ so much in demographic behavior that it is often misleading to speak of undifferentiated "Soviet" demographic patterns. Crossnational comparison is important because there is a tendency to view Soviet demographic phenomena as unusual or unique, without an effort to compare Soviet demographic experience directly with that in other countries. Thus, this project seeks to determine what Soviet demographic patterns are unique and what aspects fit into the mainstream of world demographic experience. The methods of technical demography are combined with an extensive knowledge of Soviet society and Soviet data. Insufficient work has been done evaluating the quality of official Soviet demographic statistics. This complicates the analysis of Soviet demographic behavior, and limits our ability to separate artifact from reality. This is a renewal proposal. In the project's first three years, ten papers have been published or accepted for publication. In addition to continuing established lines of research, bibliographic and technical groundwork has been laid for additional research topics. The new work extends our research by focussing on health, old age, and labor force issues, from all-USSR, regional, and ethnic perspectives. It also expands explicit crossnational comparisons, including study of the relation between economic development and mortality.