The Census and Statistical Accounts on the number of Ekaterinburg Old Believers from the 60-es to the 90-es of the 19th Century
The article focuses on the number of the Old Believers of the “ancient piety” (drevlee blagochestie) in the post-reform period in Ekaterinburg. The rich and influential Old Believers community was a part of the city population since the second half of the 18th century. The representatives of the trade circles, gold mining, and crafts, stemming from the Old Believer communities, have had a great impact here. They often held the post of the Mayor and were among the members of the City Council, since the emergence of the municipal authorities under the reign of Catherine II till the tightening of the state policy by Nicholas I in the 30-es of the 19th century when many among the Old Believers were forced to turn into the so-called “edinoverie” (lit. “the unitary faith”). In the article the question of the city Old Believers is considered from the 60-es of the century - after the end of the active persecution, followed by the loss of their former influence upon the municipal government. One of the first sources of data on various Ekaterinburg denominations were the materials collected by the officers of the General Staff and published by H. Moselle. His data concerning the proportion of the Yekaterinburg Old Believer population in 1860 (4.8 %) differed slightly from the information received by the Perm Statistics Committee for 1861 (3.8 %), and were to a large extent confirmed by the one-day municipal censuses in 1873, 1887 and by the 1st General census in 1897, which all also fixed the rate of 4 to 5 %. It may be noted that the methods of collecting information by different agencies during the period under review were not uniform and of high quality. When comparing all the circle of the sources available, a scholar’s eye is caught with the materials of the Perm Statistics Committee for 1892, compiled with the assistance of the police, as they were characterized by the minimum values possible of the female Old Believer population in Ekaterinburg. Moreover, the data in question were fixed in the form of a "sharp decline", and so they were hard to explain in comparison with analogous figures from the other sources. The examination of the data from the census in the yards and houses of Ekaterinburg, carried on against the background of the information obtained by other methods of public accounting as a whole and of the record keeping of the Old Believers, in particular, allows us to speak of those censuses being such a source that has had a higher accuracy as compared to a consolidated data of the provincial (guberniya) statistical committee.