Internal migration in the USSR: 1897-1926

The purpose of this study is to describe and to analyze internal migration in the USSR primarily by the use of data from the 1926 census of the USSR. The article is divided into two parts. The first is devoted to a description of the aggregate and regional migration patterns based on place-of-birth data. The second is an analysis of these migration patterns, primarily in terms of economic differentials by guberniya. Because only limited income data are available for the period around1926 and because other economic data are scarce or unusable owing to boundary changes, census data on labor force distribution, literacy, and urbanization are used as substitute variables to approximate income differences.Migrationis a complex phenomenon related to a host of factors. The present study does not presume fully to explain migration in the USSR, but it does attempt to isolate differences in income and to relate these to the internal migration that occurred during this period. As a result of processing and analyzing an extensive array of data, we have shown that differences in income, derived indirectly from a variety of data, are closely related to internal migration in the USSR in the period prior to the 1926 census. There were striking similarities in respect to internal migration between the period prior to the 1897 census and the period prior to the1926 census. The chief areas of out-migration and in-migration were roughly the same,and migrants in both periods moved primarily to areas of higher income.