NICOLAE ENCIU
Contributions to a Demographic History of the Moldovan SSR. The First Post-War Census, January 1959
Abstract
Based on a wide range of statistical sources and especially on the documents of the Soviet census of January 1959, this article follows the main demographic variables of the population of the Moldovan SSR, from the annexation of Bessarabia in June 1940 until the date of the 1959 census in the SSRM. It becomes obvious that during the process of establishment and consolidation of the communist regime in Bessarabia (1940–1941, 1944–1959), its population has passed through some social cataclysms that are unique in its entire history, so that during the period between 1940–1950 it was affected by a serious involution of its population from 3,191,016 to 2,290,400 inhabitants, the direct population loss during that period reaching about 1 million persons.
Keywords: Bessarabia, post-war census, Moldovan SSR, total population, ethnic-linguistic structure, social structure of population, administrative-territorial structure.