SUMMARY:

These introductory thoughts by Jean Radvanyi were addressed to participants in the workshop held by the Russian–French Center in Moscow on November 9, 2010, and dedicated to the most recent Russian population census (October 2010). Radvanyi stresses the importance of individual observations and research projects conducted by French and Russian anthropologists and sociologists: unlike in 2002 (the previous census), in 2010 Russian official institutions did not support the initiative of the international network of experts to monitor the whole process of preparing and carrying out the census. The author points to the effect of economic crisis on defining the dates and goals of the census, highlights the organizational problems that accompanied it, and draws attention to regional versus federal “policies” of the census.