Specifics of the First General Population Census of 1897 in Menzelinsk District of Ufa Province

The study of the First general population census in October 1896 – January 1897 years in Menzelinsk District of Ufa Province – “in the inner outskirts” – is relevant in several aspects: 1) it allows considering the effectiveness of the instructions for organiz-ing and conducting statistical operations developed by the Chief Census Commission, which were compiled with the focus on the Russian majority of the country; 2) there is an opportunity to observe the social behavior of local authorities, facing the need to organize and conduct a statistical event within a very short time; 3) can trace the reac-tion of the local population to this state statistical event. The reports and journals of the provincial and district census commissions preserved in the fund of the Central Statisti-cal Committee at the Ministry of Internal Affairs served as the source of the given arti-cle. The publication highlights a number of omissions allowed by the center in prepara-tion of the normative legal documentation of the census; it also discusses the formation of census and enumeration areas in the country, recruiting of census enumerators and translators, providers the confessional composition of the heads of census areas and clarifies the role of the county census commission and mullahs in conducting explana-tory work among Muslims, the protest reasons and forms are specified and the course of the census with the involvement of military teams in Muslim settlements is presented in details.