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Religious Statistics in Russia
Silant'ev, Roman Anatol'evič
Silant'ev, Roman Anatol'evič
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Ch22_Silantyev.pdf
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"The first national census to be conducted since 1989 took place in October 2002. Unfortunately, it was not compulsory and provoked a great deal of scandals; still it allowed for the production of a body of officially recognised data that, if processed, can give answers to many questions concerning the nature of Russian society today. One important question however has remained unanswered. As early as the initial stages in preparations for the census, many authoritative scientists insisted that the census questionnaire should include a question about the religious affiliation of respondents [...] religious leaders strongly disapproved of such questions, allegedly afraid to face the truth when they saw how low in fact the numbers of their followers were. [...] As a result, the request of scientists was rejected, thus depriving them of an opportunity to handle official statistics as to the religious convictions of Russian citizens for at least ten more years, while engaged specialists retained the carte blanche to continue speculating on the subject. Followers of scientific atheism will thus continue arguing that it is they who make up the majority of the population, while supporters of the interests of religious minorities will continue insisting on having as many as 35 million Russian Muslims, 5 million Protestants and 1.5 million Catholics. It is much easier to refute such claims than to substantiate them. However, a natural question arises here: ‘What is it in fact that the Russians believe in ?’ [...]", p. 204.
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Book chapter
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2007
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9782825415160
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With permission of the license/copyright holder