The most common Russian population records of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—the revisii—were the product of the state's effort to keep track of the population primarily for tax purposes. The narrowness of this approach to documenting the size and distribution of the population—particularly the absence of socioeconomic data—gradually led to replacement of the revisii by more comprehensive statistics, including the census. Unlike the revisii, the census of 1897 was to be a statement of population size and characteristics on a specific date of record, a “single-day” census (odnodnevnaia perepis’). In addition, the census collected relatively broad data on the population, including items ranging from age, sex, and place of birth to items such as class, literacy and schooling, employment, and so forth. Finally, it was the aim of the census to collect and publish these data for the entire population of the empire regardless of social class, tax status, or place of residence.