The First Independent Ukrainian Census: Myths, Miscoding and Missed Opportunities

State-defined identity categories can have a profound impact on individuals’ conception of themselves. Like birth certificates and migration documents, the census is a crucial instrument in producing and maintaining ethnic and racial identities. Recent research suggests that censuses measure preferences, rather than objective data, and can profitably be studied along the lines of political campaigns. This article advances the idea that the next question is whose preference is being recorded. Ethnographic research on the micropolitics of census-taking in Crimea, Ukraine suggest the dynamics between census-takers and ethnic constituencies, as well as instructions from census officials with various ethnic loyalties, have a crucial role to play.