The publication of the database on the Heidelberg University website

A digital publishing house of Heidelberg University (HeiDATA:Heidelberg Research Data Repository, University of Heidelberg) has published the digital atlas 'Transcultural Empire: Geographic Information System of the 1897 and 1926 General Censuses in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union' prepared by members of the project: 'Applied GIS in Humanities'.

The database was prepared within the framework of the Academic Fund Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2015 and supported within the framework of a subsidy granted to the HSE by the Government of the Russian Federation for the implementation of the Global Competitiveness Program.

The geographic information system (GIS) is based on the first and only Russian Imperial Census of 1897 and the First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union of 1926. The GIS features vector data (shapefiles) of allprovinces of the two states. For the 1897 census, there is information about linguistic, religious, and social estate groups. The part based on the 1926 census features nationality. Both shapefiles include information on gender, rural and urban population. The GIS allows for producing any necessary maps for individual studies of the period which require the administrative boundaries and demographic information.

Atlas is available on the Digital Object Identifier(DOI): http://dx.doi.org/10.11588/data/10064