Literacy among the Jews of Russia in 1897

Researchers exploring Jewish literacy have traditionally ignored the Russian Census of 1897 on
the grounds that it underreported Jewish literacy. Most have felt that the low literacy percentage
reported for Jews could not possibly be accurate and therefore scholars have ignored the value of
the Census as a research tool. In a study that compares the results of the 1897 Census with the
1926 Soviet Census, Senior Scholar Joel Perlmann concludes that the 1897 Census is more
accurate than past scholars have acknowledged.