The main stage of the All-Russian Population Census was held from October 15 to November 14, 2021. It was the first digital census: for the first time, people could fill in the census forms themselves via the Gosuslugi portal (website of the Government services), and census takers recorded the data on electronic tablets, which greatly simplified their work and data processing time.

By law, population censuses in Russia should be carried out once every 10 years, so the next census was scheduled for October 2020. However, the COVID pandemic intervened: the census had to be postponed to avoid the rapid spread of the disease by the census-takers.

Three types of census forms were used during the census: a full list of questions (for permanent residents of Russia), a shortened questionnaire (for residents of other countries temporarily staying in Russia), as well as several questions on the characteristics of the living conditions of the population.

The summarization schedule was approved by a decree of the Government of the Russian Federation. Because practically all primary data were collected in digital format, the processing will take a short time. The final results will be summarized by the end of 2022.

According to preliminary data, 147.2 million people lived in Russia at the time of the census, 2 million more than in 2010. For 11 years the population increased in 28 regions, most of all in Moscow and Moscow Oblast, St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast, and Krasnodar Krai. Urbanization is continuing: 75% of the population lives in urban settlements (in 2010 there were 74% of urban residents).

Today the country has 16 cities with more than 1 million permanent residents: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Samara, Ufa, Rostov-on-Don, Omsk, Voronezh, Perm and Volgograd. They are home to almost a quarter of the total population of the country - 35.7 million people. In 2010, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Perm and Voronezh did not have the status of millionaires.