[arethuza]

Nitpicks: the Soviets rather than the Russians - Chernobyl is in Ukraine after all.

Mind you, I wonder if anyone actually explicitly decided not to collect the relevant statistics or whether facts like that were simply ignored by Soviet statisticians if they thought they might give "wrong" answer - there being some history in that area with Stalin and statisticians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937)

[ncmncm]

tl;dr the census accurately counted a deficit of millions of people, so the census takers were executed. There is no telling how many of the "before" count had existed, as previous counts were systematically inflated.

[acidburnNSA]

Fortunately we have dose maps from Chernobyl and have a rough understanding of biological damage vs. dose. Using conservative models, plus the medical records and interviews (WHO and UN got excellent access a few years after Chernobyl happened), we can build pretty good understandings even if census data was questionable. This was accounted for by UNSCEAR, who says "Up to 4000 may die early from Chernobyl" [1]

[1] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html

[ncmncm]

Chernobyl did not have a reactor in 1937...