170 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR 
namely 0.14 per cent. In the whole of European Russia, 2,625,806 
refugees settled, and of this number 552,714 took up their resi- 
dence in the provincial towns, constituting 21 per cent of the total 
number. A comparatively small number of refugees, 76,949, went as 
far as Siberia. Still fewer, 38,518, made their way to Central Asia, 
and fewest of all, 23,758, to the Caucasus.’ 
By nationality, refugees were distributed as follows: Russians, 
57.9 per cent; Poles, 14.2 per cent; Letts, 9.8; Jews, 6.3 per cent; 
Lithuanians, 2.8; others, 9 per cent.* 
As regards the provinces of origin of the refugees, information 
was available only in 806,000 cases. In the first place came the prov- 
ince Grodno with 80.6 per cent of the total number of refugees; 
then followed Volhynia with 24.07 per cent, Kholm with 11.18 per 
cent, and Kovno with 6 per cent. The total number of refugees 
registered from Poland was only 6.46 per cent, and from Galicia, 
3.39 per cent. The remaining provinces furnished between 0.16 per 
cent (Bessarabia) and 4.82 per cent (Minsk). The overwhelming 
majority of refugees consisted of women, children, and the aged. 
Adult males constituted only 22 per cent of the total. It should not 
be thought, however, that even these males were fully capable of 
performing hard physical labor. The fact was that a considerable 
aumber of the men were sick and all of them were utterly exhausted 
and undernourished. However, the vast majority, having been 
forced to abandon their homes at a moment’s notice, and having lost 
all they had in the world, finding themselves in strange places with- 
out future prospects, and having suffered untold hardships, had 
lost all energy and simply given up the struggle in hopeless resig- 
nation. The total number of refugees mentioned above cannot be 
considered exact. Subsequent figures would appear to bring the 
total number of refugees settled in new places as high as 3,200,000. 
It was even advanced, although without sufficient proofs, that the 
total number of refugees must have been between 10,000,000 and 
15,000.,000.12 
» Izvestia (Bulletin), Nos. 45-46, p. 129. 
10 Ibid., No. 47, pp. 84-85. 
lt Ibid., Nos. 48-44, p. 121. 
iz Tyyd; (Proceedings) of the Commission for the Investigation of the 
Effects on Public Health of the War of 1914-1920, Moscow, 1923.