Typically, Americans received up to two Census mailings, and if those forms were not returned completed, a residence would receive a personal visit (sometimes two) from census volunteers. In short, Americans weren't left alone until they submitted the census information themselves.

My experience was very different when visiting Moscow last summer. When the doorbell of my family's condominium rang, I opened the door and was met by two young female Census counters. They said they had started knocking on doors at the 18th floor until they reached us on the 9th. I was the first person in the building to open the door, they said, which may have explained why they seemed so excited to see me. They told me that many people weren't home, and those who were often didn't open the door because they were afraid of being robbed. I asked when they'd return to the building to finish the count. They said, "Never."

"We're not getting paid enough to do this all day," they said. "We got yours, we'll get some grandma's downstairs. Then we'll go to a cafe and fill out the rest ourselves." Out of 72 units in my family's Moscow condominium complex, only two of the results were going to be genuine. The rest were going to be made up by college students over cups of coffee.

Later, while visiting a Russian company, I noticed that an intern was leaving early. When I asked the manager I was meeting where the intern was going, I was told he was making extra money by working for the Census. The reports were due, I was told, and the intern hadn't had a chance to fill them out. Playing innocent, I asked what he meant. "He needs at least a couple hours at the coffee shop to fill out a neighborhood's worth of surveys," the manager said.

Back in America, I decided to check my experiences with Dr. Cynthia Buckley, a Social Demographer at the University of Texas who currently serves as the Program Director for Eurasia at the Social Science Research Council. She follows the Russian Census closely.

"Yes, very few people opened their doors," she confirms, "and this has been a huge problem in the past as well. Mailing the questionnaire is not an option because of the mandatory residency registration (propiska) that results in people being registered at addresses where they don't really live."

The U.S. spent much more money conducting its 2010 census than did Russia. Russia's 10.5 billion rubles were the equivalent of $350 million US, about $2.50 per person. Last summer, rumors in the Russian media had it that the Russia Census actually cost only 20 rubles per person, or $.70, and that the other $1.80 went to destinations unknown. In comparison, the United States spent $48 per person--or nearly 20 times more than Russia's official expense. Putin fans may assume that the Russians accomplished results comparable in quality to America's Census for a fraction of the cost. The trouble is, the results don't mean much.

For some Americans, the shabby reality of the Russian Census revives memories of the Cold War when the Kremlin was so paranoid about giving out information that its own statisticians couldn't obtain accurate facts. According to former U.S. Census Director Bruce Chapman, in the 1980s they sometimes came to Dr. Murray Feshbach at the U.S. Census Bureau to get information on their own country.

In 1989, the New York Times called Dr. Feshbach "the West's leading detective of Soviet demography." Back then he led an entire USSR population department at the U.S. Census Bureau. But times have changed and the branch has long since been rolled into the Center for International Research, providing Americans with less U.S.-obtained data about Russia. Interest in Russia at government defense and intelligence offices undoubtedly has waned since the Cold War. Private business interest has grown, but there isn't much U.S. official expertise to assist it.

Feshbach, 82 and now affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, is inclined to be sympathetic with the Russians. "We have a lot of similar problems, but not on the same scale. I wonder if they really had time to prepare the questions properly, because the entire census was jeopardized."

A glaring example of a hole in the new Russian Census, Dr. Feshbach says, was the failure to count illegal immigrants. He estimates that roughly 8 percent of the Russian population consists of illegal immigrants, twice the percentage of the comparable population in America (coincidentally, the number in both countries is the same--11 to 12 million people). But unlike the Americans, the Russians make little effort at all to find and count these persons.

"The growing nationalistic attitude of 'Russia for Russians' doesn't help, either," says Dr. Buckley. "For example, even though pension forms are printed in the Tajik language, if you're a Tajik worker you would try to avoid being counted at any cost. If you were to believe the Russian numbers, almost all Chechens have moved back to Chechnya (since the recent civil war there). But I was in Grozny and that cannot be true, simply because post-war housing construction is still far from finished."

"Because of public schools and pensions, Russia's numbers related to children and elderly will be fairly accurate," Dr. Buckley indicates. "However, when it comes to young professionals and the middle class, corporations had better rely on other data than the ones produced by the Russians."

Where they might find such superior data is a mystery.

Yuri Mamchur directs the Real Russia Project at Discovery Institute in Seattle and manages Russia Blog online at www.russiablog.org