You can immediately answer the question. Yes, it grew, judging by the data. But was life good? Some people on the holiday could afford to eat onions so as not to die from scurvy, others lived more satisfying. And the fact that children were given birth in reserve, and the more there were, the greater the chance that you will be helped in old age, since there were no pensions.
Under Nicholas II, Russia came out on top in the world in terms of natural population growth.
The tone was set by the royal family itself, where four daughters grew up - Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia - and the heir, Tsarevich Alexei. “Our country has experienced a demographic boom,” says Doctor of Historical Sciences Vyacheslav Nikonov. - According to various estimates, the population of the Russian Empire by the beginning of World War I numbered from 170 million to 180 million people. At that time, every seventh person on the planet lived within the Russian Empire. For comparison - today in Russia, according to the latest census, 142 million live. Since then, the population of the Earth has grown at least 6 times. At present, at best, only every 50th earthling lives in our country”.
The era of the last Russian tsar's reign was marked for our country by many technical achievements - the first tram, the first car, the first submarine, the first Arctic icebreaker, the first newsreel, color photography, the first Olympic Games (1912, Stockholm), in which Russia took part. The Tsar often examined technical innovations personally. So, he met with the famous aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky, about which interesting photographs have been preserved in the archives, when they talk, standing on the "balcony" of the "Russian Knight" - an airplane created by Sikorsky.
The population of the Russian Empire at the time of its proclamation and throughout the entire two-century period of its existence was multinational, although the core of the empire's population, called the titular nation, was made up of Great Russians (Russians), whose national identity was formed among the East Slavic population of the Old Russian state in the XIV-XVI centuries, who lived in the territories that became part of the Russian state during this period.
Almost all the peoples of the country were mainly engaged in agriculture, some led a nomadic life. Nevertheless, the share of the urban population grew steadily, especially rapidly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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At the end of the 19th century, the first general census of the population of the Russian Empire was carried out (January 28, 1897), which most adequately reflected the number and composition of the inhabitants of the empire. Usually, however, the Central Statistical Committee (CSK) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs carried out the population count, mainly by mechanical calculation of the birth and death rate data provided by the provincial statistical committees. These data, published in the Statistical Yearbook of Russia, fairly accurately reflected the natural population growth, but did not fully take into account migration processes - both internal (between provinces, between cities and villages) and external (emigration and immigration). If the latter, by their small scale, did not have a noticeable effect on the total population,then the errors due to underestimation of the factor of internal migration were much more significant.
Since 1906, the Central Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs tried to adjust its calculations by introducing amendments to the expanding resettlement movement. But still, the practiced system of counting the population did not allow to completely avoid the repeated registration of migrants - at the place of permanent residence (registration) and place of stay. As a result, the data of the TsSK MVD somewhat overestimated the real number of the population, and this circumstance should be borne in mind when using the materials of the TsSK MVD.