By the 1897 Russian Census, there were 3,559,229 people in the guberniya making it the most populous one in the whole Russian Empire.[6] Most of population was rural. There were 459,253 people living in cities, including about 248,000 in Kiev. According to the mother tongue, the census classified the respondents as follows: 2,819,145 Little Russians (the Russian government term for Ukrainians) representing 79.2% of the population, 430,489 Jews representing 12.1% of the population, 209,427 Great Russians (the Russian government's term for Russians) representing 5.9% of the population, and 68,791 Poles representing 1.9% of the population.[7] By faith, 2,983,736 census respondents were Orthodox Christians, 433,728 were Jews and 106,733 were of the Roman Catholic Church.[6][8]