Demographic Problems Threaten Russia’s Existence, Health Ministry Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – Russia’s demographic problems including both declines in the number of births and the rise in the number of deaths are now so severe and threaten to grow worse in the coming years that they threaten the very existence of Russia, Oleg Apolikhin, a Russian Health Ministry demographer, told the St. Petersburg Economic Forum.

            “Our country is the largest in the world, but it ranks only ninth in terms of population,” Apolikhin says; “and if the situation does not change and the trends are going in the wrong direction, then by 2050, we will rank 18^th in terms of population.” Russia’s population decline may soon be so large that it will be irreversible (nakanune.ru/articles/119025/).

            Unfortunately, the demographer says, Russia has focused on only one aspect of the problem and neglected the others. Moscow has spent billions to lower infant and maternal mortality, but “where those indicators are the smallest, the regions are dying out; and where they are the largest, in the North Caucasus, the population is growing because of higher birthrates.”

            The Russian government hasn’t focused on men, on the survival of marriages, or on the general well-being of the population, the single greatest factor in determining how many children will be born, Apolikhin continues; and it hasn’t yet recognized that declining birthrates in Russia are in part the result of a conscious Western policy to weaken its competitor.

            “We deal with women but not with men,” he says. And this failure is having disastrous consequences. Young men are distracted from any interest in having families by pornography on the Internet, and slightly older ones are dying prematurely with more than half of them dying before they reach 65.

            Everyone knows that if the number of women in prime child-bearing cohorts falls as it is in Russia, the population will decline; but few seem to be aware, the expert says, that if men become less numerous and especially if they become less interested in having families, the number of babies will fall at least as fast.

            Other demographers are predicting that the Russian population will fall by eight million before 2030, the result of both declining births and increasing deaths. And some, like independent demographer Aleksey Raksha are saying that the birthrate may soon fall to levels not seen in 250 years (ng.ru/economics/2022-06-14/1_8460_russia.html).

            Instead of focusing on the problems Apolikhin and Raksha are pointing to, Russian bureaucrats, Nezavisimaya gazeta reports, have adopted their usual strategy of ignoring the problem by dropping the birthrate as one of the factors to judge the success of their carrying out of the Kremlin’s demographic policies.

            That allows them to report to Putin that all is well when in fact, as the demographers point out, Russia is very much on a disastrous path, given that no country has had an economic rebound when its population is declining as rapidly as Russia’s now is.