Paul Goble
Staunton, July 5 – In order to hide Russia’s demographic decline, Moscow’s statistical agency has stopped publishing demographic statistics, a move that will hurt the Russian Federation more than anyone else and that will not preclude doing serious demographic research on what is going on within it.
In reporting this development, Russian outlets have been almost unanimous in suggesting that this step will hide Russia’s demographic losses from the Russian people and from the West. They have rarely pointed out that Rosstat is also hiding these important social trends from the Russian government itself.
Officials will be flying blind on many issues; and the mistakes they will make will be costly, however much Putin and the Kremlin will welcome the opportunity to make claims about the success of Moscow’s demographic problems and about how wrong those talking about Russia’s demographic decline are.
The impact on those in the West who want to track demographic trends in the Russian Federation will be serious but not fatal. Various Russian agencies will at least for the time being such as the registration offices and election officials will continue to publish data often region by region rather than for the country as a whole.
That will make doing demographic research on Russia more difficult because the analysts working in this area will have to focus not just on data Moscow has brought together from all the federal subjects but on each of them and then do their own summations. But as the late US demographer Murray Feshbach brilliantly demonstrated, that is hard but entirely possible.
Indeed, what the Rosstat decision really means not that the Kremlin has blocked research into Russian demography but is restoring both one of the worst aspects of Soviet practice and the ways in which scholars in other countries must conduct their research whenever they deal with subjects that the Kremlin doesn’t want covered.
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