Russian Businesses Call on Kremlin Not to Force Them Pay to Support Population Growth

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 5 – Igor Shchegolyev, presidential plenipotentiary for the Central Federal District, says that companies which provide cash, time release and other forms of support to workers and their families have met “the gold standard” as far as their responsibilities for helping to solve Russia’s demographic problems.

            Others agreed, but business leaders urged Moscow not to make these steps obligatory given the economic problems they face. Doing so, they suggested, could further undermine the ability of their firms to survive in the current ecoinenomic environment (https://readovka.news/news/242281/).

            Given that Putin has made solving Russia’s demographic problems including the continuing decline in fertility rates to ever further below the replacement level of 2.2 children per woman per lifetime, such opposition by businesses to calls for them to bear some of the burden are intriguing if not unexpected.

            Clearly, some business leaders feel they can openly resist effort to force them to bear more of the costs of trying to turn the country’s demographic situation around, resistance that they were far less likely to offer in the past but may feel that the situation has changed and a kind of real political struggle has returned.

            And it is such judgments that are the most important aspect of this resistance, not the specifics of what Moscow officials have said is desirable or even the specifics of what Russian businessmen are saying they’ll do if they can but don’t want to be forced to do if they can avoid it.