Window on Eurasia: Populations of Former Soviet Republics Have Fallen or Increased Less than Projected in 1990

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 10 -- The former Soviet space had 48 million fewer people living on it in 2010 than Soviet demographers in 1990 had predicted for that year, with all 15 of the states having smaller populations than were was projected for them and 10 of the 15 having fewer residents than they did two decades earlier.

            In a blog post last week, Andrey Illarionov compares the figures offered by the USSR State Statistics Committee in its “Collection of Statistical Materials. 1990” (in Russian; Moscow: 1991) with the actual populations reported by the 15 post-Soviet countries in 2010 (aillarionov.livejournal.com/567935.html).The figures are presented in the following table.

Columns: 1-Actual Population in 1990 in 1000s; 2-1991 Projections for 2010 in 1000s; 3-Actual population in 2010 in 1000s; 4 –Difference between actual and predicted population in 2010 in 1000s; 5-Actual growth 1990 to 2010 as a percentage of 1990; 6-Actual growth as percentage to predicted numbers for 2010; and 7-difference between actual an predicted growth as percentage to predicted growth.

Columns		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1	Turkmenistan	3701	5538	5439	-99	47,0	-1,8	-5,4
2	Tajikistan	5379	9053	7616	-1437	41,6	-15,9	-39,1
3	Uzbekistan	20674	32804	28500	-4304	37,9	-13,1	-35,5
4	Azerbaijan	7208	9504	8998	-506	24,8	-5,3	-22,0
5	Kyrgyzstan	4425	6607	5478	-1129	23,8	-17,1	-51,7
6	Kazakhstan	16828	21898	16434	-5464	-2,3	-25,0	-107,8
7	Russia	148341	162339	142900	-19439	-3,7	-12,0	-138,9
8	Armenia	3498	4471	3263	-1208	-6,7	-27,0	-124,2
9	Belarus	10266	11131	9481	-1650	-7,6	-14,8	-190,8
10	Ukraine	51680	53277	45783	-7494	-11,4	-14,1	-469,3
11	Lithuania	3735	4119	3287	-832	-12,0	-20,2	-216,7
12	Estonia	1584	1701	1340	-361	-15,4	-21,2	-308,5
13	Georgia	5434	6117	4436	-1681	-18,4	-27,5	-246,1
14	Moldova	4381	5171	3564	-1607	-18,6	-31,1	-203,4
15	Latvia	2683	2858	2121	-737	-20,9	-25,8	-421,1

           

             Illarionov suggests that this comparison between projections and realities highlights the consequences of the events that Soviet demographers could not foresee and the intensification of others that they were able to project across the entire region and not just one country as is usually the case.

           

            Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Tajikistan suffered the most from various “social, economic, political, and military cataclysms.” Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Kazakhstan suffered from the intensification of migration flows, with the greatest deviation between projected and actual populations was in Ukraine and Latvia.

As far as the Russian Federation is concerned, Illarionov notes, it had almost 20 million fewer residents in 2010 than Soviet demographers had projected, but in percentage terms, its decline was not as “catastrophic” as those in Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Latvia and Kazakhstan.

As for the region as a whole, the population in 2010 was almost 48 million fewer than projected in 1991 and remains “approximately one million fewer than the population of the same space at the end of 1990.

Some Russian commentators have pointed out that this overall decline is twice the size of Soviet population losses during World War II and have sought to place the blame on the social and political changes that the post-Soviet governments have introduced, with the more liberalized countries having the greatest losses (forum-msk.org/material/news/10106433.html).

                But in fact, the trends to which Illarionov calls attention to reflect two underlying realities: a worldwide trend of declining fertility rates, and the differences between predominantly Muslim countries which have continued to grow rapidly and non-Muslim ones which have seen their populations grow more slowly or fall.