Paul Goble
Staunton, Feb. 1 – The “Historical Thimbles” telegram channel says that the experience of Leningrad and London in World War II shows that the birthrate in Leningrad and in London Kingdom went up after Stalingrad in the first case and El Alamein in the second and suggests that Russia can achieve the same results by a smashing victory in Ukraine.
Statistics clearly show that when residents of these cities came to believe that their countries were going to win the war, they began to have more children even though there were no other objective reasons for deciding to change their family plans, the telegram channel says (dzen.ru/a/Y9wh0G_cbECwXIL7 reposted at business-gazeta.ru/article/582279).
What makes this argument important is that it may help to explain why Putin has put all his eggs in the single basket of Ukraine, believing not only that a victory there will allow him to redraw the international order but also give Russia a chance to get out of the demographic “pit” it has fallen into and see its population increase rather than continue to fall.
Such a perspective is especially likely to be attractive to the Kremlin dictator because it doesn’t require him to take unpopular measures like banning abortions or to invest in the needs of his people. A military victory with promises of more to come, the telegram channel says, will be enough.
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