Ethnic Russian Nation Faces ‘Replacement’ by Immigrants Unless Moscow Takes Action, Krupnov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Yuri Krupnov, a much-published Moscow demographer, says that the ethnic Russian nation replaces “replacement” by immigrants in the coming decades unless it takes action both the promote strong Russian families with more children and to limit the influx of immigrants.
    In an 8,000-word interview for Kazan’s Business-Gazeta, he thus gives new prominence in Russia to the “replacement” theories now circulating in some Western countries and to those in Russia who want to radically limit or even expel migrant workers from the Russian Federation (business-gazeta.ru/article/662599).
    And in dramatic fashion, Krupnov warns that the replacement of Russians by non-Russian immigrants as the dominant population group in the country will happen even sooner that the projected decline of the total Russian population to half of its current size by the end of this century.
    Unfortunately, as events in the Year of the Family have shown, Russian officials are not taking this seriously and report statistics on the growth in family size among all families in the Russian Federation, ignoring the reality that an increasing share of ethnic Russian families are “childfree” and that most of the growth is among non-Russians indigenous and immigrant.
    Unless that changes, Krupnov suggests, a country called Russia may well continue to exist but it won’t have an ethnic Russian population.