Paul Goble
Staunton, May 30 – The Kremlin has been devoting ever more attention to the collapse of the Russia population as a whole given that fertility rates are now well below the replacement level of 2.2 children per woman per lifetimes overall and below even on child per woman per life time in major cities.
But behind this concern about the decline of the population of the Russian Federation as a whole has always been a particular worry about the decline in the number of ethnic Russians because in the minds of Putin and his regime, they represent “the state-forming people” on whom the fate of the country depends.
The Kremlin has usually been cautious in the ways it expresses that concern lest it exacerbate anti-ethnic Russian attitudes among non-Russians, a category that is gaining in share even if in many cases its component parts are also declining because they are declining less rapidly than the ethnic Russians.
But now, in a sign that the Putin regime is going to be more open about what it really cares about – and thus about what it doesn’t care nearly as much about – the Russian Duma has held a roundtable on “Legislative Support for the Development of the Ethnic Russian State-Forming People” (svpressa.ru/society/news/517572/).
The round table had as its subtitle “Problems, Prospects and the Role of Civil Society in shaping the Desired Vision of the Future,” an indication that the Russian parliament acting at the behest of the Putin regime is likely to pass a variety of laws in the coming months to try to boost birthrates among ethnic Russians in particular.
Focusing on ethnic Russians alone and especially doing so by stressing that they and they alone are “the state-forming people” of the country are going to infuriate many non-Russians who will view such actions as yet another sign that they are second-class citizens in the Russian Federation and prompt ever more of them to think about alternative outcomes.
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