(Paul Goble, Window On Eurasia – Staunton, Feb. 9, 2023) In December 2021, 20 percent of Russians said they would like to live and work abroad, a percentage that fell to 15 or 16 percent in December of 2022, according to Russian and international polls. But in both cases, the share wanting to do so was only about half of […]
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“The Russian army’s strangely stumble-footed invasion of Ukraine is only the latest reminder of the pervasive and long-standing ‘human resource’ woes that frustrate … Putin’s aspirations for superpower status. … Russia is depopulating — even after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, its total numbers are lower today than when the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia’s working-age population and its pool […]
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“… Russia’s population has been in near-constant decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, due to a low birth rate, an under-resourced healthcare system, and emigration. The coronavirus pandemic, which has killed at least 400,000 people in Russia according to the national statistic agency Rosstat, has seriously aggravated the problem. … This week the country set a […]
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Russia’s natural population underwent its largest peacetime decline in recorded history over the last 12 months, an analysis of official government statistics has shown.
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Russia’s government has approved measures aimed at halving the number of abortions carried out in the country before 2025, according to a document published on its website […]
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The number of scientists and highly qualified specialists leaving Russia has risen fivefold in nearly a decade, Russia’s Academy of Sciences (RAS) said […]
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… Russia’s government estimates … the country’s population decline hit a 15-year high in 2020, driven by record-setting excess deaths and outmigration linked to Covid-19 border closures […]
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Rosstat reports that the population of the Russian Federation fell by an estimated 510,000, the largest number in many years […]
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… Navalny enjoys particular popularity among the young who formed a large share of those taking part in [recent] demonstrations […]
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The [official] statistical data indicates that the Russian population reduced by 510,500 over the past year […]
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Anatoly Vishnevsky, the Russian demographer who … showed how demographic statistics can illuminate a larger slice of reality than most people had ever thought possible, has passed away […]
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… [A]lmost 60 percent of Russians below … thirty view developments in Russia negatively and were on average against [Putin’s 2020 amendments to Constitution] … according to the Levada Center […]
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New studies … show that Russians have the lowest healthy life expectancy in Europe … the result, to a large degree, of the fact that Russians ‘drink more than in most countries and do so in ways … especially harmful to their health and well-being’ […]
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“Russia’s population is expected to decline by 325,500 people this year – 11 times more than in 2019 (when the number of Russians fell by just 32,100 people) – according to the latest government projections, first leaked by the Telegram channel Maisky Ukaz and later confirmed by sources who spoke to the news outlet RBC. The estimated population loss in […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, Sept. 25, 2020) The fertility rate in Russia fell last year to 1.504 children per woman per lifetime, far below the replacement level of 2.1, below the figure of 1.579 of a year earlier, and below the Kremlin’s projected goal for last year of 1.63. In fact, the 2019 figure was the […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – RM Staff – Sept. 23, 2020) Slightly more than half (51%) of Russians either support implementing the idea of “Russia for [ethnic] Russians” or think it would be good to implement “within reasonable limits,” according to a Levada Center poll of 1,600 people in 137 localities across 50 of Russia’s 80-plus regions conducted Aug. 20-26, […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Sept. 2, 2020) Russia’s population could see its biggest decline in 14 years in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic has raised the country’s death rate amid falling birth rates, according to government forecasts reported by the RBC news website Tuesday. The Covid-19 outbreak will also push Russia’s poverty rate up from 12.3% in 2019 to […]
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(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo – Peter Rutland, Andrei Kazantsev – July 13, 2020) Peter Rutland is Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought at Wesleyan University. Andrei Kazantsev is Professor at the Higher School of Economics, Russia. This memorandum reviews Russian state media and civil society responses to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The varying reactions cast an interesting […]
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The “Putin Generation” (… Russians from 17 to 25) … just about 9% of the overall Russian population … [is] Russia’s first entirely post-Soviet generation and the first … to grow up with the Internet […]
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MOSCOW. July 13 (Interfax) – The Russian Orthodox Church condemns racism, but believes that modern people should not bear responsibility for what their ancestors once did. “Those white people who live on earth now cannot bear responsibility for what their ancestors did a long time ago. Nevertheless, when the state authorities of countries apologize for mistakes made in the past, […]
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“President Vladimir Putin has been trying for years to push Russia’s birthrate higher, but the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is undermining his efforts” “… The Kremlin has been trying for years to encourage Russians to have more children. … Putin sees replenishing … population as … key to expanding Russia’s economic and political power. But … falling incomes […]
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“A new study has revealed … a 14,000-year-old tooth belonging to a close cousin of today’s Native Americans … thousands of kilometers from the landmass that once connected Eurasia and the Americas. … suggest[ing] the Siberian ancestors of North America’s Indigenous peoples were more widespread and mobile …. Sometime about 20,000 years ago, people began to cross the eastern tip […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 21, 2020) Russians’ average life expectancy reached a historic record of 73.4 years in 2019, the country’s Health Ministry was quoted by Interfax as saying Tuesday. The increase from 2018, when average life expectancy stood at a little over 73 years, is attributed to a 3.5% decrease in male mortality and a 2.1% decrease […]
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(Article text ©2020 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Irina Fokina, Robert Coalson – SEVERODVINSK, Russia, February 9, 2020 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/despite-putin-s-promises-many-large-russian-families-feel-abandoned-by-the-state/30424839.html) Natalia Golubtsova and her husband, Sergei Kirillov, are raising their six children in a cramped, two-room apartment in a Brezhnev-era building in this city in Russia’s Far North. When their third […]
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“Russia’s population declined for a second year in a row in 2019, Rosstat’s preliminary estimate reveals. An increase in migration failed to make up for the dwindling natural population, which fell by 286,000 in the first 11 months of 2019. On the whole, Russia’s population dropped almost 36,000 … [after a] nearly 100,000-person decline in 2018. Rosstat’s demographic forecast predicts […]
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“Ukraine’s population fell behind that of Poland … [with] an electronic census reveal[ing] the number of citizens … dropped by … 5mn … 37.289mn since the last census in 2000. Poland’s population was 37.98mn in 2018, according to Eurostat. The … Ukrainian number does not include … Crimea or [the] Donbass regions, which would add roughly another million …. The […]
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(Kennan Institute – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Arbakhan Magomedov – Nov. 14, 2019) Arbakhan Magomedov is visiting professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities. (RSUH). His fieldwork in the Far North was done as part of the project “Rising Voices of Northern Indigenous People in the Context of Growing Pressure of Russian Nationalism,” for which he received financial support through […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, Oct. 22, 2019) It is common ground that official Russian statistics are often at odds with reality, but that divergence has seldom been the subject of academic research. Now, Olga Molyarenko of the Higher School of Economics has filled that gap with a study based on 270 in-depth interviews with officials at […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, September 30, 2019) Fertility rates in Russia have again fallen to the levels they were in during the 1990s, Rosstat data show, and the government assumes that when the deceive economy improves, they will go right back up. But a more careful examination of the data suggests that underlying shifts in values […]
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“Russia remains a nation of heavy drinkers, but alcohol consumption has fallen 43 percent from 2003 to 2016, a key factor in the country’s rapid rise in life expectancy, the World Health Organization said …. Russians consume the equivalent of 11-12 liters worth of pure ethanol a year, among the world’s highest consumption levels, but the reduction since 2003 has […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – September 24, 2019) The average woman in Russia gets married eight years later than she did earlier this decade, according to official data. Marriage rates in Russia hit their lowest point since 2000 last year, according to Federal Statistics Service (Rosstat) data, and researchers don’t expect rates to begin rising again until the mid-2020s. Most […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Daniel Shapiro, Natasha Yefimova-Trilling – September 13, 2019) Last week, in a meeting with top advisors, Russian President Vladimir Putin lamented the population decline in the country’s Far East, saying it falls in an “alarming, red zone.” While this sparsely populated region, which shares a border with far more densely populated Chinese provinces, may raise […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 16, 2019) [Text with charts themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/16/russias-fsb-publishes-foreign-worker-statistics-for-first-time-in-20-years-a66895] Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has for the first time in two decades released data on the number of labor migrants who have arrived so far in 2019, revealing the extent of work-related migration into the country. President Vladimir Putin aims to offset Russia’s declining population numbers with […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 23, 2019) Many Russians were pleased that the demise of the Soviet Union meant that the rapidly growing Muslim populations of the Central Asian republics were beyond the state borders of the Russian Federation and thus would no longer be a brake on the desire of Russians for development and even […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – July 3, 2019) Russia’s population numbers are declining “catastrophically” with several regions vastly underestimating their death rates, a top government official has said. Russia has struggled with a demographic crisis in recent years, with population numbers falling for the first time in a decade to 146.8 million last year. Official data for 2019 places Russia’s […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 27, 2019) Many suggest that the continuing economic decline of Russia will prompt people to go into the streets and demand change, Vladislav Inozemtsev says; but “nowhere on post-Soviet space have we see mass protests arise as a result of economic issues.” The Russian people will come to terms with their […]
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“… For more than 33 million Russians under age 20, the leadership of Putin is the only type of government they’ve ever known. Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin as president in 2000. Since then he’s bounced between the offices of president and prime minister, most recently barring Navalny from running against him in the 2018 presidential elections. … young Russians … […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 1, 2019) Many people in the regime and beyond are not inclined to take the current wave of protests in Yekaterinburg, Yakutsk, Siyes, and Ingushetia seriously, Yevgeny Gontmakher says, assuming the causes are so varied and the solution to the demonstrations the same as it was in 2011-2012. The economist says […]
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(Russia Matters – Simon Saradzhyan – April 30, 2019 – russiamatters.org/blog/key-putins-passport-offers-ukrainians-russias-shrinking-labor-force) Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent decree to make it easier for residents of some separatist-controlled parts of Ukraine to get Russian citizenship has drawn criticism not only from Kiev but from key partners of the Ukrainian government, such as the U.S., EU and individual EU states. His subsequent statement […]
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It’s almost impossible to find a decent salary and comfortable living conditions in Russia. For many young people, the only options are to build a life in Moscow or leave the country, says Anastasia Arinushkina. “… half of Russia’s citizens are unhappy with the size of their salaries and struggle to pay for health care and education, according to recent […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, April 10, 2019) The Russian justice ministry reports that the number of marriages and the number of divorces in Russia have fallen sharply in recent years, with experts providing a wide variety of explanations. Some say that both trends reflect the uncertainties many feel as a result of economic hardship or international […]
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(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – April 4, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/russian-migrate-west-gallup-poll-one-in-five/29861985.html) One in five Russians say they would leave their country if they could, according to a new poll by Gallup. The Washington-based pollster said on April 4 that since 2014, the percentage of working-age Russians who say they […]
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(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Matthew Luxmoore – April 4, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/rising-mortality-rates-challenge-population-growth-decline-putin-demographics/29861882.html) Every third region in Russia saw a spike in mortality rates in 2018, according to health officials, contributing to the country’s first population decline in a decade and highlighting the challenges of fending off a […]
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“Highlights Russia’s demographic decline will be a key concern for Moscow in the coming years as a result of emigration and low birth rates. Contradictory data sets and the Kremlin’s plans to attract migrants make it difficult to predict the exact extent and speed of Russia’s demographic decline, but it will nevertheless impact the Russian economy and Moscow’s ability to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – Evan Gershkovich – March 25, 2019 – themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/25/an-inescapable-phase-of-life-fighting-loneliness-among-russias-elderly-a64935) When Lydia Kondrashova’s husband died in 1994, her pension wasn’t enough to keep her afloat. So she left her longtime home in southern Russia to move in with her youngest daughter in Mytishchi, a Moscow suburb. Two decades later, however, the arrangement had run its course. The […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – March 21, 2019) Average life expectancy in Russia has reached 73 years, a top health official said on Thursday. Russia plans to spend 1.7 trillion rubles ($26.68 billion) on dramatically improving health care to accomplish President Vladimir Putin’s goal of raising life expectancy to 78 years by the time his term ends in 2024. Average […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – March 5, 2019) Around 30 percent of the Russian population will practice Islam within the next 15 years, Russia’s grand mufti has predicted, citing demographic trends. Russia’s Muslim-majority regions, including republics in the North Caucasus and the republic of Tatarstan, are known to have the highest birth rates in the country, reflecting similar trends worldwide. […]
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(Article text ©2019 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Matthew Luxmoore – February 20, 2019 – article text also appeared at rferl.org/a/five-takeaways-from-putins-state-of-the-nation-address/29781350.html) MOSCOW — In his annual state-of-the-nation address on February 20 to Russia’s two-chamber parliament, President Vladimir Putin promised to spend huge sums of money. Critics ask where those funds will come from. 1. Focus On […]
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(PONARS Eurasia/ Victoria Sakevich, Maria Lipman – February 12, 2019) Victoria Sakevich is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Demography at the Higher School of Economics, Russia. She has been studying the demography of reproductive health for many years. [Full text with charts: http://www.ponarseurasia.org/point-counter/article/abortion-russia-how-has-situation-changed-soviet-era] Soviet women commonly resorted to abortion as a way to end unwanted pregnancies. In the […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – February 7, 2019) The United States has announced that it will close its only immigration office in Russia next month over what it called a “significant decrease in workload.” The move follows two years of mutual diplomatic staff cuts and consulate closures after the U.S. said that Russia interfered in its presidential election in 2016. […]
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