(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, Oct. 10, 2021) The number of scholars and associated personnel working in the natural sciences has fallen to the lowest level in at least ten years, with the total number employed down a third from the number at the end of Soviet times, according to a new Higher School of Economics study. […]
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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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With declining economic trends exacerbated by the pandemic, poor, rural areas are facing a demographic crisis […]
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(Paul Goble – Window On Eurasia – Staunton, July 7, 2021) Russia has significantly reduced the number of abortions over the last several decades both in absolute terms and relative to the number of live births, experts at the HSE’s Institute of Demography say. But Russian officials have changed the way such events are classified without consulting specialists thus making […]
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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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The [official] statistical data indicates that the Russian population reduced by 510,500 over the past year […]
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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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… That pattern, [a] Levada Center sociologist says, reflects … the very different experiences of the two generations and the inability of the Putin government to find a common language with the rising generation … a threat to the stability of the regime […]
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President Vladimir Putin has urged the government to improve abortion prevention strategies in an effort to reduce the number of terminated pregnancies and offset Russia’s population decline […]
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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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Subject: What Do Siberian Millennial and the Perestroika Generation Professionals Have in Common? Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2020 From: Sarah Lindemann-Komarova <echosiberia@gmail.com> What Do Siberian Millennial and the Perestroika Generation Professionals Have in Common? By Sarah Lindemann-Komarova [Sarah Lindemann-Komarova has been a community development activist in Siberia since 1992] With photos: medium.com/@ECHOSiberia/what-do-siberian-millennial-and-perestroika-generation-professionals-have-in-common-ff4a74fc7658 After a six hour drive, the designer cocktail […]
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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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(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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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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“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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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – December 13, 2019) Russia’s natural population decline will set an 11-year record this year as the country’s demographic crisis shows no signs of letting up, the RBC news website reported Friday. Russia’s overall population totaled 146.7 million in January-September 2019, the State Statistics Service Rosstat said in a report last week. While migrant inflows had […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, Nov. 28, 2019) What is happening in the Russian North recalls to mind an old Soviet joke in which Hitler returns from the dead to watch a Soviet military parade in Red Square. After he has watched this display of military might, he is approached by a Soviet citizen who says, “I […]
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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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(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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“… 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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(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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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, April 5, 2019) Yezhednevny zhurnal offers another chapter from Vladislav Inozemtsev’s new book, An Uncontemporary Country, a chapter that demonstrates that whenever Russia has turned outward and involved itself with the rest of the world, it has made progress but that when it has turned in on itself, it has not only […]
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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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Bne Intellinews reports on Russian demographics and population decline, citing statistics from state agency Rosstat that Russian population fell from 146,880,432 at the beginning of 2018 to 146,793,744 at the start of 2019, a decrease of 86,688. Says bne intellinews: “The fall in the natural population has been partly offset by inbound migration, which covered half of the fall in […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 16, 2019) At least six times more Russians are leaving the country than officially estimated, a comprehensive study conducted by the Proekt news outlet said on Wednesday. Proekt’s report highlights discrepancies between official data from the Rosstat federal statistics agency and data compiled by countries where Russians emigrate to. Rosstat estimates 377,000 Russians left […]
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(Russia Matters – russiamatters.org – Marlene Laruelle – December 12, 2018) Marlene Laruelle is a research professor, associate director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, director of the Central Asia Program and co-director of PONARS Eurasia at The George Washington University. [russiamatters.org/analysis/isolation-and-reconquista-russias-toolkit-constrained-great-power] In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s famous Munich speech took stock of what Russia considered the failure of the […]
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