(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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MOSCOW. Dec 6 (Interfax) – Over half of all deaths in Russia are associated with eating low-quality food and the wrong nutrition, Rospotrebnadzor said in a report released on Thursday. “The idea of labeling [products] is due to Rospotrebnadzor’s concerns about the high rate of diseases associated with eating among the country’s population. About 63% of all deaths in Russia […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – December 6, 2018) Russia’s prime minister on Thursday said that this summer’s decision to raise the retirement age was the hardest the authorities have had to make in the past 10 years. Dmitry Medvedev, who became prime minister in 2012 and served as Russia’s president for a four-year term starting in 2008, announced plans to raise […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, November 18, 2018) Seventy-five percent of married couples in Russia have children, but only 55 percent say they would like to have them, according to a 17-year-long study by Yuliyz Lezhnina of the Institute for Social Policy of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2018/11/17/1746996.html) Having children is still the basis for marriage […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, November 11, 2018) Recent statements by FSB Director Aleksandr Borotnikov suggest that in Russia, the clash of generations, historically known in Russia as the battle between “fathers and sons,” is replacing the clash of civilizations, according to the editors of Nezavisimaya gazeta. The recent wave of violent acts by young Russians has […]
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(Moscow Times = themoscowtimes.com – September 20, 2018) The Russian population has decreased in 2018 for the first time in almost a decade as the country battles a demographic crisis that threatens its economy, according to new data. Declining birth rates after the collapse of the Soviet Union have resulted in a second demographic slump as the generation born in […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, September 10, 2018) On average, women in Russia live 11 years longer than men do, according to a study conducted by Russian and Western scholars that has been published in Britain’s authoritative medical journal, The Lancet (thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31485-5/fulltext). The study focused on trends between 1980 and 2016 and noted that the difference between […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Yelizaveta Mayetnaya, Robert Coalson – August 5, 2018 [Text with links and graphics: rferl.org/a/not-so-united-russia-ruling-party-rattled-by-pension-reform-crisis/29413547.html] Speaking to a riled-up crowd at a July 28 protest against the Russian government’s deeply unpopular proposal to raise retirement ages in Vologda, angry pensioner Nikolai Zharavin didn’t mince words as to who was to […]
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(PONARS Eurasia – Maria Lipman, Evgeny Gontmakher – July 26, 2018) [Text of interview here ponarseurasia.org/article/there-no-reform-russias-recent-pension-reform-bill-interview-evgeny-gontmakher] Maria Lipman speaks with Evgeny Gontmacher about the political and socioeconomic implications of raising the retirement age. Gontmacher is the deputy director responsible for social policy projects and recommendations at Aleksei Kudrin’s Committee of Civil Initiatives. Over 1992-2003, he held positions as Head of […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 22, 2018) Both supporters and opponents of the Russian government’s plan to raise retirement ages frequently invoke demographic statistics; but all too often, Anatoly Vishnevsky of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, they use these figures incorrectly and thus make it more difficult for Russia to solve some of its problems. In […]
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MOSCOW. July 18 (Interfax) – Russia’s de jure population was an estimated 146.8 million on June 1, 2018, down 77,800 since the start of the year, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said. The population grew by 259,700 in 2016 and 77,400 in 2017. The number of births in 5M 2018 fell to 651,000 from 679,200 in the same period […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 16, 2018) Caught between the demands of the Kremlin which decides whether they will be in office and the opposing views of their populations that could make their time there easy or difficult, Russia’s governors are simultaneously telling Moscow they support the pension plan but asking it to exempt their own […]
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In Izvestia, Sergei Ryazantsev argues: “… The United Nations rates [Russia] third after the United States and Germany in terms of number of immigrants. … in 2015 … the US population born overseas amounted to 46.6m; 12m went to Germany, 11.6m to Russia. Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and representatives of other republics of the former USSR began to come […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Pete Baumgartner – June 30, 2018 – article also appeared at rferl.org/a/russia-world-cup-team-no-multiethnicity-swiss/29329228.html) While there is a splash of ethnic diversity on virtually every team playing in soccer’s 2018 Russia World Cup, many cite the Swiss national team for setting the standard for being multicultural. Known affectionally by its fans […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 24, 2018) Many commentators in both Russia and the West have suggested that the World Cup has helped Russia to overcome much of the opprobrium it has suffered as a result of its invasion of Ukraine, its meddling in elections in Western countries and in general its disruptive behavior. And it […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, June 11, 2018) The average age of Russians today is much higher than in the past and will continue to rise in the coming decades, Pavel Pryanikov says; and as a result, the usual source of pressure for change, from members of younger generations, is going to fall, reducing still further the […]
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(Article ©2018 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Mike Eckel – May 16, 2018 – article also appeared at rferl.org/a/putin-vs-pensions-will-his-reelection-finally-free-him-to-tackle-looming-crisis-/29229857.html) It’s been the third rail of Russian politics for years, if not decades, but now an increasingly fragile economy appears to have forced the Kremlin to finally reckon with the country’s pension crisis. Russia’s pension system — […]
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[Link to UN Report: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/] (Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – May 17, 2018) Russia’s population will shrink by 11 million people by 2050 and will increasingly be concentrated in cities, according to the latest United Nations estimates. Russia has been in the midst of a generational demographic crisis, which newly inaugurated President Vladimir Putin said he would seek to reverse […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, May 9, 2018) Vladimir Putin’s new May decrees are no more realistic or realizable than the 2012 ones that even he has acknowledged have remained largely unfulfilled, Yevgeny Gontmakher says. Instead, they are slogans about the future like those the Soviet government trotted out on holidays and that no one in the […]
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“The U.S. government … is claiming a sharp spike in asylum claims from Russian citizens, hitting a 24-year high in 2017 …. One of the main drivers of revolutionary forms of democratic regime transformation, according to contemporary social science, is the lack of sufficient social mobility for middle class youth that often emerges in authoritarian countries with high or rising […]
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“… Russia ‘maintained strong growth underpinned by solid productivity, with a sustainable growth trend estimated at 2-2.5 percent,’ … [but] the rebound obscures … ‘one of the few countries in the world with negative population growth, which reduces their overall growth potential.’ The population shrinkage – by some measures at around 0.4 percent – dampens productivity, making growth above 2 […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – April 25, 2018) In 2000, when Vladimir Putin first became president, 1.3 million children were born in Russia. This year, as that generation turns 18 and gains the right to vote, Putin was reelected to another six years in power. His victory in March extends his rule over the country until 2024. By then, Generation […]
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MOSCOW. March 1 (Interfax) – At least 3.4 trillion rubles should be allocated for demographic development within the next six years, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on Thursday. “We will have to allocate at least 3.4 trillion rules for demographic development measures and for the welfare of mothers and children within the […]
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(Kennan Institute – wilsoncenter.org/program/kennan-institute – Brian Milakovsky – February 7, 2018) [Text with links kennan-focusukraine.org/ukrainians-abroad-the-economics-and-politics-of-labor-migration/] Brian Milakovsky works on economic recovery issues at a humanitarian organization in Luhanska Oblast, Ukraine . He has been in Ukraine or Russia since 2009, working in both the ecological and humanitarian sectors. In December, Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan made a statement that raised […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 29, 2018) Russia’s birth rate has fallen to the lowest level in a decade, with just 1.69 million births recorded last year, despite government efforts to reverse the demographic trend, according to official data. The government plans to spend $8.6 billion over three years to encourage Russians to have more babies starting this election […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – January 24, 2018) An increasing number of educated Russians are leaving the country for economic and political reasons, according to researchers at a prestigious Russian state university. Researchers at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) conducted interviews with Russian emigrants abroad and cited statistics from countries receiving them. Previous reports […]
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“… The government will spend 500 billion rubles ($8.6 billion) over three years on measures to encourage Russians to have more babies, including mortgage subsidies and payments to new and growing families …. The money will come from government reserves and won’t require changes in the budget, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told the upper house of parliament. …”
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, November 5, 2017) Most discussions of migration in Russia focus on the arrival of gastarbeiters from Central Asia, the Caucasus or elsewhere; but two other population flows may be even more important for the country’s future: the flight from villages to the cities and the exit of people from the north and […]
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(Article ©2017 RFE/RL, Inc., Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty – rferl.org – Tom Balmforth – MOSCOW – September 27, 2017 – article also appeared at rferl.org/a/russia-population-decline-labor-oreshkin/28760413.html) Many advanced economies are wondering how breakthroughs in technology could leave whole swaths of the population unemployed, but in Russia the government is pondering how to fill jobs with a dramatically shrinking work force. Economy Minister […]
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“… Putin does not plan to retire any time soon. Yet many of his potential voters are worried about their own retirement prospects. Will their pensions be sizeable and reliable? At what age can Russians count on receiving them? During a televised call-in show held in mid-June, the president left this issue hanging. … By not giving any direct answers, the […]
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“The average life expectancy of Russians reached 72.5 years for the first time in history … according to Rosstat … men’s life expectancy increased by a year from 66.5 to 67.5 years and for women it was 77.4 years. During the worst of the economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, male life expectancy fell to […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 24, 2017) Negativity towards foreigners in Russia has reached an all-time low, according to the results of a new poll produced Levada Center. Russians who said they’d like to restrict one or more nationalities from the country fell to its lowest level ever at 54 percent, down from 70 percent in 2016, and an […]
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(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – August 15, 2017) The average life expectancy in Russia has for the first time exceeded 72 years, deputy prime minister Olga Golodets said on Monday. According to data from the federal statistics agency Rosstat, the average life expectancy reached 72.4 in the first half year of 2017, she was cited as saying by the state-run […]
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“… With Russia’s natural population growth entering an extended period of decline, villages like Baruta are disappearing from across the country’s continental expanse. * * * Russia’s demographic problem dates back at least 100 years, to the upheaval of the 1917 revolution, followed by Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. Both events curbed population growth, foreshadowing the devastating impact of World […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 5, 2017) Russia’s economic development ministry says that the country’s GDP growth will be approximately half of one percent lower each year because of projected declines in the number of workers in Russia in the coming decades, a decline that the ministry says must be fought by increasing immigration. But any […]
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MOSCOW. July 4 (Interfax) – The State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building has approved the text of the naturalization oath of allegiance to Russia. This is an amendment to the draft law, which deprives convicted terrorists of Russian citizenship. It will be considered by the State Duma on Wednesday, on July 12. The oath is as follows, […]
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(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, July 4, 2017) The periodic increases and current decrease in the number of births in Russia reflects the third echo of World War II, Anatoly Vishnevsky says, with the low number of births in 1943 leading to demographic declines approximately every 25 years thereafter. The current decline is almost precisely 75 years […]
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(Kremlin.ru – June 19, 2017) Vladimir Putin held a meeting on economic issues at the Kremlin. Various aspects of national demographic policy were the main items on the agenda. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues, Today, we will have a comprehensive discussion of demographic policy. As you know, for the subject came up during the Direct Line too, […]
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