Une parole franche

Demographics and Russia’s Great Power Status

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

 

In the closing days of 2009 and very first days of the new year, Russia’s official news channel Vesti interviewed a succession of ministers from Vladimir Putin’s cabinet on the evening program “Opinion” during which they were questioned about developments in their areas of responsibility during the year gone by. One of the more interesting appearances was by Tatyana Golikova, RF Minister of Health and Social Development broadcast on 3 January.^. After giving a detailed account of how her ministry was putting in place a program to make the 50 most important pharmaceutical preparations available to the population at very affordable prices through a complex of measures including ensuring local licensed production, she responded to a request for information about the stemming of the country’s population decline dating from the early 1990s. This achievement was brought to public attention a few days previously in a celebratory announcement by the Premier.

According to Golikova, on November 1, 2009 the Russian population was 12,000 higher than a year before and on January 1, 2010 it was assumed to be between 15,000 and 20,000 higher than the preceding year. Although natural population growth occurred in the month of August, the first of its kind in 15 years, for the year as a whole, there was nonetheless an excess of deaths (1,995,000) over births (1,720,000). The difference was made up by immigrants to the Russian Federation. And yet directionally clear progress was being made: the mortality rate declined by 4% over the year, while the birth rate rose by 3%.

Close attention is given to these numbers in Russia today not only because they suggest that the Government programs to improve public health services and to encourage larger families through substantial grants may be taking effect, but because they are more generally indicative that stable and optimistic conditions for the broad Russian citizenry are emerging, notwithstanding the current economic downturn.

Just to see how deeply the country was affected by the depression years of the 1990s, we must recall that the population nosedived year by year from over 148 million in 1991 at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union before stabilizing at its present level of just under 142 million. The Yeltsin years of misery and chaos for the general population, which Russia’s detractors in the West still insist on identifying as a golden age of democracy and market reforms, were accompanied by a catastrophic decline in child bearing, the results of which are just now beginning to exert an impact on social planning. A report by the agency RIA Novosti also dated 3 January informs us that within three to four years Russia will have twice fewer secondary school graduates as today. Russian institutions of higher learning are even now scrambling to fill their entering classes, all of which implies a severe contraction of the university establishments and teaching posts in the years ahead unless alternative solutions such as increased enrolment of foreign students are found.

These issues are not merely the preserve of Russian navel-gazers. None other than U.S. Vice President Joe Biden cited Russia’s ‘shrinking population’ in his widely publicized July 25^th interview with The Wall Street Journal as one of the objective factors stripping away its great power status and ultimately compelling the country’s leadership to “make accommodations to the West on a wide range of national-security issues, including loosening its grip on former Soviet republics and shrinking its vast nuclear arsenal,” to use the words of WSJ reporter Peter Spiegel.

In light of Russia’s latest demonstration that it has turned the corner on population decline, perhaps Mr Biden and other detractors in the West should think again about how to deal with this past and again rising world power. A Diktat from positions of strength such as Biden assumed is unlikely to be practicable.

© Gilbert Doctorow 2010