The population of Russia has been declining since the fall of the USSR, a decline that did not stop the measures taken by Vladimir Putin
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Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the population continues to decline in Russia. The year 1992 marked a turning point: for the first time in a large developed country, the mortality rate largely exceeds the birth rate. With 147 million in 1989, the country only includes 145.47 million in 2021, according to the Federal Service for Russian State Statistics (ROSSTAT). This figure includes the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula, annexed in 2014.
According to forecasts, the demographics of the country could stagnate between 130 and 140 million people in 2050. In addition, the share of the Russian ethnicity has diminished, from 81.5% of the total population in 1989. 77.7% today. The rate of the labor force also decreases, at the risk of generating major social problems.
Male overmortality
The demographic decline of Russia is first linked to a male overmortality attributed to alcohol consumption – which nevertheless declined in the last decade – and its consequences (cardiovascular diseases and road accidents have Caused more than 30,000 annual deaths in the 2000s; and still 18,000 in 2018). However, this decline is only poorly offset by the birth rate, despite the measures taken by the State from 2007. If the birth rate is raised to 1.6 child per woman since 2010 (compared to 1.16 in 1999 ), it remains far from the rate of renewal of the generations, fixed statistically at 2.05.
Between October 2020 and September 2021, the epidemic of Covid-19 also cost the lives of nearly one million, directly or indirectly, according to the Russian demographic Alexei Rakcha. The sanitary measures were only little followed by the population, and the vaccine campaign proved to be laborious: in early March 2022, only one in two residence had received two doses in Russia.
Migrations since the ‘former USSR
This decline hinders Vladimir Putin’s projects, which, upon his arrival in power, in 2000, had been on demographic growth as a factor of the return of Russian power on the international scene. At the national level, it further refers to the desired rebalancing between the weight of the Russians – and more generally of the Slavic (mostly Christian) – and that of the Muslim populations, whose fertility rate remains higher. Not only migration from the countries of the former USSR, first encouraged by Moscow, are no longer sufficient to compensate for the demographic decline, but they are decried by the Russian majority, while the country already has 2 million Caucasians. (Armenians and Azeris) and 1.2 million people from Central Asia (mostly Kirghizes, Tajiks and Uzbeks) on its territory.
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