For centuries Russia
was considered a threat to its neighbors by virtue of its larger population.
But since the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 (and half
the population broke away to form 14 new nations) the remaining Russian
population has been in decline. Twenty years after the Soviet Union
collapsed, the Russian population implosion is getting worse. While in the
1990s the population was shrinking at a rate of .1 percent a year, in the last
decade that has increased to .2 percent a year. This is because the non-Slav
Russians are having fewer children, just as the Slavs have been doing (or,
rather, not doing) for decades. The Russian population has declined three
percent since 1989, from 147 to 142.9 million. The proportion of the population
that is ethnic Russian (Slav) has declined from 81.5 percent to 77 percent in
that same period.
The rapidly aging Russian population is not only shrinking
but is not fit for any major economic or military efforts. During the last
decade it was discovered that some 60 percent of Russians are elderly,
children, or disabled. Out of 20 million males of working age, one million are
in prison, a million in the armed forces (including paramilitaries), five
million are unemployed (or unemployable due to poor education, health, or
attitude), four million are chronic alcoholics, and a million are drug addicts.
Thus there is something of a labor shortage, with plenty of
jobs for women and immigrants. The birth rate is below replacement level and a
declining population means more immigrants just to keep things going. Improving
medical care and health habits (especially treating alcoholism and drug use) is
a government priority, in order to raise the life span of Russian males. That
has had some success, and in urban areas you see more Russians out running and
going to the many newly built private gyms. But these improvements are not
happening quickly enough to reverse the population decline.
If this trend is not reversed, Russia
will continue to have a smaller, and less Russian, population.
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