Everyone interested in modern Russia should read a report out this week on the nation’s deepening demographic crisis. It’s published by the United Nations Development Programme, but it’s written by a team of Russian academic experts, so no one can say it’s tainted with bias.
The report describes the stark reality of a country whose population is falling fast, to a considerable extent because of rampant alcohol abuse among men, who on average are dying before they make it to 60 years old. “Short life expectancy is the main feature of this crisis, though by no means its only feature. The birth rate is too low, the population is shrinking and ageing, and Russia is on the threshold of rapid loss of able-bodied population, which will be accompanied by a growing demographic burden per able-bodied individual. The number of potential mothers is starting to decline and the country needs to host large flows of immigrants,” the report says.
Since 1992, the natural decrease of Russia’s population has amounted to a staggering 12.3m people. This has been compensated to some degree by the arrival of 5.7m immigrants. But many are ethnic Russians from former Soviet republics, and the source is drying up. Overall, Russia had 142m people at the start of 2008, compared with 148.6m in 1993. By 2025, the figure will almost certainly fall below 140m and could be as low as 128m.
The implications for Russia’s economy are enormous. The authors cite forecasts from Rosstat, the national statistics agency, that Russia’s working age population will decline by 14m between now and 2025. As Vladimir Putin said three years ago when he was president, the demographic emergency is “the most acute problem facing Russia today”.
Alcohol abuse has a very long history indeed in Russia. Some of the first western European visitors to the ancient Russian heartland were astonished to see Russians of all types, high and low, male and female, drinking themselves into oblivion. Over time, the Russian (and Soviet) authorities came to depend heavily on revenues from alcohol sales, especially of vodka. This deterred serious state-led anti-alcohol campaigns.
But as I remember well from several years I spent in Moscow in the mid-1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist Soviet leader, tried to change all this, cracking down on alcohol production and sales in a way that earned him the nickname “mineral water secretary”, as opposed to “general secretary”, of the Soviet communist party. The UN report’s authors say Gorbachev’s 1985-87 campaign had a substantial impact, raising life expectancy for men by 3.1 years and for women by 1.3 years.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, is now trying to do something similar, calling alcoholism a “national disaster”. The Gorbachev experience suggests that Medvedev may achieve some short-term success, but not much in the longer run.
In the meantime, the really interesting question is this: Where exactly is Russia going to get all its desperately needed immigrants from? China? That may raise some delicate issues in Russia’s vast, underpopulated far eastern regions, which formed part of Imperial China until the Tsarist annexations of the 19th century.
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