Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the population has continued to decline in Russia. The year 1992 marked a turning point: for the first time in a large developed country, the death rate greatly exceeded the birth rate. With 147 million inhabitants in 1989, the country will only have 145.47 million in 2021, according to the Russian State Federal Statistics Service (Rosstat). This figure includes the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula, annexed in 2014.
According to forecasts, the country’s demography might stagnate between 130 and 140 million people in 2050. In addition, the share of the Russian ethnic group has decreased, dropping from 81.5% of the total population in 1989 to 77, 7% today. The rate of the working population is also falling, at the risk of causing major social problems.
Excess male mortality
The demographic decline in Russia is primarily linked to excess male mortality attributed to alcohol consumption – which has nevertheless declined over the last decade – and to its consequences (cardiovascular diseases and road accidents have caused more than 30,000 annual deaths in the 2000s; and another 18,000 in 2018). However, this decline is only slightly offset by the birth rate, despite the measures taken by the State from 2007. Although the birth rate has risen to 1.6 children per woman since 2010 (compared to 1.16 in 1999 ), it remains far from the generation renewal rate, statistically fixed at 2.05.
Between October 2020 and September 2021, the Covid-19 epidemic also claimed the lives of nearly a million inhabitants, directly or indirectly, according to Russian demographer Alexei Rakcha. The health measures were only slightly followed by the population, and the vaccination campaign proved to be laborious: at the beginning of March 2022, only one inhabitant in two had received two doses in Russia.
Migrations from the former USSR
This decline is hampering the projects of Vladimir Putin, who, as soon as he came to power in 2000, had bet on population growth as a factor in the return of Russian power on the international scene. At the national level, it also thwarts the desired rebalancing between the weight of the Russians – and more generally of the Slavs (mainly Christians) – and that of the Muslim populations, whose fertility rate remains higher. Not only are migrations from the countries of the former USSR, initially encouraged by Moscow, no longer sufficient to offset the demographic decline, but they are decried by the Russian majority, when the country already has 2 million Caucasians. (Armenians and Azeris) and 1.2 million people from Central Asia (mostly Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Uzbeks) on its territory.
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