In Fifty Years, Russia's Population Will Dip Below 100 million

Human evolution always finds a balance as Russia's stupidity threatens to push the country to the brink of irrelevance

Courtesy of Newsweek 

Take a look at that face. Yes, I was thinking the same thing: Grinch-like, right? He is similar in many ways to the Grinch, but that is not why I asked you to go against the natural impulse to avert your eyes from this demon. Look again, please. You are seeing the reason why Russia, by 2090, will be demographically irrelevant. 

It is estimated that Russia’s population will fall to about 132 million in the next two decades. The United Nations has predicted that in a worst-case scenario, by the start of the next century, Russia’s population could almost halve to 83 million, Newsweek previously reported.

If you come from a country with a population under 20 million, for example, you think that 132 million, even 83 million, is a lot of people. I agree. If you put that amount of people into Estonia, then the tiny but feisty Baltic nation would quickly become Gaza-like in terms of population density. Russia has a landmass that spans 11 percent of the Earth’s surface or 17.1 million square kilometers. Estonia is 45,000 square kilometers. 

Nothing Russia does today promotes population growth. The initiatives under Putin to reward families having children did not spark the hope-for population boom. In addition, Russia’s racist immigration policies, which discourage the immigration of non-whites and non-Europeans, have only created gaping holes in Russia’s manual labor force. 

Two examples of how Russia’s anti-Southern immigration policies have negatively affected the country can be seen in the farmer’s markets, which stand half-empty, resulting in less competition and much higher prices at the markets; and during the winter, when cities used to rely on the cheap labor from the Soviet Union’s former southern republics, sidewalks and rooftops are not being sufficiently cleared of snow. 

Moscow always has money because it is the capital, but even in St. Petersburg, walking through the city during the winter can be very dangerous (I suffered torn muscles in both shoulders as a result of hard falls on the city’s street, and they still ache every morning!). Each year throughout Russia, people are killed in falls and also when hit by falling icicles from roof overhangs. 

While these issues are on the micro level, demographers know that all it takes is a few years of low birthrates, and repercussions ripple quickly through society. China is now suffering the consequences of its one-child policy.

About 14% of China’s population is now over 65, a threshold that Japan passed in 1993. But while it took Japan nearly a decade to reach that level of 10%, China made the jump in just six years. In the next two decades, China is on track to add more over-65s to its population than the US has people (Beijing’s Demographic Crisis).

The average age in Russia today is almost 41 years. Down from a high in 2015 (2.1) when Putin’s program for awarding families with more than one child, the fertility rate in Russia stands currently at 1.36. The rate has been trending down since 2015 and is projected to drop below 1 in the next 10 years. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine saw over one million young people, the majority with families, abandon their homeland. 

All over Europe, the better-educated and, in many cases, financially better-off Russians are getting citizenship, setting up businesses, and building new lives without intending to return to Russia. Russians differ from Ukrainians in their immigration desires because most Ukrainians want to return home. 

Most Russians now living abroad accept that without Putin, the likelihood that much will change for the better in their country is low. An international pariah, economically and culturally isolated, the world does not plan on letting out a “Phew, okay guys, welcome back” after Putin’s demise. Russia will be in the penalty box for generations as a result of these latest crimes against humanity. 

As for the Russians who have stayed, they can pretend all is hunky-dory and just as it is supposed to be, but there is an inner whine that grips them all: Why, oh why, have we shot ourselves in the foot yet again? Why, oh why, are we so historically screwed thanks to our own leaders?

With that angst lying heavy on the soul of the average Russian, the planning for a bright and happy future that was so common in the early 2000s has a certain limit to it. Pro or anti-West, from 2000 to 2015, Russians could imagine that each year would be better than the previous one. Today, pro or anti-Putin, Russians all over Russia have to admit that 2022 was not better than 2023 and 2024 won’t be better than 2023 — it will be worse: thanks to Putin’s insane decision to launch a war that no one needed or wanted. A war that Russia was woefully not prepared for.

The demographic collapse of modern Russia will continue unabated. Russians won’t wake up tomorrow and suddenly start making lots more babies. The Kremlin also won’t suddenly wake up and permit the world’s refugees, many whose status is such thanks to Moscow’s international shit-stirring policies, to set up new lives in Russia. Russia has always made it hard for anyone to come to the country. Even if it is just for a weekend trip to check out the museums or go to the ballet, the corrupt bureaucracy has set up hoops through which everyone must leap. 

Nothing has changed, and it has only gotten worse since the invasion. 

As the population shrinks and intellectual stagnation, thanks to censorship, takes hold, Russia’s economy will begin to realize negative technological growth — something not seen since 1987–88 in the final days of the Soviet Union. With so many of the young men in the military and police forces and kids being recruited actively to join those forces, Russia will become a sad shadow of itself, resembling North Korea more than the proud nation of Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Akhmatova, and Nabokov. 

But, as they say in today’s Russia, the soon-to-be-demographically irrelevant former power, “all hail Russia!”