Russia: the Demographic Alternatives

Since 1994, the Russian population has fallen by almost 6 million. This steady and substantial decline reflects some malfunctioning in Russia. If this trend continues or worsens, the country is likely to encounter serious economic and social problems, accentuated by the difficulties of administering its vast land area. Anatoli Vichnevski examines the demographic prospects for Russia and highlights the catastrophic trend in death rates, and with a birthrate apparently set to remain low, there is little reason to expect a major upturn through natural increase.
Vichnevski first presents the projections of the size and composition of the population made by the Russian Academy of Science’s Centre of Demography and Human Ecology, which he heads, and then discusses the prerequisites if the Russian population is to be stabilized at its present level from now until 2100. He argues that if Russia wants to maintain its population constant throughout the 21st century, there will have to be strong reliance on immigration. For this reason, he says, “seeking ways of coping with the challenge of migration in the 21st century will be one of the most important goals of Russia’s domestic and perhaps also its foreign policy”.