IN TEN YEARS RUSSIA’S POPULATION TO BE LESS BY ANOTHER 10 MILLION

RIA Novosti, Russia
June 11 2004

MOSCOW, JUNE 11 (RIA Novosti) – By 2015 Russia’s population will be
reduced by another ten million. Olga Antonova, deputy head of the
Population Statistics Board of the Federal State Statistics Service,
made this forecast at the RIA Novosti round table Priorities of the
State Ethnic Policy of the Russian Federation and Outlook for the
Ethnic-Cultural Autonomies in Light of the 2002 National Census.

The 2002 population census showed that over the twelve preceding years
the population of Russia became less by 10 million; the average annual
population loss is 800,000.

Since the last census, Russians have become one million less.

“As of January 1, 2004, Russia had 144.2 million people”, Antonova
said.

Immigrants are the salvation for the Russian demographic situation.
“They replenish the natural population loss by two thirds”, she said.
“Migration is and will be a source replenishing the population of
our country”, she added.

The main “providers” of manpower in Russia are countries of the
Commonwealth of Independent States – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan
and Moldova. Since the 1989 census, the number of Turks, Koreans,
Vietnamese, Pashtuns residing in Russia has also increased.

“However, the inflow of registered migration has been ebbing in recent
years”, Antonova noted. In expert estimate, the aggregate potential
of future migration from countries in the Transcaucasia and Central
Asia does not exceed three to four million.

“All those willing to leave Armenia and Georgia have already left
them”, she said.

On a longer perspective, manpower resources may arrive from East
and South-East Asia, above all China, and, “to a lesser degree,
from India and Afghanistan”.

The number of Russia’s native small ethnic groups has increased by a
fourth over twelve years and, according to the last census, is 306,000,
said Galina Sheverdova, head of the Methods and Census Analysis Sector
of the Federal State Statistics Service, told the Friday round table.

According to the state statistics, native small ethnic groups
constitute from 19 to 40 percent of Russia’s autonomous entities –
Evenk, Chukchee, Koryak (Siberia) etc.

“Noteworthily, less than a half of the native small ethnic groups
speak their national tongues. Less than 20 percent of the 19 mostly
Northern ethnic groups do”, Sheverdova noted.