Kavkaz Center, Turkey
Jan 6 2005
Russia is doomed
The words that are in the heading are not a fruit of the author’s
imagination, but it is a quite substantiated prediction based on
specific figures and facts, which are a subject of discussion right
in Russia today. It is a matter of catastrophic demographic
situation.
Ethnic Russian population of the Russian Federation is rapidly
decreasing. Entire cities and villages are ceasing to exist due to
the lack of population in them. According to official figures of
National Forum, «Present and Future of Russia’s Population», which
took place in Moscow last month, 11,000 villages and 290 cities have
disappeared from the map of the Russian Federation. 13,000 villages
are still on the map, but they remained with no inhabitants in them.
Two villages are disappearing in Russia each day, which in one year
is equal to a small province.
Deputy Minister of Health and Social Development of Russia, Vladimir
Starodubtsev, said that Russia’s population has decreased by 9
million over the last 10 years. Moreover, depopulation affected
virtually entire Russia. Even according to understated figures, the
number of the Russian population is decreasing 700 to 800 thousand
each year (other reports show that the figure is 1.2 million a year).
Since 1992 death rate among Russians exceeded birth rate and the
difference has only been increasing ever since then.
Male death rate in Russia is one of the highest in the world. At the
same time 30% of the dead are men of working years. Average life of
men is 13 years less than that among women (women – 72 years, men –
58.8 years). Main reasons are alcoholism, oncology (cancer), traumas
and poisonings. Deaths from abuse of alcohol in Russia skyrocketed
3.5 times over the past 5 years. Suicide rate exceeds Central
European figures 2.5 times among males and 1.5 times among females.
In Russia there are twice as many deaths in traffic accidents as
there are in European states.
Russian youth ages 15 to 19 started dying 40 % more often. Out of
today’s generation of 16-year-olds, only 54 % will live until they
reach their retirement age.
In 1998 for the first time the number of retirees in Russia exceeded
the number of children and juveniles under 16 by 110,000. For January
1, 2004, this number has grown to 4.2 million. Right now the number
of children under 14 is 2.5 times lower than the number of retirees
(10.6 and 27.2 million accordingly). According to the predictions
that have been made, starting the year 2006 the number of retirees
will be growing even more actively and by 2016 it will comprise 25%
of the entire Russian population.
According to the census of the Russian Federation, the number of
ethnic Russians was 104 million out of 144.2 million of the overall
population in Russia. Considering the fact that demographic figures
in Russia have always been considered to be a national security
issue, then proceeding from Soviet/Russian practice of demographic
overstatements, you can say for sure that the number of 104 ethnic
Russians is set too high and it’s already been quite a while since
the real number of ethnic Russians sank under the psychological mark
of 100 million.
The signs of apparent worsening of demographic situation for Russians
have been seen right in Moscow as well. This week Komsomolskaya
Pravda newspaper («Young Communist Truth») published the figures of
ethnic structure of the population of the Russian capital. Senior
research officer of Center for Geopolitical Research of Institute of
Geography under Russian Academy of Sciences, Olga Vendina, whose
research is based on the records from civil status registries in all
districts of Moscow over the years of 1993 – 2003, ‘ethnically
tinged’ neighborhoods have already been formed in Moscow. In these
parts of the city Russian population is constantly decreasing, while
the percentage of residents of other ethnic backgrounds is
systematically increasing. Furthermore, it is in Moscow’s historical
center, where birthrate among non-Russian population is considerably
higher than birthrate among Russians, who are being naturally ousted
to the capital’s outskirts.
The largest ethnic diasporas in Moscow, whose numbers are constantly
growing due to sharp increase of newborns throughout the last 10
years are Azeris, Tatars, Armenians and Ukrainians. At the same time
each 5th Russian woman marries a man from the Caucasus.
But that’s not all. About a year ago Novye Izvestiya (‘New Tidings’)
newspaper published some figures about ethnical structure of Russia,
compiled by Jewish University of Jerusalem based on the 2002 census.
According to that sensational document, in 2002 the number of Chinese
population in Russia reached almost 3.5 million, and thus the Chinese
have now taken the fourth place in Russia’s population, following
Russians (104 million), Tatars (7.2 million), and Ukrainians (5.1
million). 15 years ago there were only 5 thousand Chinese living in
Russia.
According to the predictions made by the experts, by the year 2013
every fourth person in Russia will be a Chinese.
In this short material we quoted only a few facts that are recognized
in Russia and that are not propagandistic exercises of Kavkaz
Center’s journalists, as Moscow likes to be claiming. Anyone can draw
his/her own conclusions from these facts. And in conclusion, we would
like to quite the Holy Koran:
«But if you turn back, then indeed I have delivered to you the
message with which I have been sent to you, and my Lord will bring
another people in your place, and you cannot do Him any harm; surely
my Lord is the Preserver of all things».
(The Koran 11/57).
Said Ibrahayev,
for Kavkaz Center