By Vestnik Kavkaza
Yesterday the planet celebrated World Population Day. The head of the Center on Studying Population Problems of the Economy Department of MSU, Valery Yelizatrov, explained: “On July 11th, 1987, the world population numbered 5 billion people. Paying close attention to this important date and a big event for the whole of humanity, in 1989 the UN recommended all countries to use this day to talk about population problems and finding ways out of the problems.”
There are many such problems. According to recent research, demographic processes in the post-Soviet space are unpromising – a decrease in the birthrate, depopulation and the ageing of society. According to the UN, the population in the CIS countries, except for Kazakhstan, will significantly fall by 2050.
There are not many ways to change the tendency, but still they exist. “I wouldn’t rely on the concept of the family policy, especially on the variant of discussing it,” Yelizarov says. “We have the Concept of Demographic Policy of Russia till 2025, which was adopted in 2007. It is divided into three stages. The first stage was completed in 2010. Now it is the second stage – from 2011 to 2015. Each stage includes various measures on implementation of the Concept on promotion of the birthrate, improvement of reproductive health, decrease of the death rate, and control over migration. The Concept is being fulfilled. As for natural increase and natural decline (the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths), last year was a record for 20 years – the difference was only 4 thousand. If we compare it with 900-960 thousand in the mid-1990s, of course it is a great step forward. We have almost reduced natural decline, i.e. the number of births has come close to the number of deaths. However, does it mean we have overcome the dangerous tendency and that we will see a happy demographic future? Unfortunately, it is not so. In the future we will face difficult demographic times.”
The short-term demographic growth of recent years is called by experts “a present from the past”; it is a result of the right policy of the 1980s. However, the short “golden era” is coming to an end. Moreover, the common demographic past of the CIS countries still influences the situation. “The huge losses which the Soviet Union suffered during the Great Patriotic War skewed the population structure. They will influence the demographic development in our countries for a long time. The big demographic gap caused by the war and the losses of people of 20, 30, and 40, especially men who took part in the war, led to a drastic decrease of the birth rate in wartimes. For instance, in the second half of the 1960s all our countries experienced a low birth rate when we were one country – the Soviet Union and 15 Soviet republics. The low birth rate of the second half of the 1960s caused the low birth rate of the 1990s.”
Modern demographic tendencies in newly-independent countries are similar as well. According to the head of the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology, and Law of the Armenian Academy of Sciences, Gevorg Pogosyan, “the depopulation tendency is typical for many countries, including Western Europe, the CIS and Christian countries. It is a typical tendency. It is global. We should objectively admit that the process of population reduction, a striving for an optimum is taking place, because in general the global population process is increasing on the planet. Our population surpassed 7 billion people; and by 2050 10 billion are predicted. The impetuous growth of population on the planet is a challenge, it is a common threat, because the resources of the planet are limited. Of course every country is fighting depopulation; this is natural and right. But the global situation is that some countries provide normal demographic policy, considering their limited resources, while other countries have an aggressive demographic policy. Their population is growing impetuously. Many Europeans say that Europe is declining, Asia expanding, and it is a kind of demographic expansion. There is a political component which seems dangerous. That’s why many countries are concerned about depopulation.”
