Can We Manage a Declining Russia? Read the full text of Eberstadt and Shah's paper starting on page 118.

Download PDF Over the decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has been in the grip of an unrelenting demographic crisis. Admittedly, "demographic crisis" is a term that is thrown around these days with an all-too-promiscuous-and sometimes quite unwarranted-abandon. But the particulars of the Russian Federation's demographics travails provide empirical demonstration for the proposition that Russian society is beset by severe demographic paroxysms that are directly and adversely affecting both individual wellbeing and economic potential-and will do so for some time to come.

From 1992 to the present, the country's total population has reportedly fallen by almost 7 million (almost 5%).

Since the end of the Soviet era, the Russian Federation has witnessed a pronounced and continuing depopulation: from 1992 to the present, the country's total population has reportedly fallen by almost 7 million (almost 5%), with almost continuous year-on-year population declines. Russia, to be sure, was by no means the only country to experience population decline during these years-but the magnitude of the fall-off was exceptional. In absolute terms, the only drop larger than this one in the postwar era was the bout China suffered in the wake of Mao's catastrophic "Great Leap Forward" campaign (a decline in relative terms roughly similar to Russia's post-Communism population decline to date).

The Russian nation, of course, is no stranger to sudden bouts of depopulation: in fact, it has suffered four of these in the past century alone. The first three of these, however, were the consequences of war, political upheaval, and state-directed violence; depopulation ceased when the afflicting cataclysms abated. Today's depopulation by contrast proceeds in a time of peace-and requirements for reversing it are correspondingly not at all obvious.