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Soviet Union [USSR] Population Problems and Policies
Unless unfavorable trends can be reversed, the Soviet Union
eventually will have to deal with the threat of depopulation in
much of the European portion of the Russian Republic and in the
Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Ukrainian
republics, the very political, military, and economic base of the
country. Persistently low birth rates and a sharp downward trend in
family size among most Soviet Europeans has been the root cause.
The pattern became more obvious, and the alarms became louder, in
the late 1970s and 1980s.
The declining Russian representation in the multinational
Soviet population has caused great concern. Such a trend has
serious international and national political, economic, social, and
military implications. For example, with fewer native speakers of
Russian, it becomes progressively more difficult to maintain
Russian as the national language. As the Russian language declines
in importance, the challenge of both raising the national level of
education and training a skilled labor force becomes more
complicated and costly. The armed forces, as well, face the
prospect of adding to their ranks a smaller percentage of Soviet
Europeans and a greater share of Soviet Asians, who may not serve
with the dedication of the Slavs and whose service imposes
additional demands on the military in terms of special training to
improve communications skills.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the government introduced some key
initiatives that were intended to ameliorate demographic
difficulties: occupations restricted to males for health and safety
reasons were expanded; maternity leave was extended to one year
after the birth (eight weeks fully paid), and the leave was counted
as service time; lump-sum cash payments for each birth were
provided, with higher premiums for the third and fourth child;
child support payments to low-income families were increased; and
families were to be given preferential treatment in the assignment
of housing and other services.
At the same time, campaigns were introduced aimed at raising
overall "demographic literacy" (developing a citizenry better
informed about the national demographic situation) and improving
public health. By far the most publicized and most controversial of
these campaigns was the attack on alcoholism and public
drunkenness. The sale of alcoholic beverages was sharply curtailed
in the mid-1980s. Soviet authorities felt that the elimination of
this traditional social ill would have an immediate and direct
impact on demographic processes by eliminating a major cause of
divorce and premature disability and death. In addition, promoting
safe and healthful working and living conditions was one of the
chief aims of the growing numbers of officials and citizens
concerned with the environment.
The success of these government measures remained in doubt in
1989. Persuasive evidence supported the view that patterns of
urbanization, extreme reluctance to migrate, and higher fertility
rates in Soviet Central Asia have continued. These demographic
patterns, together with the strengths and limitations of the
physical environment, have affected such critical issues as the
cohesion of the Soviet federation and its nationality
representation, the acutely uneven distribution of natural and
human resources, investment in industrial development, and the
character and composition of the work force and the military.
* * *
By far the most important English-language source of current
information on the geography and population of the Soviet Union is
the monthly journal Soviet Geography. Much of the
information in the chapter derives from the excellent articles in
this journal, some of which were written by its founder and editor,
Theodore Shabad, who was, until his death in 1987, the foremost
expert on the subject in the United States. Some standard texts on
the geography of the Soviet Union are Paul E. Lydolph's
Geography of the U.S.S.R; J.P. Cole's Geography of the
Soviet Union; David Hooson's The Soviet Union: People and
Regions; G. Melvyn Howe's The Soviet Union: A Geographical
Study; and William Henry Parker's The Soviet Union.
Pending publication of the final results of the 1989 all-union
census, the most important source of data on the Soviet population
has been the statistical handbook Naselenie SSSR, 1987. In
recent years, more information has been made available to both
Western and Soviet scholars on demographic developments in the
Soviet Union. As of 1989, among the experts on the subject in the
United States were Murray Feshbach, Stephen Rapawy, and W. Ward
Kingkade. All three, especially Feshbach, have written extensively
on various aspects of Soviet population (fertility, mortality, age
and sex structure, and ethnicity). Particularly valuable was
Kingkade's article "Demographic Trends in the Soviet Union." (For
further information and complete citations,
see Soviet Union USSR -
Bibliography.)
Data as of May 1989
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