Chukotka is an unlikely center for a
resurgence of Russian civilization. For one, it’s hardly the “center” of anything. Its
capital, Anadyr, is also the country’s easternmost city and sits just below the Arctic Circle.
It’s closer to Chicago than it is to Moscow. A road connecting it to the rest of Siberia is
on track for completion… in 21 years. Until then, the only way out is this airport, accessible
only by helicopter for half the year. Nor is there much “civilization” to be
found. Despite being larger than France, the region’s entire population would
fill less than half of Michigan Stadium. Life here moves pretty slowly. When two brave Australian tourists
visited in 2018, they made the local news. And yet tiny, remote Anadyr, of all places, was
one of the first stops Putin made this year. There, in a staged meeting with local residents, the president celebrated its rising number
of large families, portraying the town as a model for the rest of the country,
a beacon of hope for Russia’s future. So, what “rising number,” exactly, was
Putin referring to? A net population increase of 157 between 2010
and 2021, or 14 people per year. …Not quite the shining success story
the Kremlin would have you believe. Still, he wasn’t wrong. An
increase of 157 — any increase, in fact — is far more than most places can claim. Between 2010 and 17, over 70% of
Russian cities shrunk in size. And while Chukotka’s fertility rate of
1.6 is well below the world average, it’s among the highest in Russia, where
children are becoming increasingly rare. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union had one of the
highest birth rates in Europe. Its population peaked at nearly 149 million, making it
the 6th largest country in the world. But after its collapse in ‘91, its birth
rate has never recovered. Since then, more Russians have died than been born for
every one of the last 33 years except three. Russia was first overtaken by Pakistan,
then Nigeria, and finally Bangladesh. And by the end of this century, it’s expected
to fall all the way down to 20th place, shrinking to three and a half times
smaller than the United States. Needless to say, these are troubling signs for
a leader intent on reviving the Soviet legacy. And it gets worse. Because the Soviet Union collapsed 33 years ago,
birth rates fell 33 years ago, which means today, 33 years later, Russia is missing a whole lot of
33-year-olds — the prime working-age demographic. As a result, the country has a massive shortage of labor — especially of the blue-collar and
tech variety, which skew much younger. A mere 15% of all workers are under 30 years old and the unemployment rate has now
reached a new low of just 2.6%. …Not to mention, this dwindling 20-35-year-old group is the exact one you’d need,
to, say, fight a troop-intensive war. Now, Russia is not alone. Far from it. China’s birth rate, famously, fell much faster. Korea’s is much worse.
And Japan’s has stayed low for even longer. Families across the developed world are getting smaller and much of Europe
and East Asia is shrinking. Take Italy, for instance. As you can see, both it and Russia saw the same roughly 50%
drop in births — albeit, with a ten-year delay. Likewise, both will experience the same economic
challenges stemming from their smaller working-age populations. More retirees withdrawing pensions
than young people funding them. Fewer children left supporting a larger number of older
relatives. Fewer inventors to invent things, landscapers to landscape, and caregivers
to care for a growing cadre of seniors. Russia may be in trouble, you might
think, but no more so than Italy, or Japan, or Britain. “Nothing to see here.” But… there’s a critical difference.
While the effects may look the same, the causes couldn’t be more different. In Italy, like most countries, these unfortunate
problems have a silver lining. Birth rates fell because fewer teenagers were getting pregnant.
Women could go to school, had more career opportunities, and were increasingly free to
have as many or as few children as they wanted. An economic defeat, but a human victory. Whereas, in Russia, this drop was less a
choice and more a reaction — to hard times, mass unemployment, and a general
sense of uncertainty and despair. An economic and human failure. Meanwhile, Italians were also living longer,
healthier lives. Medicine was advancing, the standard of living was rising,
and pollution was being regulated. Thus, even while the country
got older, the number of deaths, as you can see, remained more or less constant. The same cannot be said of Russia. And this is
where the two countries really begin to diverge. There, deaths surged at the exact moment birth
rates fell, producing what demographers call the “Russian Cross.” And this was not just a temporary
phenomenon — deaths have remained high ever since. There’s no silver lining to be found
here. This is the bleak story of a nation being squeezed simultaneously from two
directions — fewer births and more deaths. Consider, for a moment, the scale of this tragedy.
The annual number of deaths more than doubled during the thirty years when HIV treatment, ICUs,
and organ transplants became widely available. As the economist Nicholas Eberstadt once observed,
the last 16 years of Soviet rule saw 11 million more births than deaths. Over the next sixteen
years, it saw 12 million more deaths than births. These are war-like casualties in peacetime. So, what exactly caused all these deaths? One clue is that heart-related fatalities — the
leading kind — seem to spike on the weekend. Another is that — whatever the cause — it
appears less common in Muslim-majority regions. All signs, in other words, point to alcohol. The problem is not simply one of quantity. Though it certainly doesn’t help that in
some years Russians have consumed almost double what the World Health
Organization considers to be dangerous. The problem, above all, is what
kind of alcohol, where, and when. The French sip wine, the British
beer, and Russians, overwhelmingly, vodka. Some stereotypes, apparently, are true. Not only do Russians get more
intoxicated, faster, as a result, but a deeply embedded culture of social
and binge drinking compounds these effects. During Soviet times, vodka was sold with
non-reusable caps. Bottles were consumed all at once, usually in groups, and often in uncontrolled
public spaces — unsupervised by bartenders. This is an extremely lethal combination. So much so that every Russian male
has a roughly 25-30% chance of dying, one way or another, thanks to alcohol. The numbers on screen, bear
in mind, are from 2012, but note how Russia’s number is
ten times higher than America’s. Researchers estimate that between 1990 and 2001, over half of all adult male deaths
in Siberia were caused by alcohol. On top of this, about 30% of all crimes and 72% of all murders in 2017 were related to
alcohol, according to the Kremlin. These are staggering numbers,
particularly for one of the world’s most highly educated countries,
with an upper-middle income, no less. Unsurprisingly, then, the
Russian male life expectancy is just 68 years — closer to Haiti than
Germany. The average man in Sweden, Switzerland, or Macau will live
a full decade and a half longer. So, why does the government accept
this tragic state of affairs? Surely, even the most corrupt, authoritarian,
and malevolent dictator would recognize this for the epidemic it is,
if only out of self-interest. Well, as it turns out, serious
efforts have been made in the past. During Soviet times, authorities estimated
that Russians spent 15-20% of their incomes on vodka alone. And no fewer than 75% of
work absences were attributed to alcohol. In response, Gorbachev — a non-drinker himself
— launched the strictest crackdown before or since. Prices were increased, manufacturing
restricted, rules tightened, and curfews enforced. Entire vineyards were even destroyed by the state. It worked. Almost immediately, consumption fell by
about 25%, and, more importantly, it shifted from vodka to beer. In less than 3 years, the male life
expectancy increased by 3.2 years. For women, 1.4. There was just one problem: or, rather, 28
billion — the number of rubles the government lost in tax revenue, which, as Mark Schrad
points out in his book “Vodka Politics,” was roughly equivalent to Russia’s total
loss from the collapse of world oil prices. The Soviet Union, at the time, truly ran on vodka — the tax revenue from
which funded 25% of the government’s budget. So, left with no other choice, Gorbachev rolled back the campaign in
1988, just three years after it began. But it was too late. To fund the deficit, the
Soviet Union began printing money, which broke the state-run economy, which led to shortages,
which, in turn, caused its total collapse. It would be too simplistic to say the
anti-alcohol campaign brought down the Soviet Union. But experts generally agree that
it contributed, at the very least, to its demise. Then, just when you thought things
couldn’t possibly get worse, they did. After 1991, alcohol suddenly became extremely
cheap and even more accessible. In other words, the floodgates were opened after
3 years of pent-up demand at the exact moment Russians were at their most hopeless. If they drank profusely before,
now they were off the charts. Consumption soared as they made
up for lost time …and then some. Over two decades later, Putin’s political
placeholder, President Medvedev, tried again, this time with more modest reforms — mandating
health warnings, cracking down on DUIs, and, if you can believe it, reclassifying beer as
“alcohol,” rather than mere “food” product. But, once again, during its economic downturn in
2014 when it was in dire need of extra revenue, many of these measures were
reversed. In the meantime, Russians turned to all manner of far
more dangerous alcohol substitutes. The lesson? Don’t touch alcohol restrictions
with a ten-foot pole. They’re costly, they’re wildly unpopular, and they don’t work. During the Great Recession, Russia’s finance minister removed any doubt about
the government’s true motives, saying the best thing ordinary citizens
could do to help the economy was drink more. And one final cherry on top: a popular
brand of Russian vodka is named after Putin — who ironically, is
a teetotaler like Gorbachev. Now, Russia almost certainly stands more to lose from encouraging alcohol consumption
than it does to gain from taxing it. As early as 2006, Putin declared the demographic
crisis to be Russia’s “most important problem.” Two decades later, he continues to say similar
things, most recently on his trip to Anadyr. And this isn’t just empty rhetoric. The country’s
“Maternity Capital” program encourages population growth by giving new families a one-time
payment for giving birth to or adopting a child. Still, these are relatively
easy, low-risk policies — and, frankly, likely not all that effective. Whenever this demographic goal conflicts with
any other goal, the latter inevitably wins. Year after year, Putin has
made short-term decisions that aggravate the problem
and mortgage Russia’s future. Take healthcare, for example. In a recent report, Russia ranked last out
of 55 countries for healthcare efficiency. Hospitals are so dirty, corruption so rampant, and
medical practices so outdated that many people, especially those outside of major
cities, avoid seeking care altogether. At no time was this more on display
than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Distrustful of the government,
people avoided vaccines. Today, a smaller share of its population is fully
vaccinated than the lowest U.S. state — Wyoming. As a result, as many as 1 million Russians may
have died of the virus, according to outside estimates. If true, this would make it one of
the highest per-capita death rates in the world. Rather than fund its outdated hospitals, the
government diverts money toward the military. Estimates of Russian casualties from its
war with Ukraine range between 100,000 and 500,000 — in either case, a massive chunk of
the demographic its economy needs the most. Not to mention: countless families have fled the
country since the war began — likely 1-2 million, including 200,000 in the first
10 days of the invasion alone. Keep in mind that only 29% of the population — the
elite — hold a passport. Those who are leaving, in other words, are disproportionately young, wealthy, well-educated, and
have skills in high demand. The loss of 100,000 software engineers, on its own, will cause chaos in Russia’s
once-thriving technology industry. Add all this up — alcohol use, declining
birth rates, the poor state of healthcare, the pandemic, war, and the subsequent
exodus, and Russia has a serious problem. It’s running out of people. In 2020 and 2021, its population declined by over
a million. And the worst may still be yet to come. Again, none of this was unforeseeable, which only makes the Russian government’s
inaction that much more concerning. Perhaps it should have taken the “Understanding
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