Why Russians are dying out: a historical outline of the demographic situation. Destruction of the family institution and abortion
A lot has been written about the demographic crisis in Russia in recent years - both by scientists who scrupulously kept statistics and drew frightening graphs, and simply by publicists who thought in the spirit of “something needs to be done.” The rate of extinction of the Russian population is really unpleasantly striking, but in fairness, this problem affected the entire white population of Europe in general.
Starting from the second half of the 60s, the birth rate in most European countries began to fall, which is why the white population began to steadily decrease. At the same time, due to the higher birth rate, the proportion of the “non-white” European population is growing rapidly. The population is also growing in Asia (especially in Islamic countries), Latin America and Africa.
As for Russia, statistics show us that the Russian regions of Russia have the lowest birth rate in the world. Moreover, the lowest among the regions of the Russian Federation. Thus, the total fertility rate in 2019 in the Ivanovo region was 1,27; in Smolenskaya – 1,21; in Leningradskaya - 1,075. At the same time, the TFR in one of the poorest regions of the Russian Federation – Tyva – was recorded at 2,72 (twice higher than in Russian regions), and in the Chechen Republic it reaches 2,5 [1].
In this regard, the question arises: what is the reason that the Russian population of Russia is rapidly dying out? The economic situation is often cited as a reason, but, in the author’s opinion, it is not the main factor in the demographic crisis.
It is worth highlighting four aspects that fundamentally affect the birth rate. The first aspect is the destruction of the institution of family. The second aspect is abortion. The third aspect is urbanization. And only the fourth aspect should be called economic factors. Let's look at these questions in historical context.
The first aspect is the destruction of the family institution after the revolution
The revolution of 1917 had a serious impact on the institution of family in Russia. The first years of Soviet power are characterized as a period of destruction of the traditional family and rejection of the continuity of family legislation associated with the formation of new relationships between spouses, parents and children [2].
From some radical leftists you can hear that traditional values do not exist at all, for this reason it is necessary to clarify what is meant by traditional family values and a traditional family.
Traditional values can be defined as conservative values that express adherence to traditional orders, social and religious doctrines, and a certain moral code. The main value is the preservation of the traditions of society, its institutions and values.
During the period of the Russian Empire, marriage was regulated on the basis of a synthesis of state and religious norms, where the latter were of paramount importance. In pre-revolutionary Russia, almost everyone got married, with the exception of those people who, for health reasons, were forced to remain illegitimate. Marriages were dissolved extremely rarely.
The family usually had many children. By the end of the 1910th century, women gave birth to an average of seven children, and by the end of the XNUMXs. this figure dropped to five. The family was the custodian and transmitter of life experience and morality from generation to generation; children were raised and educated here. In noble estates, portraits of grandfathers and great-grandfathers, stories and legends about them, as well as their belongings were preserved.
At the end of the 1850th and beginning of the 1910th centuries, the population of the Russian Empire increased at a fairly rapid pace. Population growth rates in Russia for the period 16–1897. exceeded the population growth rates in Germany, Great Britain, and France. In just 1913 years (40–XNUMX), population growth in Russia amounted to about XNUMX million people.
The pre-revolutionary family was an independent, independent economic unit, in whose affairs the state almost did not interfere, with the exception of cases of a criminal nature [2]. Parents had both a number of rights in relation to their children and responsibilities - to take care not only of their material security, but also of their mental and moral education.
In the first years after the revolution, the family began to be seen as a relic of the “bourgeois” past, contributing to the exploitation of women and the preservation of a patriarchal sense of ownership among men. The rules of decency adopted before the revolution began to be ridiculed as “philistinism” and “philistinism,” and the younger generation began to disrespect the institution of marriage.
If before the revolution there was no widespread practice of divorce proceedings in Russia, then in the first years after the revolution a divorce could be obtained on the basis of a simple application; it was enough to notify the marriage partner about the divorce, and his consent was not required.
The government that came to power in October 1917 condemned the family as a bourgeois institution and promised to abolish it, because, according to the Bolsheviks, “the family as an economic unit, from the point of view of the national economy, must be recognized not only as helpless, but also harmful... Communist society abolishes the family, the family loses its significance as an economic unit from the moment the national economy transitions to the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat" [five].
During the first ten years of the post-revolutionary period, members of the new Soviet government proposed several options for the state's relationship to the family "in the transition period from socialism to communism." One of the central ideas in family policy in the first half of the 1920s was the idea of public education, since the task was to educate a “new man” - the builder of communism.
Marxist A. M. Kolontai argued that a child raised by society will supposedly be better prepared for a new way of life than a child raised in a family:
“A person brought up in the institutions of a workers’ republic will be better adapted to life in a workers’ commune than a person whose childhood was spent in a closed environment of selfish family habits” [4].
A. M. Kolontai believed that raising children in a family is ineffective, since children can “be instilled with conservative bourgeois values.” This approach to education was also supported by A.V. Lunacharsky, according to whom, when choosing one of two educators - parents represented by the mother and the state represented by the school - priority should be given to the school [2].
It turns out that traditional and conservative values still existed, and they were even afraid of them, but the radical left can give other arguments to this - society before the revolution, they say, was archaic and “wrong”, and therefore it is good that it was destroyed.
Some laws of the Russian Empire were indeed archaic to some extent, but what did the Bolshevik policy of destroying the institution of the family lead to? And by 1935, the number of divorces had increased 1913 times compared to 68.
There was a primitivization of moral standards - surveys showed that meeting a loved one and starting a family were non-identical events for a significant number of respondents. After the adoption of the new Code on Marriage and Family in 1926 in St. Petersburg, the number of divorces increased from 5 in 536 to 1926 in 16[006]. The number of abortions that were officially permitted also increased (more on this below).
In the mid-1930s, the Bolsheviks changed their policy towards the family. The state, interested in increasing the birth rate and increasing the population, abandoned its condemnation of “bourgeois patriarchy” and returned to the traditional family model. Divorce began to be frowned upon. As in Western Europe at that time, material incentives began to be used to encourage families to have several children [6].
Supporters of the abolition of the family suddenly sharply changed their views and became its defenders. Thus, in 1927, academician S. Ya. Wolfson argued that
“socialism brings with it the withering away of the family,”
and already in 1937 he wrote the following:
“The assertions that socialism brings the withering away of the family are deeply erroneous and harmful” [2].
However, despite the increased status of family values, the state, even during the Stalinist period, resolutely insisted that women should work. Women thus took on a “double burden”: they were expected to fulfill the traditional role of housewife in the family, but at the same time working in a factory or on a collective farm [6].
In 1966, after the divorce procedure was simplified in the USSR, the number of divorced marriages increased. In just a year, their number doubled - if in 1965 there were 360 thousand, then in 1966 - 646 thousand. And by the end of the century, divorce had become common practice: in 1994, there were 100 divorces for every 60 marriages. And in 2015, for every 100 marriages there were already 70 divorces.
Following the latest data, 2020% of marriages in Russia broke up in 73, which clearly indicates the collapse of the family institution.
Aspect two – abortion
The second aspect follows from the first aspect – the problem of abortion. The Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize voluntary abortion in 1920. We can say that in the first years after coming to power, the Bolsheviks adopted “progressive” laws that many liberals of that time had never dreamed of (they later admitted that in some aspects they took an example from Soviet Russia).
In the West, this happened only a decade and a half later as a result of the second wave of the feminist movement, and then often there was no talk about the complete legalization of induced abortion for a long time - the US Supreme Court, for example, legalized abortion only in 1973.
Progressive for its time, but not well-thought-out legislation in the field of liberalization of the institution of family, sexual life and reproductive rights of women led to an increase in sexually transmitted diseases and an increase in the number of abortions. At the same time, the ideology of “free Komsomol love” and building a new society did not include a policy of increasing sexual literacy of the population and accessible contraception.
After abortion was allowed, the number of these operations increased sharply. In particular, abortion commissions were created in Samara, which registered and issued permission for artificial termination of pregnancy. The report on the work of the abortion commission recorded a steady increase in the number of abortions from year to year. The commission's statistical materials make it possible to identify the number of abortion operations in Samara: in 1925, 1 abortions were performed, in 881 – 1926, in 2, 441 abortions were already recorded. Thus, by the end of the 1927s, the number of abortions in Samara doubled [4].
Compared to 1924, the number of abortions per 100 births in Moscow in 1927 increased significantly - from 27 in 1924 to 86 in 1927. In 1934, the number of recorded abortions increased 1924 times compared to 10.
Ignoring the issue of contraceptives, the government left abortion as the only way for women to regulate the birth rate, turning the production of this operation into a kind of industry, introducing a fee for it and consistently increasing it until the official ban on abortion in 1936.
After the adoption of a decree banning abortions in 1936, their number in Moscow per 100 births had already decreased several times in 1937. This law also abolished the simplified divorce procedure adopted in 1926, in which a divorce could be filed in the registry office at the unilateral request of one of the spouses.
Such changes appear to have been driven primarily by falling birth rates and concerns that Soviet population figures were not showing the strong growth expected under socialism. The institution of free marriage still existed (it was abolished only in 1940), but by the end of the 1930s it was no longer as popular as before [2].
Abortion in Soviet Russia was allowed again in 1955 (Decree of November 23, 1955 “On the abolition of the ban on abortion”), after which the growth of abortions increased many times over, while the birth rate fell even more. This reduced the mortality rate among girls who had illegal abortions, but the demographic situation worsened. In the 1970s, the USSR was ahead of the most populous country in the world, China, in terms of the number of abortions.
In 1990–1997 the number of abortions in Russia was more than 2 times higher than the number of births. As for the data for recent years, they vary greatly - following the data of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, the number of abortions does not exceed about 400 thousand per year (411 in 414 and 2021 in 395). However, many believe that the official figures are greatly underestimated.
In 2022, at the International Scientific and Practical Conference “Abortion and Women’s Health” in Moscow, experts stated that in 2022 Russian women got rid of approximately 1 million 795 thousand unborn children. And Russian State Duma deputy Pyotr Tolstoy, during parliamentary hearings on demographic policy this year, said that from 800 thousand to 1,5 million abortions are performed in Russia annually. The numbers are truly frightening.
Now let's summarize some intermediate results.
Subtotals
Many readers will probably have a question: how can the situation be improved? Therefore, it is necessary to outline the outlines of possible positive changes.
Firstly, Russia needs a return to some traditional values in order to revive the institution of the family. Moderate propaganda should be aimed at reviving conservative values and the traditional model of the distribution of roles between the sexes in society: a man is the head of the family who earns money, a woman is a wife and mother who takes care of the house.
From early childhood, a person should form the idea that relatives should help each other. Let readers not take such an example with hostility, but in a traditional family in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, relatives were understood not only as parents and children, because kinship relationships were quite widespread. Now many of us do not maintain relationships even with close relatives, and many do not even know what is not good.
The same “wild” peoples, as well as visiting migrants from Central Asia, representatives of the Caucasian peoples, highly respect family traditions, always support their own, and in demographic terms their situation is much better than that of the Russians.
Once again: the author does not say that women should be prohibited from working, there is no talk about this, but a woman, from my point of view, should first of all be a homemaker, and only then a worker.
Secondly, abortions should be made as difficult as possible. Taking into account the availability of contraception, it is not so difficult for a girl/woman to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. Therefore, if young people want sex for the sake of sex, then condoms and contraceptives will help them. Abortions should be limited as much as possible and allowed only if:
a) a woman cannot give birth for medical reasons (illness, poor health, etc.);
b) conception occurred as a result of sexual violence.
At this point, the consideration of two aspects should be considered complete. The next material will examine two more factors influencing the demographic situation - urbanization and the economic situation.
Использованная литература:
[1]. Demographic development of Russia: trends, forecasts, measures. National demographic report - 2020 / S. V. Ryazantsev, V. N. Arkhangelsky, O. D. Vorobyova [etc.]; Rep. ed. S. V. Ryazantsev. – M.: United Edition LLC, 2020.
[2]. Tsinchenko G. M. Family policy in the first years of Soviet power // Bulletin of the Nizhny Novgorod University. N.I. Lobachevsky. Series: Social Sciences. 2015. No. 1 (37). pp. 174–182.
[3]. Kollontai A. M. New morality and the working class. – M.: Moscow, 1919. 61 p.
[4]. Quote from: Kollontai A. M. The position of women in the evolution of the economy: Lectures given at the Ya. M. Sverdlov University. – M.: Young Guard, 1923.
[5]. Savchuk A. A. New marriage legislation and its impact on changes in the number of marriages and divorces in the Soviet Far East of the Russian Federation in the 1920s. // Power and management in the East of Russia, 2012, No. 3. – pp. 149–156.
[6]. Priestland D. Red flag: story communism; [transl. from English] / David Priestland. – M.: Eksmo, 2011.
[7]. Kobozeva Z. M., Skachkova U. O. “Victim of abortion”: attitude towards childbirth and abortion in the first years of Soviet power. Bulletin of Samara University. History, pedagogy, philology. Vol. 23. No. 4. 2017. pp. 17–22.
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