Sentenced to death? - Do Russians want to live? and what our demographics are talking about
The media publishes the first results of a recent census. And they do not inspire optimism. Over the past 8 years, Russia's population has declined by 5 million people. What conclusions should the authorities draw from the results of the census?Guest in the studio - Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Institute of Demography, Migration and Regional Development Yuri V. Krupnov.
Recently, his article was published in AiFe under the heading "Do Russians want to live?" Apparently, it turns out that they do not want.
According to Yu. Krupnov, if we take objective indicators, then such a terrible conclusion has to be made. Yes, as a result of the ugly, anti-people policy of the 90s in Russia, there was a gigantic failure, but in reality the birth rate began to decline and the death rate in the country began to rise from the year 1964. Even then the bell rang. According to the expert, this, in fact, predetermined the collapse of the USSR later. To this must somehow relate and explain.
By and large, today people come up with a thousand excuses, having one child, so as not to give birth to more. Father Dimitri Smirnov once said that one of his parishioners asked why she had one child, said, why, she said, should she produce poverty? It turned out that it was meant that she only one house on the ruble (she herself lives there) can buy her heir. Therefore, he believes that she will produce poverty if she has a second child. It is clear that this is curiosity, but it shows that there is a problem when people come up with thousands of different explanations in order not to give birth to more children. And people from science, unfortunately, explain all this, convincing the society that this is the result of the action of objective evolutionary-demographic laws.
In the opinion of Yu. Krupnov, all this is slyness, and by and large this is a specially constructed explanation that is offered to society, instead of helping him to grope and bring to discussion a big, serious problem. Instead, explanations are invented to justify the current demographic situation in Russia.
What happened in 1964 year? After all, then people had a different mentality, their living conditions and guidelines were different. There was no consumer society in the country that dictates the cult of money and determines the status of a person in society depending on his condition. From here they are already coming: is it possible to allow yourself to have another child or not?
Yu. Krupnov believes that this situation can be explained in two ways. The first. The fact that we are discussing this problem and do not know what happened then is already the reason for the fact that something is happening with Russian society. Society for various reasons - because of ideological pseudo-optimism, formalism, etc. - looked through that moment. The fact that there is no explanation already explains a lot. Society missed it.
The second explanation. Yu. Krupnov considers it important to recall for the explanation of the Hungarian economist Janos Karnai, who coined the term "goulash communism", which the Hungarian communists called the program of the XXII Congress, aimed at building communism in our country. After the terrible war, when the people retreated, when he had hyper-statism, they stood in front of hyper-difficulty plus terrible experiences, he was offered a program to build communism, in fact, if you remove all ideology based solely on material things. Yes, she almost immediately failed, because it was based on the very “goulash communism”, which implied a rejection of the country's development project. And no matter how much today they deal with de-Stalinization, get away from objective things. stories impossible, because with the death of Stalin, in fact, ended the Soviet project. It was a project, the meaning of which was clear to the people, the tasks facing the society were clear, who was the enemy, who was not the enemy. This is a normal situation for a viable society. Plus there was a great victory.
But after that, in essence, society turned out to be in an ideological vacuum, and the people did not know what it was building, whether it was building anything at all. Plus the ideas of goulash communism were involved.
According to Yu. Krupnov, the demography at that moment began to reflect that ideological prostration that existed in society, the rejection of the project. And then everything went on increasing, manifesting itself in various types of deformations, and then in the collapse of the USSR.
In 1965-1966, remarkable journalistic articles were written, the authors of which seemed to begin to grope for this phenomenon. For example, through such a seemingly completely different order phenomenon as whips. It was at that time that pests appeared.
Is it a prototype of the current homeless?
Yu. Krupnov believes that the homeless too, in the sense that they are people who, on the one hand, wanted to earn a lot somewhere and quickly, but, on the other hand, they did not take care of themselves in life. It's one thing when a person wants to earn money, make a career, how he achieves this, it may or may not like him, but he saves himself and treats himself too touchingly. And the scourge (homeless) phenomenon assumed that people go, for example, on Putin to the Far East, they make huge amounts of hard work there, and after that they lose all their money in a few days, don’t understand what they do afterwards, becoming indifferent to life.
Yu. Krupnov recalled one of his similar relatives, whom he once asked why he drinks so much. In response, he heard that what's the difference, to die in 45 or in 55 years. Why live? Will the Kremlin shut down or will the village flourish or die?
Maybe this is some kind of national fatalism?
Yu. Krupnov agreed, calling it a feeling, when a person realizes that his life, in fact, has no meaning. Plus, then there was the so-called "restructuring", which the outstanding Russian thinker A. Zinoviev, not by chance, called two years after its beginning "catastroika". Introducing such a neologism, he felt that the Russians began to kill themselves as if by themselves. They do not want to be reborn as a country, do not want to give birth. Plus, the country was killed. This, in essence, the cult of death, the cult of disinterest in one’s own life, has ceased to exist.
Y. Krupnov turned to the theory of the remarkable physician and demographer Igor Alekseevich Gundarov, which the only one, in his opinion, can somehow be discussed. I. Gundarov believes that the basis of the current demographic situation in Russia is the loss of the semantic factor and the depression of the majority of the population. He cites an indicator that in the 1943 year after Stalingrad in the country, despite the most severe living conditions and hunger, there was a surge in fertility. Then the population of the country that broke the ridge of Hitler’s car near Stalingrad realized that people could not be killed so easily, nothing would happen to them, and responded with a surge in fertility. But this is not the main thing. The birth spike is a slow, gradual category. The most important thing is that the mortality rate among the non-belligerent population has decreased. That is, the people realized that he had survived, managed to take a terrible misfortune and that he could. This, in a good sense of the word, the national courage was manifested in demographic figures.
A similar thing happened in the second half of the 90s. In the 1991-1993 years in Russia there was a demographic hole - and the birth rate, and a giant loop of mortality. Then, despite the default in 1998, when the people had already adapted to everything, went through all the Gaidar reforms, mortality in Russia also began to decline.
Today they like to say that in Russia the birth rate is rising and mortality is decreasing. This is true, but for some reason they always forget to say that over the past five years, mortality in Russia has decreased by 13 percent, and, for example, in Kazakhstan - by 21 percent.
At the peak of perestroika in 1988, the maternity hospital in the country was filled with women in labor. People then felt a change for the better, no one knew what would happen to the country in the future, and there was really a lift. And this rise gave birth.
As for men, dying at an early age. Back in 1968, the article "Take care of men" appeared in the "Literary". It was written in it that in the country men are not cherished, everything is done for women and mothers.
Y. Krupnov disagrees with this question. In his opinion, it is not necessary to take care of men. They are dying out because they are being protected. In the sense that they do not have to solve difficult tasks and work hard. And they need to be moved to solve difficult tasks, in practice creating an infrastructure of complex labor. The high level of domestic alcoholism in the country is not a cause of high mortality, but a consequence of the fact that people do not see prospects in their lives. We can say that in the country there are no infrastructure to support the population.
What does this mean?
This year, young people graduate from universities. 50 percent of them will fall into non-structured employment. This may be full-time, but after six months a graduate will change jobs. Somewhere it will be part-time employment, somewhere it will not be clear at all how he is employed. And 70 percent, and in certain specialties and 90 percent of graduates will work in places that have no relation to their university specialty.
Guaranteed half of graduates will fall into the category of half-hidden unemployment or unstructured employment. They will not do what they thought and dreamed of. Plus, the vast majority will not be employed at all in their specialty.
Recently, a meeting of the Russian Security Council on aircraft construction was chaired by President Dmitry Medvedev. Last year, all 7 aircraft were built in Russia, when it used to produce thousands of vehicles. Here is the answer.
The boy goes to the MAI, in the best Russian aviation engineering university, and after graduation he has nowhere to get a job in his specialty. He goes to the bank or becomes an office plankton. Or even worse - in the trade or in the shuttles. Or do not understand anyone and do not understand where.
All this is called the term "life scrapping." And this happens in a person not in 50-60 years, as happens in life in people of pre-retirement age who find it difficult to get a job, but in 22-23 of the year. It's another thing when the 22-23 of the year is already a dead end. And the deadlock is understood by young people already from the 3-4 course. People are all adults, they earn extra money, they see their elders, brothers, etc. tell them. That's the problem. Society needs to take, above all, men, hard work, but hard not in terms of physical effort, but hard in the sense that men will be required to return and professional qualifications. That is meaningful hard work.
What is the standard in this sense?
Yu. Krupnov thinks that this is when a person graduated from a serious engineering university, went to the plant, through 5-10 years of hard work he became, if not the chief engineer, then he took a respected position and in a certain sense began to capitalize on a giant reserve made by him, "while young ".
Such a chain in modern Russia is not organized. There are no projects in the country, the country does not create anything. Hence, direct access to the problems of demography. In addition to depression in men, in addition to experiences, they still have a role to play, that the man should feed the family, provide for the children, and if he cannot do this, then in this sense the man will have a complete life impasse. And professionally too.
Remember, there were opinions that a woman should not work at all, that women are too busy with us. Today, the situation has become ten times worse in this country. Because if a woman in the family does not work, then for most people it will be impossible to support a family at all. As a result, a man often finds himself in a situation where everyone hopes for him, but he cannot. And he becomes a kind of social impotent.
From historical experience it can be seen that without technological progress, without a new strategic course, without promising labor and employment for the entire population, without the country switching over to new technologies and creating new infrastructures, there will never be demographic growth.
Because there is a demographic growth through development. This, in the opinion of Yu. Krupnov, is precisely the case that Russia should do what the Popular Front of Putin should do if the conversation about it is serious. It should be a country development organization. And then the demographics will follow, and everything will go fine. It will not be necessary to persuade anyone to give birth with all other mandatory demographic things.
Another thing, when growth may be temporary. It is typical for countries that are only members of the global community, that is, for the countries of the third and fourth world. This is a different growth, and he does not threaten Russia.
Olga Valentinovna writes that she did not have children, because it is impossible to live in this country. With such medicine, education and corruption. Leonid from Moscow writes that it is necessary to create conditions so that people would like to have children ...
Yu. Krupnov disagrees with both points of view. In his opinion, such excuses are a reflection of the unwillingness of the Russian people to live. People can understand, they can not be blamed. But somehow we all explain why we do not want to live. All the talk about the fact that in this country I do not bring children, that conditions do not allow, they are correct. The socio-economic situation is not at all the same, the country needs development. But this is only one side of the issue.
On the other hand, all these excuses can be called a fad when everything that is possible is thought out so as not to live. This just confirms that the socio-economic model that prevails in Russia today is not adequate and must be changed.
Can one look to the future with optimism? Some believe that Russia has already passed the point of no return. Is it possible to turn the tide and return to another state?
Yu. Krupnov thinks there is nothing more harmful than such theories about “points of no return”, about demographic transitions, etc.
Russian society needs to start living. For this, he needs to teach his elite to develop the country. It is necessary to demand from the Popular Front, which Putin is creating, “Putin, develop the country, it’s enough to engage in nonsense, to divide something inside. Let's develop the country”.
People have to demand it themselves and want to give birth at the same time today, and not in 20 years. And everything in Russia will be fine. And all these conversations, explanations and theories are needed only in order to sentence Russians to death ...
Information