"Russia is Becoming Non-Russian"
… is a bold claim that I hear from Russia-haters.
Here are some samizdat stats for your consideration though. They run through 2010 and, if anything, the situation has improved since then:
The percentage of Russian children being born in Russia’s regions.
These are just the names of regions of Russia and the corresponding percentages. Should make sense.
The executive summary: historically Russian-regions of Russia remain Russian. We don’t have a phenomenon on our hands like in the UK where the most popular name is Muhammed. There may be fewer Russians than there were a century ago in absolute terms, but there is no mass demographic replacement.
Also, as I have reported before, serious large-scale deportations of migrants began before the war started. Furthermore, many migrants fled when the special operation in Ukraine did start. Russia is a federation with non-Russians in it, but Russia can honestly refer to itself as an ethnostate if it so wished because of how overwhelmingly Russian it is - Russia is more Russian than Israel is Jewish.
And if demographics were fixed, Russians could easily grow to be close to 100% of Russia.
But the only way to achieve that is to bring back homesteads and rural living. Stop saying that there is another way because there simply isn’t. City people do not breed. Rural life is the key to restoring demography - full stop. Lots of land in Russia exists that can be claimed for free or for pennies. A Russian family can set up an A-frame there and thereby is able to first claim de facto ownership of the land and then eventually, de jure. After that, it’s all about setting up internet, and voila, you can work from home and do your part to keep Russia safe from coronavirus or the next hoax that comes along.
It can be done - the idea simply has to popularized and promoted in society.
The reason why this isn’t done is because 1) The Sovok generation is afraid of nature, 2) The Bariga generation can’t steal much in the countryside and 3) Zoomers and Millennials prefer to be broke content-curators living in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
If I were the Russian government, I’d pay celebrities to spend a weekend out in the woods and vlog about how much they liked it. Putin was way ahead of the curve on this:
As soon as you make it trendy - think “eco-villages” - and divorce the idea from vegan hippies, you can make it a mainstream thing.
Happily, many city-dwellers are indeed talking about moving out to the countryside or suburbs nowadays. As soon as I figure out my car situation and get a hunting license, I’m leaving the commieblocks, these sarcophaguses of civilization, far behind me.
Hyperborea calls.
"But the only way to achieve that is to bring back homesteads and rural living. Stop saying that there is another way because there simply isn’t. City people do not breed. Rural life is the key to restoring demography - full stop."
This is true and is something often overlooked when it comes to total fertility rates (TFR). High religiosity, good parental leave benefits, and low IQ are always talked about as ingredients for high TFR, but space and land is often left out of the discussion. I don't have the link but a study from Norway concluded the strongest predictor of new births is "recently moved out of apartment and into single family residence" which was the case in many other countries as well. Obviously this is because people make the choice to move out of their cramped city apartment before they have kids, but people feel too restrained by commie block living and need more space for kids.
Russia has such an insane amount of land. I think this would be a great idea.
PSA: This blogger - Hal Freeman - is an American living in Russia. He himself is retired but I believe he knows a group of American homesteaders in Russia.
https://halfreeman.wordpress.com/about/