The issue has become personal for the Russian president, obsessed by his image and that of the Russia he will leave behind after his death. But after 25 years in power, the aggravating factors are only multiplying for Russia. Covid, alcoholism, decriminalization of domestic violence, poverty, deaths in Ukraine and exiles will have neutralized all the political initiatives launched by the president.
The Dagestani “dream”
Enough to push Vladimir Putin, who believes that each family should be made up of three children, to take the example of the Republic of Dagestan, a rare Russian region to experience positive demographics (+ 1.6% in 2024). An epiphenomenon which can be explained, according to Russian observers, by local cultures framed by Islam, which push residents to have more children, raise them in the family but under the responsibility of women, and to avoid alcohol. A conservative society dreamed of by the head of the Kremlin that is difficult to transpose to the whole country. Russian polling institutes all agree that the economic situation is the main cause of Russians’ lack of motivation to give birth.
In the midst of a demographic crisis, the Kremlin wants to push families to have more children: “Abortion is a serious problem”
Russia has come a long way since the first decrees which still provide massive financial aid for parents of large families. While men are sent to the front or mobilized for the needs of the war economy, women are at the heart of the attention of Russian politicians… and their indecent remarks. They are often made to feel guilty, pushed, sometimes in the name of religion, to refuse abortion and the use of contraception. There is also the influence of the media which, for example, pushed men to freeze their sperm before going to the front in 2022 and which are still trying to convince women today that giving birth is part of the war effort. , that it is a national security issue. Last September, several thousand Moscow women received messages urging them to carry out fertility tests, provoking numerous scandalized messages on Russian social networks. In Karelia and the Chelyabinsk region, female students have recently been able to receive up to 100,000 rubles (around 955 euros) upon the birth of their children. As cynicism is rife on this subject, local authorities do not hide their disinterest in “useless” infants and assume not to pay money in the event of stillbirth and do not comment on children who are born disabled. . Both regional and federal deputies are pushed to bring good numbers back to the Kremlin. Result: crazy ideas regularly appear. Since last fall, the Russian national assembly, the Duma, has, for example, been studying the possibility of making men and women without children pay. The idea comes from a “child tax”, which ran in the USSR from 1941 to 1990. Childless citizens gave 6% of their salary to the state. A decision that would particularly affect women, who outnumber men. A state of affairs which also attracts the attention of its Chinese neighbor, also in a demographic crisis: the Russian authorities instantly blocked it when last autumn a Chinese scientist suggested that the men of his country go and have children with Russian women.
