Attachment #6: Russia’s Size, Power and Troubling Demographics
Geographically, Russia is the largest country in the world, stretching across 11 time zones and bordering 16 sovereign nations from eastern Europe to northern Asia. The country is a federal republic which is divided into 85 federal subjects. Russia is one of the world’s leading producers of oil and natural gas. The country also possesses the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Its power is backed up by having 17% of the world’s oil and 13% of its natural gas, which together comprise more than 60% of Russia’s export revenue. Its nominal GDP is comparable to that of Italy’s.
Russia has a population of 145 million, but it’s undergoing some profound changes. The population is aging (the fertility rate is 1.5, well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to sustain population). After WWII, the median age was 24; today it is 40. By 2035, it will be 44. The change will strain health care and pensions.
But there are other significant changes. As John Ibbitson in the Globe & Mail wrote on March 25 it “lost a million people last year to a combination of COVID-19 and vodka.” With only half of the population vaccinated, an estimated 750,000 people died. But there are other forces at work. 25% of all Russian men die before the age of 55 (the UK is 7% in comparison); heavy drinking and smoking are deeply entrenched in Russian life.
Immigration helps make up for lost births, but in Russia’s case, most immigrants come from the Central Asian republics, such as Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, which are mostly Muslim and not ethnically Russian. Economic sanctions will likely deter immigrants.
The country is also losing young, well-educated and highly skilled people, perhaps because they oppose the war, fear unemployment or are unwilling to work under increased censorship. It is estimated the consequence of all of the above will be that Russia’s population will decline to 115 million by 2050. Norman Pereira, professor of Russian Studies at Dalhousie University, believes Putin launched this war “based on a desire to reverse the demographic collapse of ethnic Russians, by annexing a nation thought by Putin to be full of Russians denied their true identity.”
There is course is another side to Russia. This may be represented by such individuals as Alexey Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition who remains incarcerated in a Russian prison. Surviving a poisoning attempt, he has been sentenced to a further nine years in prison in a sham trial on fabricated corruption charges. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation has been outlawed in Russia (and now will become a global organization). He’s a reminder of the side of a nation that has a long history of achievement in so many areas, be they political, artistic, cultural, athletic, scientific, space achievements, or whatever.
President Biden captured this thought in a landmark speech March 26 in Warsaw, when he reassured the Russian people that they are not our enemies. Just days ago they were “a 21st century nation with hopes and dreams,” and now “Putin’s aggression has cut you, the Russian people, off from the rest of the world, and it’s taking Russia back to the 19th century.” “This war is not worthy of you, the Russian people.” He then dropped in the sentence “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” This was considered a gaffe by some media, changing his long-standing insistence that the US is not engaging in regime change but rather trying to defend Ukraine’s right to exist independently of Russia. However, in my opinion it reflects the attitude of anyone with a tiny spec of humanity in them; he said what most think, and good on him.
Attachment #7: The Role of Religion in this Conflict
There are some complicated forces working here. First of all the Russian Orthodox Church has yet to criticize the war, although in a display of defiance, more than 250 Orthodox clerics issued a statement in which it states “stop the war”. It also says: “We call on all opposing sides for a dialogue because there is no other alternative to violence. Only an ability to hear the other side can give us hope to get out of the abyss our countries were thrown into several days ago.” As Michael Coren in a Globe & Mail Opinion piece said Putin “has certainly increased the influence and profile of the Orthodox Church but Russia isn’t a particularly observant nation. More than 80% of Russians claim to believe in God but few attend church.”
The Russian church was suppressed for decades under communism, and the state seized church property. But as an article in The Economist on March 21 suggested “the link between faith and national identity was not severed. In 2015, 71% of Russians identified as Orthodox and 57% said following the faith was an important part of what it meant to be Russian…This makes it a powerful tool of propaganda – a conduit through which to promote a single vision of Russian values, at odds with Western liberal societies.” Putin, in 2007 described nuclear armament and Orthodoxy as the two pillars of Russian society.
The head of the Russian church, Patrick Kirill, remains a firm supporter of Putin whose rule he once described as a “miracle of God.” According to Coren, Kirill has argued “that the war was about decaying Western values and shockingly claimed – not for the first time – that Pride parades served as a kind of litmus test.” Protecting traditional values is a powerful force in Russia. Patriarch Kirill recently described military service as a “manifestation of evangelical love for neighbours.” In 2013, Putin shored up his waning popularity by passing legislation that banned allowing children to see “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” launching an attack on LGBTQ Russians. He said that Russia would defend “traditional” values against an assault of “genderless and fruitless so-called tolerance” that he said “equals good and evil.” He equated modern liberal democracies, with their defense of the rights of all, with pedophilia.
It is apparent that Kirill is now casting this conflict as a holy war. Putin has picked up this theme in his speeches to the Russian people.
Meanwhile back in the US, evangelical leader Franklin Graham praised Putin’s attack on gay rights for protecting children from “the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda,” while Obama and his attorney general “have turned their backs on God and His standards, and many in the Congress are following the administration’s lead. This is shameful.”
As Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian and professor of history, wrote in her May newsletter, “American evangelicals are converting to the Russian Orthodox Church out of support for its nativism, white nationalism, rejection of LGBTQ rights and abortion, and support for authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin. Like him, they object to the diversity inherent in democracy.” This is a shocking twist within the US, which daily continues to deliver this kind of thinking. Republican Ryan Kelley, who is running for governor of Michigan, has openly attacked the idea of democracy. “Socialism – it starts with democracy,” he said. “That’s the ticket for the left. They want to push this idea of democracy, which turns into socialism, which turns into communism in every instance.” Kelley’s distinction between “democracy” and a “constitutional republic” is drawn from the John Birch Society in the 1960s, which used that distinction to oppose the idea of one person, one vote, that supported Black voting. This is in the US, supposedly the world’s beacon for democracy.