Sunday, November 10, 2013

Window on Eurasia: Populations of Former Soviet Republics Have Fallen or Increased Less than Projected in 1990



Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 10 -- The former Soviet space had 48 million fewer people living on it in 2010 than Soviet demographers in 1990 had predicted for that year, with all 15 of the states having smaller populations than were was projected for them and 10 of the 15 having fewer residents than they did two decades earlier.

            In a blog post last week, Andrey Illarionov compares the figures offered by the USSR State Statistics Committee in its “Collection of Statistical Materials. 1990” (in Russian; Moscow: 1991) with the actual populations reported by the 15 post-Soviet countries in 2010 (aillarionov.livejournal.com/567935.html).The figures are presented in the following table.

Columns: 1-Actual Population in 1990 in 1000s; 2-1991 Projections for 2010 in 1000s; 3-Actual population in 2010 in 1000s; 4 –Difference between actual and predicted population in 2010 in 1000s; 5-Actual growth 1990 to 2010 as a percentage of 1990; 6-Actual growth as percentage to predicted numbers for 2010; and 7-difference between actual an predicted growth as percentage to predicted growth.









Columns

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
1
Turkmenistan
3701
5538
5439
-99
47,0
-1,8
-5,4
2
Tajikistan
5379
9053
7616
-1437
41,6
-15,9
-39,1
3
Uzbekistan
20674
32804
28500
-4304
37,9
-13,1
-35,5
4
Azerbaijan
7208
9504
8998
-506
24,8
-5,3
-22,0
5
Kyrgyzstan
4425
6607
5478
-1129
23,8
-17,1
-51,7
6
Kazakhstan
16828
21898
16434
-5464
-2,3
-25,0
-107,8
7
Russia
148341
162339
142900
-19439
-3,7
-12,0
-138,9
8
Armenia
3498
4471
3263
-1208
-6,7
-27,0
-124,2
9
Belarus
10266
11131
9481
-1650
-7,6
-14,8
-190,8
10
Ukraine
51680
53277
45783
-7494
-11,4
-14,1
-469,3
11
Lithuania
3735
4119
3287
-832
-12,0
-20,2
-216,7
12
Estonia
1584
1701
1340
-361
-15,4
-21,2
-308,5
13
Georgia
5434
6117
4436
-1681
-18,4
-27,5
-246,1
14
Moldova
4381
5171
3564
-1607
-18,6
-31,1
-203,4
15
Latvia
2683
2858
2121
-737
-20,9
-25,8
-421,1
           
             Illarionov suggests that this comparison between projections and realities highlights the consequences of the events that Soviet demographers could not foresee and the intensification of others that they were able to project across the entire region and not just one country as is usually the case.
           
            Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Tajikistan suffered the most from various “social, economic, political, and military cataclysms.” Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Kazakhstan suffered from the intensification of migration flows, with the greatest deviation between projected and actual populations was in Ukraine and Latvia.

As far as the Russian Federation is concerned, Illarionov notes, it had almost 20 million fewer residents in 2010 than Soviet demographers had projected, but in percentage terms, its decline was not as “catastrophic” as those in Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Latvia and Kazakhstan.

As for the region as a whole, the population in 2010 was almost 48 million fewer than projected in 1991 and remains “approximately one million fewer than the population of the same space at the end of 1990.

Some Russian commentators have pointed out that this overall decline is twice the size of Soviet population losses during World War II and have sought to place the blame on the social and political changes that the post-Soviet governments have introduced, with the more liberalized countries having the greatest losses (forum-msk.org/material/news/10106433.html).

                But in fact, the trends to which Illarionov calls attention to reflect two underlying realities: a worldwide trend of declining fertility rates, and the differences between predominantly Muslim countries which have continued to grow rapidly and non-Muslim ones which have seen their populations grow more slowly or fall.

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