Slate reports on Russia's pathetic and comically corrupt efforts to buy itself a new population. So much for patriotism!

ULYANOVSK, Russia—On a humid Sunday afternoon in late June, about 100 couples clutching newborn babies filed into the Lenin Memorial overlooking the wide banks of the Volga River. This mammoth concrete slab of Soviet constructivism was erected in Lenin's hometown to commemorate the leader's 100^th birthday and now houses one of the city's many Lenin museums, but the families had not come for a lesson in Soviet history; they were there to pick up their prizes. The couples were finalists in Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia Day, a local birthrate-boosting competition that offered rewards to anyone who gave birth on June 12, Russia Day.

The event was one of the many schemes thought up by Russian officials to reverse the nation's population decline. Vladimir Putin recently declared that women choosing to have a second child would receive 250,000 rubles, nearly $11,000. Since then, a stream of pro-family programs, events, and holidays has been rolled out by the government. The New York Times put a positive spin on this trend earlier this week, but that piece ignored the grim side effects of this crude approach to such a complicated problem.

Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia Day was cooked up three years ago by Ulyanovsk's governor, Sergei Morozov, to prod the local population into improving the region's dismal 2-to-1 death-to-birth ratio. It worked like this: Women who gave birth on June 12 would be guaranteed one of a variety of prizes—refrigerators, TV sets, washing machines, even cash, and one lucky family would be picked to win the grand prize: a brand-new Russian-made jeep called the UAZ-Patriot.

To make it easier for couples to participate, Morozov set aside Sept. 12 as a special regional holiday dedicated to family communication, and he urged employers to give their workers a day off so they'd have a better chance at conceiving—and winning!—come Russia Day nine months later. (Never mind that nine months is roughly 39 weeks, one week short of the average gestation period of 40 weeks, so a woman who conceived on Sept. 12 would likely give birth a full week after Russia Day.)

The local media provided blanket coverage. Notices were hung all over town in marriage offices, maternity wards, and stores. Seminars were organized for expectant mothers, and gynecologists and social workers were instructed to make home visits.

"Our governor wants to create interest and excitement about this issue, while at the same time addressing the problems that have been holding the birthrate back,"Anatoly Vasilev, the head of the Department of Social Defense, told me. Vasilev oversees family and social services for the entire region and was charged with handling logistics. To him, it was all about setting up the necessary conditions to make a win possible and then ramping up public interest. After that, the population problem would take care of itself.

"Look at Russian football. Before we started winning in Euro 2008, no one cared about soccer in Russia. Now that we've won a couple of games, everyone is a fan," said Vasilev.

However dubious the premise, it seemed to work out.

On June 12, while Russia enjoyed its day off, doctors all over Ulyanovsk struggled to survive the most hellish day of their professional careers. The region's maternity wards, which usually stood half-empty, were suddenly filled beyond maximum capacity. Masses of screaming pregnant women seemed to materialize out of thin air. Stressed-out and sleep-deprived doctors ran around frantically attending to patients. Most doctors were forced to work multiple shifts just to keep up with demand.

When the clock finally struck midnight and the last bloody sheet dropped to the ground, the tally was impressive. Eighty-seven children were born in Ulyanovsk that day, nearly four times the region's average daily birthrate. With just a few prizes, Morozov's team had found a solution to a problem that has haunted Russia for the last two decades. Or so it seemed.

When I made about a dozen home visits to couples all over the Ulyanovsk region—armed with chocolates and champagne—a disturbing picture of poverty and desperation began to emerge. Every couple I talked with categorically denied that they had planned to give birth on June 12. Despite the media hype, many of the women claimed they had not heard about the event until months into their pregnancies, when their doctors informed them they were eligible. But eventually they revealed that labor was being artificially induced on a massive scale that day, and it had nothing to do with patriotism. Their stories were of women desperate to give birth on June 12 and doctors all too eager to oblige.

One woman recalled seeing a young mother-to-be repeatedly attempt to fake contractions in order to be admitted to the hospital, while some women who were already inside begged their doctors to perform cesarean sections. Another woman recalled thinking that many of the C-sections performed that day were rushed through unnecessarily. A young mother told me that every single one of the 25 women on her floor of the maternity ward gave birth on June 12. That would have been equivalent to the total number of kids born in the entire Ulyanovsk region on a normal day. Another woman told me she overheard doctors talking about prescribing so many labor-inducing drugs that they ran out and had to order a new shipment. There was also a rumor that the hospital that delivered the most babies on June 12 was going to be rewarded by the regional government, possibly with cash. Only one of the women admitted, with much shame and humiliation, that her doctor pressured her to induce labor.

What they told me had all the trappings of a conspiracy. But who was behind the plot? Did the governor's office pressure doctors to meet a certain quota so that they could brag about the statistics? Or were people so poor that they were desperate to make themselves eligible for prizes?

Whatever it was, the women's stories seemed to be corroborated by the facts. Official statistics gathered for just one of the city's neighborhoods showed that the June 12 spike was fed by births from adjacent days: There were two births on June 11, 18 births on June 12, zero on June 13, and two on June 14. The normal rate would have been around four births per day.

Ludmilla Vanina, the head doctor of the neighborhood's maternity ward, was annoyed at my suggestion and denied that doctors would induce labor just to boost statistics. But after 10 minutes of playing defense on the phone, she slipped up.

"Women want to give birth in June, so they give birth on that day," she said. "Why? I don't know. Maybe because they get gifts."

"You mean to say they gave birth on that day because they got gifts?" I asked.

"We just help women," she said after a long, uncomfortable pause. "I'm not authorized to discuss this. Plus, I have my own personal opinion of the press," she said before slamming down the receiver.

"The doctors had nothing to do with it," said Galya Kaimova, a young mother in her early 20s who works as a police officer. She gave birth on June 14 but was admitted to the hospital two days earlier and had a ringside seat to the chaos of June 12. According to her, many of the mothers who were due around that time induced labor in order to take part in Give Birth to a Patriot.

"Women were asking, practically begging, their doctors to do it," she said. "They had their babies that day because of the presents; they put their health at risk. It was sick."

Sick, but understandable. And in retrospect, even predictable.

Ulyanovsk is part of Russia's Red Belt, a zone of impoverished farming communities and stagnant Soviet factories that stretches west of the Volga River. It has seen little benefit from Russia's market reforms. Even now, few people can afford the steep prices of the restaurants and the shopping mall that have opened up in recent years. They prefer to spend their free days hanging out on park benches or clustered around their beat-up Soviet-era cars.

Inside the Lenin Memorial on the day of the award ceremony, babushkas raced back and forth setting the tables with wine, blini with caviar, pirogi, bottled water, and juice for the kids. A band performed Russian hits, and women in extravagant ball gowns took to the stage to recite cheesy poetry extolling the virtues of children and family. All the while, beautiful young models in white bridal dresses flanked the perimeter of the hall to lend beauty to the simple provincial faces. By Ulyanovsk standards, it was a swank affair.

The governor arrived and mechanically ticked off his administration's successes—improved welfare packages for needy families with children, new kindergartens and schools were on the way, and so was a new maternity hospital. Finally, he announced the results of the competition. The car keys would go to the only participating family that had given birth to a fourth child; the rest would receive cash prizes of $300—a good month's wages—that could be spent anywhere.

For many of the mothers, the prize was a godsend, but one they achieved at considerable risk to themselves and their children. Sergei Morozov emerged as the event's only true winner. He apparently found a solution to what Vladimir Putin calls Russia's most acute problem. And he did it in a way that avoids the laborious work of tackling the crisis at its root: fixing basic infrastructure, creating jobs, and improving the quality of life.

Radio Free Europe reports that, as always, the number one form of "birth control" in barbaric Russia is the abortion. Russians love their country all right -- right up until they have to actually do anything personal to support. The Chinese can't get their people to stop having babies, and the Russians can't get them to start.

Dilyara Latypova is a gynecologist in the Russian republic of Tatarstan. With more than 25 years of experience, she's seen some progress in family planning since the days of the Soviet Union, when such topics were largely taboo.

Still, she says, the situation today is far from ideal. For many women, the most common method of birth control remains a Soviet-era holdover: abortion.

"Young women who think that having an abortion is an easy thing are wrong," Latypova tells RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service. "An abortion is not only an operation. It's a deep psychological trauma for a woman. This is an operation that causes a woman physical and moral pain. I don't think it's the right decision."

Despite an abundance of new family-planning options, Latypova says lack of public awareness and prohibitive expenses -- like $25 monthly packs of birth control pills -- mean many women still see abortion as their only choice.

"Students and young girls can't afford birth control. Many girls are afraid to talk about it with their mothers and ask for money," she says. "An unplanned pregnancy can cause them enormous stress. They immediately opt for an abortion, and don't even tell their parents or boyfriends."

Russia was the first country in the world to legalize abortion, in 1920. The procedure was briefly driven underground, when Soviet leader Josef Stalin banned abortion in an attempt to encourage women to have larger families.

But after Stalin’s death in 1953, the ban was lifted. A decade later, the practice had become so common that the USSR officially registered 5.5 million abortions, compared to just 2 million live births.

A Private Matter

The number of abortions has fallen dramatically since then. The most recent available figures, for 2006, show 1.6 million abortions compared to 1.5 million live births -- a dismal figure, especially in a country struggling with a looming demographic crisis.

Women are entitled to abortions up until the 12th week of pregnancy, and -- unlike in many countries -- are not obligated to alert relatives or give a reason for requesting the procedure.

The relative ease of getting an abortion, in fact, has blinded many women to the numerous health risks associated with the process, especially for those who turn to it more than once. "The complications include bleeding and inflammation in the short term," says Lyubov Yerofeyeva, the director of the Russian Family Planning Association, an NGO that works to improve sex education in Russia. "In the long term, the most severe complication could be infertility."

Yerofeyeva is speaking in a brightly lit office in central Moscow whose walls are adorned with posters of cuddly babies. But Yerofeyeva and other association employees can also paint a stark picture of the reality of abortion in Russia today.

Far more Russians are dying at a relatively young age than babies are being born to replace them. The result is a precipitous population decline that threatens Russia's economic well-being and perhaps even the ability to safeguard its huge territory. VOA Moscow Correspondent Peter Fedynsky examines some of the reasons and consequences of the Russian demographic crisis.

The population of Russia has been falling an average of 700,000 people each year since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than 16 years ago. Russian women can expect to live until 73, but the average life expectancy of men is 59, about a dozen years less than their counterparts in Western Europe.

Larissa Ilgova lost her husband to liver disease. She says many of her friends are dying young. "I have many friends and they're all dying at a young age - 47, 48, 50, 60," she says. "A lot."

Health experts say reasons for so many premature deaths in Russia include heart disease, poor diet, hard work, smoking, and above all, alcoholism.

But Russian demographer Igor Beloborodov says alcoholism is the symptom of a larger problem - a spiritual malaise among the general population.

Igor Beloborodov

"This is most evident among the devout Orthodox [Christian], members of Russia's largest religious faith," Beloborodov said. "There are also many children born to Muslims, and the same goes for Buddhists. People who have preserved a certain moral code and a positive attitude toward family values demonstrate different demographic and reproductive tendencies."

Beloborodov says 75 years of atheism and economic mismanagement by communists devastated not only Russia's spiritual and material foundations, but also the family structure. He says the communist system created what he calls "demographic time bombs" that continue to explode in Russia years after the Soviet collapse in 1991. These include the legalization of abortions, prohibition of private property and inheritance rights, and making a mother's service to communism more rewarding than caring for her children.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently called for measures to increase Russian life expectancy to 75 by the year 2020. But demographer Beloborodov questions whether the problem can be solved in a mere 12 years. "I think the approach to the problem - lowering the death rate but ignoring the birth rate - is wrong," he said. "It won't solve anything. It would only guarantee an older population. In other words, the rate of aging would accelerate, but the burden on the working-age population would increase. Even now, our pension system is in a state of crisis."

The demographer says more working-age Russians are needed not only to support retirees, but also to develop the economy and maintain a viable army.

Some analysts also fear the Chinese could fill a vacuum created by a particularly acute loss of people in Russia's Far East.

Vladimir Myasnikov, one of Russia's foremost China experts, disagrees. He says not many people are needed to hold the area. "East of the Urals, normal human living conditions exist only along a very thin strip running along the Chinese border. There is permafrost North of some local mountain ranges, where temperatures reach as low as 50 below zero centigrade. There are similar regions in Canada, which are virtually empty."

Russia has as many as 12 million immigrants, most of them illegal, to make up for Russia's ever-growing labor shortage. Some immigrants have been attacked and even killed by xenophobic Russians who resent the newcomers as intruders. Despite an slight increase in number of births last year, the United Nations predicts the country's population will continue to plummet from the current 141 million to less than 100 million by mid-century.

United Press International reports on more proof of the brilliant success story that is Vladmir Putin's Russia:

An alarming new word has been born. It is "hypermortality," which might be defined as an extraordinary tendency toward death. It jumps from the first page of the U.N. Development Program report entitled "Demographic Policy in Russia."

"The Russian phenomenon of hypermortality comes to be observed primarily in working-age populations," it says.

"Compared to the majority of countries that have similar levels of economic development, mortality in Russia is 3-5 times higher for men and twice as high for women."

What this means, the report says, is that the size of the working-age population "will fall by up to 1 million people annually already by 2020-25."

The effect of this will be to raise the dependency load (the number of young and old people dependent on those of working age) to 670 to 750 per thousand by 2020 and to 900 to 1,000 per thousand by 2025.

"This will inevitably influence economic growth rates," the report notes.

"At the moment, there are no grounds to believe that the crisis will be overcome and the size of the population will be stabilized," it adds.

The report, while commissioned and published by the U.N. agency, was entirely prepared and written by Russian experts led by Professor Valery Yelizarov, head of Moscow State University's Center for Population Studies. It was peer reviewed by Germany's Max Planck Institute.

In precise and formal scientific language, the report suggests that Russia is suffering the kind of hypermortality that is normally only associated with the effects of a major war.

In wars, young men die. That is also happening in Russia. The report says: "Without factoring the impact of AIDS, the number of males age 15-24 could decline by nearly half over the next 20 years."

But factor in the effect of AIDS and the picture is even more grim.

"Russia has experienced a dramatic spread of HIV in just over a decade. In 1997-2007, there was a 370-fold increase from less than 1,090 to 405,427 officially registered cases," the report says. It adds that this represents the minimum of those in contact with the HIV reporting system.

Russia's Federal AIDS Center estimates that up to 1.3 million Russians are living with HIV, and last year women of childbearing age accounted for 44 percent of known new infections.

What led to this dismal state of affairs? The report does not attribute blame, but it is specific about the timing of the demographic disaster that has overtaken Russia, associating it with the "reform period" that began in 1985 with the coming to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and the tumultuous "reform period" that followed, which included the fall of the Soviet Union.

"In the nearly two decades of the reform period, a segment of the population living on the verge of poverty expanded and multiplied, exhibiting habits and factors contributing to risk: alcoholism, smoking, improper nutrition, avoidance of healthcare, and psychological stress," it says, seeking to explain the "hypermortality" phenomenon.

This may be disputed. Western demographers like Murray Feshbach were writing of the demographic collapse in the mid-1980s and citing data from as early as the late 1960s. But there is no doubt that the disruptions of the Soviet Union's death throes exacted a fearsome toll. Even now, when Russia is becoming rich with its oil and gas wealth, the death toll continues to be unnecessarily high.

Many lives could be saved, the report says, by "providing economic and geographic access to healthcare services, most of all in medical and social prevention and primary treatment. In 2005, by primary prevention means only, about 150,000 deaths could have been avoided (about 105,000 men and 45,000 women) in the age of up to 65 years."

It is important to consider what this means for the future of the Russian economy. Ever since Goldman Sachs devised the concept of the BRIC nations, identifying Brazil, Russia, India and China as the key emerging markets, great hopes (and considerable investments) have been placed on them. But a very large question mark must be placed on the economic prospects of a country whose young male workforce looks set to fall by half.

Moreover, a large proportion of the Russian workforce may be too drunk to function. Almost one male death in three is alcohol-related.

"The increase of alcohol consumption from 10 to 15 liters and an almost simultaneous increase in mortality suggests the central role played by alcohol to mortality, in average up to 426,000 per year in 1980-2001. Alcohol-related deaths total 29.6 percent of total mortality for men and 17.0 percent for women," the report says.

Last year President Vladimir Putin launched a crash program to try to tackle Russia's hypermortality by increasing maternity leave to 18 months and cash benefits for mothers that would go as high as $9,000 for a second child. But noting that there is a current shortage of around 1 million day-care facilities in Russia, the report hints that the Putin plan lacks credibility.

"Quantitative indicators that describe set ambitious goals and tasks make one doubt if they are correct, agreed and realistic," the report concludes.

Paul Goble reports:

Only days after Russian officials celebrated an uptick in the number of births in that country in 2007, demographers there have warned that this much cited figure does not constitute a trend and that “the depopulation of Russia will accelerate,” a development that threatens its economy, its ability to field an army, and even its hold on its current territory. In the April 29th issue of Vedomosti, journalist Olga Kuvshina cites the views of the members of that expert community that Moscow’s upbeat projects are “unrealistic” and that “after 2012, the country will face a new and rapidly deepening demographic “crisis” those in denial are doing little to prevent. “From 1992 through 2007,” they note, “the difference in the number of deaths over births totaled 12 million people,” a figure whose enormity is obvious if one thinks that this means that in the first six years of this century, Russia annually lost the population of Novgorod oblast or Krasnodar kray. And the 2007 increase in the number of births was, Vladimir Arkhangel’sky, a demographer at Moscow State University, argues, the produce of the mini-baby boom in the 1980s, something that has not been repeated anytime since and means the size of the prime child bearing age group will plummet after about five years.

But what is especially critical is that these declines in the overall population will be exceeded by declines in the working age group, with the “cadre deficit” amount to 22 million total by 2020. And that in turn will “put under threat the development of the country,” especially since it represents a major shift from the past. “In the last several years, the overall decline in the number of the population has been accompanied by [what demographers call] a ‘demographic dividend’ – a growth in the number of working age people.” But beginning this year, that dividend disappears, and in the future, the country will have fewer workers relative to other age groups. Last year, there were 0.6 children and pensioners for every worker, but by 2025, that ratio will be 1 to 0.8 and by 2050, it will be one to one.” That is not a projection or estimate, the scholars insist: “’the people [being counted] are already born, and we know how many of them there will be.’” (The decline of Russia’s working-population is exacerbated by alcoholism and a rising tide of industrial accidents which this year killed 180,000 Russian workers and seriously injured more than 200,000 others, according to statistics published in Moscow’s Utro yesterday.)

Moreover, the demographers say, Russia will continue to lag behind countries at similar levels of economic development. Men in countries with similar GDPs per capita now live three to eleven years longer than in Russia, and women there live one to five years longer than Russian women. According to Anatoly Vishnevsky, a leading Moscow demographer, the Russian government’s projection that life expectancy in Russia will be 75 by 2025 is without foundation. And another demographer who works in Germany noted that life expectancy in other countries is increasing by 0.22 years annually, while “in Russia it is falling.” The “chief” causes of that, the demographers say, is “the low value of human life in the eyes of the [Russian] state … and of [Russian] society itself. … Every year, about 200,000 [Russians] die from preventable causes, of whom two thirds pass away because of insufficient medial and social support.” More than 425,000 die from alcoholism, and deaths from high blood pressure is 4.2 times higher in Russia than the average of 15 countries in the European Union, the U.S. and Japan. These are problems the Russian government, given its income from the sale of gas and oil, could address but has chosen not to.

Nonetheless, it is worth noting that this week, one branch of the Russian government decided to try to do something about this looming national tragedy: a new proposal has been taken up in the Duma that would increase the age for the legal purchase of alcohol from 18 to 21. That legislative step by itself will not reverse Russia’s demographic decline, but it is more significant than any now on offer by the Kremlin and the Russian executive branch more generally, both of which seem largely content to offer upbeat assessments very much at odds with unpleasant realities.

Russia could face a staff deficit of between 8m and 22m people, according to various estimates, Deputy Health Minister Alexander Safonov told a round table on Russia's employment problems. He stressed that even now, the shortage was considerable, and was not only of a quantitative, but also a qualitative nature. The primary and manufacturing sectors are seeing a steep decline in staffing, while the accident rate continues to soar. According to Health Ministry data, the share of work places that does not meet the relevant standards has reached 25 percent, up from a maximum of 12 percent several years ago. Safonov also noted growing foreign work force problems in Russia, as the number of international workers in Russia stood at between 4m and 12m people, according to different sources. While the quota for issuing work permits stood at 3m people in 2007, only 2m were actually granted.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., and Hans Groth, a Pfizer global health fellow and managing director of Pfizer-Switzerland, together authors of the book Europe's Coming Demographic Challenge: Unlocking the Value of Health, expose the horror of Russia's demographic collapse:

Russia is a European country, and its population patterns are unmistakably European in a number of respects, e.g. low birth rates, rising illegitimacy ratios and immigration tensions, and an aging population. But its demographic profile and future prospects differs in two important respects that bode ill for Russia's long-term economic outlook – to say nothing of the Kremlin's ambitious goal of becoming the world's fifth-largest economy by the year 2020.

First, Russia's health and mortality situation is vastly worse than Western Europe's. Life expectancy for Russian men is astonishingly low, well below current levels in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. And trends have been moving in the wrong direction for decades. In 2005, male and female life expectancy at birth in Russia were both lower than they had been 40 years earlier.

Russia's brutally high levels of mortality, along with anemic fertility levels, fashion a second "exceptional" demographic trend for the country: depopulation. In the 16-plus years since the end of the U.S.S.R., Russia has recorded over 12 million more deaths than births. Net immigration has only partially compensated for this deficit. Consequently, Russia's population dropped from 148.7 million in 1992 to just over 142 million at the start of this year. Whereas Western Europe faces the prospect of population decline a generation hence, Russia is in the midst of it.

President-elect Dmitry Medvedev envisions a Russia in which births come to exceed deaths by 2014, with positive population growth over the following decade. He has endorsed a new "official demographic concept" with population policies like birth bonuses and other social measures, including in public health, to reverse the decline. Unfortunately, there is not a single example from modern history where pro-natal policies have been able to achieve a sustainable demographic reversal. Outside of Russia, few demographers anticipate depopulation will actually halt over the coming generation. Even the United Nation's "high" projection envisions a drop of over 10 million between 2005 and 2030.

Russia's working-age population is set for an even steeper decline. Between 2005 and 2030, Western Europe's working-age population – aged 15-64 – is projected to shrink by about 7%. In Russia, that figure is 19%. Although Russia's population is just over a third of Western Europe's, absolute declines in working-age population promise to be roughly similar in magnitude over the coming decades. On current mortality schedules, seven of eight Swiss men 20 years of age can expect to celebrate their 65th birthday; only three out of seven Russian men can have the same hope.

In and of itself, the sharp falloff in working-age population – together with the rising ratio of older citizens to Russians of working age – frames a serious demographic challenge for the effort to propel economic growth and raise living standards. But the problem is even more acute than these raw numbers might suggest. For Russia's mortality problem is concentrated in its working-age population.

For over 40 years, Russia has been witness to a truly terrifying upsurge of illness and death precisely among those who ordinarily form the backbone of a modern economy. In 2005, for men between the ages of 27-57, death rates were typically 100% higher than they had been in 1965. As for Russia's women, their situation might only be described as "good" in comparison to that terrible record for Russian men. Death rates for women aged 26-59 in 2005 were at least 40% higher than in 1965 – and for some ages, death rates were up by 50%, 60%, or even 70%.

The causes of death are clear enough: Skyrocketing mortality from cardiovascular disease and injuries (accidents, poisoning, suicides and homicides). The underlying causes here are harder to pinpoint, but we can mention a number of plausible factors: Poor diet, lack of exercise, heavy smoking, and social stress. Russia's deadly love affair with the vodka bottle remains legendary, and looks to be another significant factor, with per capita consumption extraordinarily high.

Russia's "excess mortality" threatens to straitjacket Russian productivity and development. It is true that Russia has enjoyed robust economic growth rates over the past several years, but this has primarily been generated by oil and gas exports. In the modern world economy, a country's health profile is an essential element of its sustainable economic potential – quite arguably, the key element. How can Russia hope to be a vibrant modern economy with a dwindling and debilitated workforce and a life expectancy which is a full 12 years shorter than in Western Europe? No modern society can expect to enjoy an Irish standard of living on an Indian survival schedule.

If Russia is to arrive in the front ranks of 21st-century economies, the yawning health gap that separates Russians from the rest of Europe and all other industrialized democracies has to be closed. Nothing less than a protracted national struggle may be necessary to achieve this goal.

Georgy Bovt, writing in the Moscow Times:

Whenever something bad happens to a Russian child who was adopted by parents from the United States, Russian television is bound to show it as the leading story. These media reports, however, rarely dig below the surface to find out what motivated foreigners to adopt these children in the first place and to explain why these adoptions ended so tragically.

In place of objective reporting, the Russian media are quick to pass judgment on the adoptive parents, leading viewers to conclude that Americans adopt Russian children to abuse them -- and, in extreme cases, to kill them. After each incident, lawmakers toughen procedures for foreign adoptions and sometimes call for their outright prohibition.

The recent story of the Emelyantsev family from Utah is a typical example. The mother, Kimberly, is from the United States, and the father, Fyodor, is a Russian citizen. Their 14-month-old adopted Russian boy died on March 7. An autopsy determined that the child had died from a skull fracture that doctors said was the result of blunt-force trauma. Both parents were arrested, and Kimberly Emelyantsev was charged with first-degree murder.

The boy was one of three Russian children the family had adopted in addition to the two children they already had. Two of the adopted children suffered from serious illnesses, and the Emelyantsevs knowingly took them in. The boy who died had suffered from Down syndrome. The medical aspect of the Emelyantsev case is important, because it is nearly impossible for foreigners to adopt healthy Russian orphans. Instead, they adopt mostly handicapped children or those with serious hereditary illnesses.

After the Emelyantsev case was widely publicized, the public received another dose of anti-Americanism. In reality, such incidents in the United States occur in only one of every 15,000 adoption cases. U.S. and Canadian parents adopted around 15,000 Russian children in recent years, and there were 14 to 16 known deaths among all adopted children over the last 10 years. Two years ago, following a similar tragedy involving a Russian child adopted by American parents, U.S. authorities tried to organize a media tour to show how adopted children from Russia were faring in their new country and how the system for monitoring their living conditions was functioning. They invited a few members of the State Duma and the Federation Council, but there were no takers.

Russian laws governing adoptions by foreigners have gotten stricter in recent years. Even accredited adoption agencies are finding it difficult to manage -- primarily because of the pervasive corruption among bureaucrats. Only in the last two years has the number of Russians adopting children -- 7,000 -- exceeded that of foreigners adopting Russian children -- 6,000.

The Education and Science Ministry is now demanding tougher rules for overseas adoptive parents, suggesting that they be obligated to register with the state's orphan database, undergo psychological testing and take a preparatory course for bringing adopted children into the home.

Such measures are worthwhile, but if we are so concerned about the fate of Russian children adopted by foreigners, why do we remain silent about the children adopted by Russians? There are no statistics available on domestic abuse cases of adopted children. We know only that 2,500 Russian children die at their parents' hands every year, according to Interior Ministry statistics. We don't know how many of those children were adopted because the country has no system for monitoring the progress of adopted children. But we do know that 1 million adoptive parents were deprived of their adoption rights because of child abuse. Another 2,500 families changed their minds and sent the children they had adopted back to the orphanages.

Unfortunately, you rarely see these stories on Russian television. Is it really more important for us to show that Americans are worse than Russians?

Paul Goble reports on Russia's seething hatred for its children:

Two of every five Russian children say that their parents have beaten or otherwise abused them, a tragedy that drives more than 50,000 of them to flee their homes every year, often landing in a life of crime – 11,000 are now imprisoned -- and, when they have children of their own, treating their own children in the same way. Russian officials agree that such violence is now one of the most serious problems their country faces, but because so many intractable factors are involved – high rates of alcoholism, widespread tolerance for such behavior, and significant shortcomings in the legal system – they are divided on what should be done. Some believe that Moscow must make the legal penalties for such crimes far harsher. Others argue that the government must both combat alcoholism and work to change popular attitudes. And still a third group says that only a comprehensive strategy has any chance of combating this problem.

All these positions were very much in evidence at a meeting on Wednesday of the Russian government’s new commission on the defense of the rights of minors. Speaking to the group, MVD chief Rashid Nurgaliyev noted that the authorities last year charged 6,000 parents with such crimes. But that figure is almost certainly only the tip of the iceberg: More than 2,000 children died from parental violence in 2007, suggesting just how widespread such crimes may now be. And one participant pointed out that up to 90 percent of the cases of parental sex abuse of children never enter the legal system. Not surprisingly given his area of responsibilities, Nurgaliyev called for dealing with the problem through the legal system, increasing penalties on parents found guilty of violence against their children, adopting new laws on the protection of children and setting up a countrywide system of juvenile courts. But other participants were unsure that would work. As Oleg Zykov of the Social Chamber pointed out, increasing fines on alcoholic and sadistic parents might do little to improve their behavior and could result in more suffering if those parents then cut back in the amount they spend on food for their offspring.

While welcoming some increase in penalties, Aleksandra Ochirova, the chairman of the Social Chamber’s social and demographic policy committee, said that would not be sufficient unless the government also worked to change popular attitudes about family violence. Others taking part in the meeting called for improving children’s homes, but Tatyana Yakovleva, a member of the Duma’s public health committee, noted that “90 percent” of the children in these institutions have a living “father or mother” to whom they could in principle return were the latter not violent. But despite these disagreements – and they reflect broader debates in Russian society and government – participants did agree on three things. First, they backed the idea that the country needed to adopt some kind of law on the rights of children. At present, child protection is the subject of a variety of federal and regional laws.

According to Yakovleva, an analysis of 3,000 pieces of legislation governing the treatment of children found that many of the existing laws do not give priority to prevention of such crimes but rather discuss only how the government should respond once a child is a victim. Second, they agreed that the government must do more to ensure that fathers pay alimony so that single mothers will be better able to take their children. Some 4.5 million Russian children now life with a single parent, typically the mother, and only one third of such parents are receiving any alimony or child support payments. And third, they backed improving social services and intervention efforts, with one speaker even noting that sometimes parents with plenty of money drink it all up leaving the children with no food and no possibilities to obtain the medical and educational services they need.

Parental violence against children is found in every society, but it appears to be especially widespread in Russia, given the level of alcoholism and lack of social sanctions against such acts. As a result, anyone who cares about children and the future can only hope that Moscow’s new focus on this issue will lead to some improvement.

Paul Goble reports:

Russian defense officials are now scrambling to cope with that country’s worsening demographic situation, one that could, in the words of one prominent commentator, leave them with no good options in the military area and “an army with no troops” or officers. In an article in this week’s Moscow Times, Alexander Golts, the deputy editor of Yezhednevniy zhurnal, notes that the country’s top leadership is in denial on this point, routinely claiming that the country is “in excellent condition” and that the number of births is rising. On the one hand, in this and “in almost every area,” Russia’s problems as Vladimir Putin leaves office and Dmitry Medvedev assumes the presidency, “the country’s problems are a approaching a crisis point,” one that can’t be solved by throwing “petrodollars into ineffective and outdated institutions.” And on the other, the current small uptick in the number of births, one that is the product of the entrance of a larger number of women into prime child-bearing ages rather than a solution to the country’s low birthrate, does nothing to solve the problem of military staffing now and for the next 18 years at least.That is because the men and women who must fill the ranks and the officer corps over that period are already born, and there are simply not enough of them to maintain forces at the strength levels the Russian government prefers and shows no signs of changing voluntarily.

In his article, Golts describes what the defense ministry has been doing in response to this “crisis” both among ordinary soldiers, where demographic constraints have attracted the greatest notice, and in the officer corps, where these limitations may have an even greater impact. The number of young men reaching 18 in 2009, he points out, will be only 834,000, far fewer than in the past. Approximately half of them will enroll in higher educational institutions and be deferred and many others will be exempted from service on health grounds. That means, Golts argues, that the incoming president “will be forced either to drastically reduce the size of the army or to cancel military deferments for college students, thereby crippling the existing educational system,” infuriating students and parents and hurting the economy. (Moreover, the much ballyhooed shift to a more professional military with contract soldiers is not happening as quickly as many civilian policy makers had thought possible, a reflection of still relatively low salaries and even worse conditions among those at the bottom ranks of military service.)

In anticipation of this, the defense ministry has begun drafting college graduates, having reduced their opportunities to become reserve officers by cutting back on the number of military departments in some 200 higher schools and reducing financial aid to students in them. That stopgap measure may help fill the ranks for the next draft cycle or two but only at the cost to the military of reducing the number of admittedly poorly performing junior officers and to the broader society of an angry population and a reduction in the number of well-trained specialists for the economy.

With regard to the officer corps, the country’s political elite faces serious problems as well. This week, the defense ministry announced plans to extend the term of service for officers by five years, presenting it as an opportunity for commander to acquire and thus retire at higher ranks. But such PR fools no one. On the one hand, last year, Golts points out, the defense ministry added an additional year to the minimum time in service required for advancing to the next higher rank, thus, forcing “officers to serve longer terms at the lowest rank of platoon or company commanders.” That thus vitiates the meaning of this week’s announcement because “the ability to rise rapidly through the ranks is one of the main -- if not the only -- motivating factors for officers to continue serving.” Given the low salaries of Russian officers, “even the slightest delay at the bottom rung of the career ladder makes extended service pointless.” And consequently, Golts writes, “there is no basis for believing that an officer who has earned the right to retire with a pension will choose to extend his service for as much as a single day. These half-baked proposals clearly will not solve the crisis of the insufficient number of officers in the armed forces.”

“Were the Kremlin planning to have a small professional army,” Golts says, “everything would be fine.” But it isn’t and doesn’t show any sign of being willing to shift in that direction. Consequently, the armed services and thus the political elite are facing a real crisis, however upbeat everyone currently is trying to be. As that crisis deepens, Golts concludes, “the generals will throw themselves at the feet of the new commander in chief and say, "Dear, kind tsar! Nothing has worked -- not transferring a percentage of the draftees to contract service, nor switching to one year of mandatory service nor eliminating officer-recruits."

Paul Goble on Russia's worsening demographic apocalypse:

Even as Russian officials celebrate and Western media report a small uptick in the number of births in the Russian Federation, demographers in that country’s Academy of Sciences are predicting that life expectancy among Russian men will continue to fall over the next four decades, possibly to below 50 years from birth.

If these projections are correct – and they are based on internationally accepted models -- they mean that any demographic gains for the country from declines in infant mortality and from any increase in the birthrate will be more than wiped out, with all the economic, political and military consequences that entails. And that in turn suggests that the Russian government will need to devote at least as much attention and resources to the far more intractable problem of male mortality as it is currently giving in its efforts to boost birthrates by providing new benefits to women and families who have more children.

In an article in the current issue of Demoscope Weekly, Yevgeny Andreyev says that current research suggests that in the best case, male life expectancy will fall another year or so by the middle of the century, with the possibility that it might decline as much as eight or nine years.Such declines not only would wipe out most if not all of the benefits of the pro-natalist policies that Moscow is currently promoting but would also, because the incidence of male mortality is higher among ethnic Russians than most other groups, contribute to an even more rapid shift in the ethnic balance in the population. Although Andreyev does not address the causes for this in this article, they are well-known: On the one hand, Russia has succeeded in reducing infant mortality and is likely to continue to do so. But on the other, Russian men because of high levels of alcohol consumption and health problems continue to die younger than other groups. Noting that Russian demographers have good age and mortality data for the period 1956 to 2006, the Moscow scholar points out that mortality rates among Russian males under 15 have continued to decline but those among older Russian males have increased and appear likely to continue to do so over the next 40 years.

Drawing on this data set and using the ARIMA program of SPSS 15.0, he continues, Russian demographers predict that under the best of circumstances, life expectancy of Russian men will decline by a year or so over that period, while under less favorable ones, this figure could fall by as much as eight or nine years. The likely figure – and he argues that there is a 95 percent probability that the it will fall between these two – will be a decline of three or four years, a development that would leave Russian men at mid-century with a life expectancy of just under 55, far lower than in any other developed country. Indeed, even if that mid-range figure proves to be correct, the Russian Federation by mid-century would then rank in the bottom quarter of all countries in the world on this measure, a development that represents a clear indictment of a regime that is routinely described as awash with cash from the sale of oil and gas abroad.

INTERFAX reports on the paradise that is Vladimir Putin's Russia:

Russia is the world's leader in lethal suicides among 15-19 year-old teenagers, the 12th World Russian People's Council resolution reads summing up the Council's work on Friday.

As to youth spiritual crisis, the forum's participants consider it necessary to adopt laws protecting children and youth from "consequences of moral crisis." Priority to be given to laws on public morals, video and computer games, children toys, teens free time organization and control, moral values in sexual relations, informative production harmful for teens morals, health and development. To motivate the defense of morality, the Council's participants have pointed out that Russia is facing a family crisis.

"This country is among leaders in divorces. According the UN Children Foundation, the number of non-marital children equaled to 30% in 2004," the document reads.

Besides, Russia overran the majority of countries for abortions as its number has recently exceeded the number of births. The underaged abortions make significant part of it and total to 4% among 15 year-old girls.

The resolution also notes that Russia holds the first place for abandoned children: every 38th child live in state orphanages, patron or foster families. Finally, Russia's murder rate is the highest in Europe (26 incidents for 100,000 people), the forum's participants state.

The BEARR Trust reports:

The World Bank and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have held a two day conference entitled ‘The Fight against Non-infectious Illnesses and Injuries in the Commonwealth of Independent States’ (CIS).

According to the WHO’s statistics, life expectancy in the CIS is on average 11 years shorter than in the EU because of the frequent incidence of circulatory diseases and cancer, and drinking/smoking. For example, the average life expectancy for males in Russia is 58, which is twenty years shorter than in Sweden. David Leon, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, takes the view that the majority of deaths amongst men of working age could be prevented by diminishing the amount of smoking and alcohol abuse. He says that in Russia 33% of men and 35% of women aged between 35 and 69 die because of heavy smoking. Smoking causes circulatory diseases and is twice as likely to kill as cancer.

‘In order to reduce the number of smokers,’ maintains David Leon, ‘Russia should sign and ratify the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and also set out national priorities, including:

• increasing taxes on sales of tobacco
• controls on smoking in public
• restrictions on advertising.’

Scholar/blogger Paul Goble has previously reported that Russia is on the way to becoming a Muslim-dominated country; now he reveals how the Kremlin is seeking to manipulate military call-ups to continue Slavic domination in the ranks:

Confronted with what commanders see as a disastrous demographic situation, the Russian defense ministry has been manipulating this fall’s draft in an effort to secure a more ethnically Russian and less culturally Muslim military, according to an analysis published in a Moscow newspaper today.

The declining number of men in the prime draft-age cohort in Russia and the rising share that members of Muslim nationalities form among their number has confronted the Russian military with several unattractive options, according to Vladimir Mukhin in NG-Regiony. If the armed services rely more heavily on professional soldiers rather than draftees, that will put additional strains on the Russian military budget. If the army drafts more ethnic Russians, it will likely harm the economy by removing from the workforce some of the most qualified professionals. But if the army drafts men in equal proportions across the Russian Federation, Mukhin writes, then the military will increasingly consist of men from historically Muslim nationalities, something that commanders fear could undermine discipline among those in uniform. According to Mukhin, are convinced that “a large stratum of Orthodox Slavs in the army guarantees stability, excludes the threat of terrorist actions and other extremist phenomena, and also reduces the probability of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional conflicts among the soldiery.” Consequently, although they are loathe to say anything about it given the sensitivity of ethnic relations, officials responsible for drafting men into the military and other security agencies are carefully but quietly reducing draft quotas for what they call “socially unfavorable regions” like Daghestan Chechnya and Ingushetia. But because it is precisely these historically Islamic regions have relatively larger pools of potential draftees, this effort has the effect of allowing more “ethnic Muslims” to escape military service while forcing a higher percentage of ethnic Russians to don a uniform.

In the past, officials responsible for the draft did not need to do this. While Muslim nationalities were growing faster than the ethnic Russians, the difference in numbers was not so great that, after members of the former were rejected on medical grounds, that this difference had a major effect. But now, not only are young Russians now more likely to be medically unfit than they were earlier, as numerous articles attest, but the difference between historically Russian regions and historically Islamic ones as a source of draftees in the Russian military is staggering and potentially explosive. Mukhin notes that this year, the draft age cohort in Chechnya is approximately equal to that of all the predominantly ethnic Russian federation subjects in the Leningrad military district. But no one in the Russian military would be pleased were the two areas to yield the same number of draftees. Consequently, the “NG-Regiony” journalist continues, the Russian Federation General Staff has “artificially carried out draft measures which increase” the number of ethnic Russian draftees relative to the number of ethnic Muslim ones by expanding quotas in areas where the former predominate and reducing them where the latter live. So far, the military’s tilt to ethnic Russians against ethnic Muslims has not been the subject of much discussion in the media, but some ethnic Russians -- including activists in groups like the Soldiers’ Mothers Committees -- are beginning to notice that their sons have a greater chance of being called up than do the sons of Muslims. In the future, this trend could become even more pronounced, if current demographic trends continue and if the Russian military continues its current set of preferences. The first is virtually a certainty, and the second is almost as likely given the statements of many senior commanders and their links to the Russian Orthodox Church.

According to Kommersant-Vlast’, today, declines in the number of men in the draft age cohort and the simultaneous increase in the share ethnic Muslims form within it are set to increase over the next decade of more, further reducing Moscow’s options and sparking new tensions. The article notes that Russian statistics show that the numbers of people in the workforce in Russia for the first time began to fall this year after gradually rising even during the difficult years of the 1990s because of the Russian Federation’s complicated age structure.But this year, the decline was only a miniscule 300,000. Next year, according to an estimate prepared by the Moscow Center of Demography and Human Ecology, the decline will be more than twice that, and by 2010, it will exceed 1.2 million each year, a figure that will continue until at least 2020. This trend, the article suggests, “cannot but have an impact on the Russian economy” and on the Russian military but is one that current Russian policymakers, however much they try and talk, can do little or nothing about because those involved have already been born. And officials cannot soon have much effect on the changing ethnic mix, given the higher birthrates among Muslims than among ethnic Russians. As the article notes, the ten regions with the highest birthrates per 1,000 are all non-Russian, with most being Muslim, while nine of the ten with the lowest are predominantly ethnic Russian. Neither ethnic Russians nor ethnic Muslims are likely to remain entirely comfortable with a situation in which Moscow keeps the Russian Federation’s military and security services ethnically Russian just as demographic forces make that country’s population ever less so.

Scholar/blogger Paul Goble looks behind the neo-Soviet propaganda of the Kremlin's demographic numbers and exposes a web of lies:

For much of the last decade, Russians have referred to the consequences of their country’s declining birthrate and rising mortality rate as “the Russian cross” – the coming together and crossing of these two trends that have driven that country’s total population down more or less continuously since 1993. But now Moscow faces what might be called a second “Russian cross:” the intersection of continuing declines in the number of Russians and a new rise in the number of migrants from other parts of Russia or from abroad, a combination with potentially explosive consequences for that country’s future.

Russian demographers this week reported that natural decline of the Russian population – a statistic that captures the relationship between the number of births and the number of deaths – improved somewhat during the first six months of 2007 compared to the same period a year earlier. In the first six months of 2006, they report, there were 415,000 more deaths than births among Russian citizens, while in the first half of 2007, that figure stood at 307,000 – an improvement that continues a general trend since 2000 rather than being the direct result of any recent policy changes. Moreover, compared to last year, more regions of the country showed a natural increase in the population, 18 this year versus 13 a year ago. But as in the past, all the leaders in this area are non-Russian regions: Chechnya, Ingushetia, Tyva, Daghestan, and Khanty-Mansiik.

Two recent reports, however, cast a shadow on such claims. On the one hand, a close analysis of demographic statistics in a city near Moscow found that local officials are misstating the figures to make it appear the situation is improving. How widespread that phenomenon may be is, of course, unknown with any certainty. But it is almost certainly to be found in more than one place and could be sufficiently common to distort the statistics that officials in the central Russian government are using. And on the other hand, last Friday, a Leningrad military district official said that the declining number of young men in the draft pool might force Moscow to increase the length of required military service, a step that would certainly heat up the political situation in Russia now.

But however that may be, it is the second “Russian cross” that is likely to attract the greater attention in the coming months. After a period of relative decline in the growth of the country’s population as a result of immigration (1995-2003), the number of immigrants is again rising – and rising rapidly. During the first six months of this year, there were 117,000 registered immigrants, compared to 67,000 in the first half of 2006, and 50,000 in the first half of 2005. While some of this increase may simply reflect a greater willingness on the part of officials to register new arrivals, senior officials are generally pleased by this trend. These new arrivals thus make up for an increasing share of the continuing natural decline of Russian Federation residents. And at the same time, these new arrivals not only can fill otherwise vacant job positions but also help keep upward wage pressure and thus inflation down. But the arrival of migrants, both from non-Russian regions of the Russian Federation moving into predominantly Russian regions and from Central Asia and the Caucasus moving into all locations in that country, often trigger xenophobic reactions among the indigenous populations, Russian or non-Russian.

That danger – which is reflected in the very name of one of the largest extreme Russian nationalist groups, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) – was the subject of a discussion organized in Irkutsk last Friday by the Open Russia-Irkutsk Foundation. Emil Pain, director of the Moscow Center of Ethno-Political and Regional Research and one of Russia’s leading specialists on xenophobia, told the meeting that in contrast to its state-sponsored and imperial forms, “spontaneous nationalism” is on the rise “throughout the entire post-Soviet space.” One of the reasons for this, he continued, is a fundamental shift in the way in which people evaluate their own status. In the past, he said, “people compared their life with earlier periods.” But now, Pain suggested, they compare their situations not with the past but with that of other people who live around them. Such a shift in the basis of evaluating status, of course, reflects growing income inequality, and that in turn helps to explain why many “natives” in the Russian Federation are sensitive to what some of them see as the advantages that “migrants” have over them. Other speakers expanded on why the attitudes of one ethnic group to another may, especially if the latter is perceived as an outsider, be hardening in the Russian Federation today. Oleg Vornonin, a specialist on Siberia at the Moscow Carnegie Center, said that one reason is that there is more talk than action about this problem. But Svetlana Plokhotnikova, who heads the Irkutsk oblast department for work with ethnic communities, said that she and other officials there were doing everything to promote the integration of outsiders into Irkutsk society, particularly through a ramified system of more than 70 national-cultural autonomies.

She acknowledged, however, that her office had not been able to find a sufficient number of leaders “who could create inter-confessional youth organizations which would be capable of becoming an alternative to nationalist organizations.” Her admission on this point, of course, is likely to prove more significant than her claim of progress.