In an article published on the Russian website Voyennoye Obozreniye, writer Alexander Odintsov focused on demographic data which, he argued, raises fundamental questions about Russia’s ethnic, religious and civilisational future.
According to the figures he cited, the number of ethnic Russians fell by 4.9 million between 2002 and 2010, before declining by a further seven million according to the 2021 census.
Alongside the decline in the ethnic Russian population, the proportion of Orthodox Christians is also falling. Odintsov argues that Russia is facing a serious civilisational crisis that is not merely economic, but existential.
He cited a 2020 population estimate based on religious affiliation which placed the number of Muslims in Russia at 14.5 million, around 10% of the population. By 2024, he said, that figure had risen to approximately 20 million, or 13.6%, placing Russia among the world’s 20 countries with the largest Muslim populations for the first time.
If current trends continue, Odintsov argued, the number of ethnic Russians could fall to around 90 million by 2040, while their share of the population could decline to 50% by 2060.
At the same time, Muslim peoples in the Caucasus are experiencing some of the country’s highest population growth rates.
A Demographic Crisis
Odintsov said Russia recorded a natural population decline of around 596,200 people in 2024, an increase of 20.4% from the 495,300 recorded in 2023.
He argued that the direction of current demographic policy was difficult to understand and that Russians had a right to know what was happening in their country.
According to the writer, Russia has experienced three demographic catastrophes over the past 124 years: the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War, the Second World War, and what he described as the liberal reforms that began in 1992 and continue to the present.
In his view, the current situation is the result of a long-term project aimed at weakening Russia and reducing its population, which he attributed to Western states and suggested may have begun even before perestroika.
Faced with what he described as a serious civilisational challenge, Odintsov argued that Russia must preserve its ethnic balance while maintaining the role of the Russian people as the state-forming nation. Otherwise, he warned, the country could fragment and be absorbed into the spheres of influence of the West, Turkey and China.
What Is Driving the Decline?
Odintsov identified a broad set of factors behind what he described as Russia’s demographic catastrophe.
These include deterioration in the employment structure of an economy heavily dependent on raw materials, insufficient numbers of high-income jobs, hidden unemployment and falling incomes.
He also cited the demographic consequences of the steep decline in birth rates during the economic shocks of the 1990s, high housing costs, inadequate housing supply at current prices, high abortion rates and the concentration of people in major cities, where he said families living in three-room apartments typically have no more than two children.
Other factors, according to the writer, include what he described as a spiritual and moral crisis, a sense of futility, the entrenchment of individualism, insufficient promotion of family life and childbearing, increasing infertility which he linked to imported food products, and problems in the pension system that reduce grandparents’ ability to help care for grandchildren.
Odintsov also claimed that around 60% of the population lives in poverty and cannot afford adequate housing, making having children an expensive luxury.
At the same time, he argued, companies seeking maximum profits continue to drive property prices higher, even though housing is the second most important requirement for forming a family and having children after income.
A Crisis of Values
According to Odintsov, a powerful propaganda machine has operated continuously in Russia over the past 20 years with the aim of changing what is now called the “mentality of the people”.
He said traditional institutions, including the family, had been subjected to severe media pressure.
The current situation, he argued, cannot continue indefinitely and must eventually be changed.
He also questioned why the authorities, while attempting to compensate for the falling birth rate, continue to encourage what he described as a dangerous migration policy.
As an example, he noted that more than one million citizens of Central Asian republics had obtained Russian citizenship over the previous seven years.
He also referred to plans for Russia to receive one million migrant workers from India because of labour shortages, alongside talks with Sri Lanka and North Korea over the recruitment of foreign workers.
Despite this, Odintsov argued that Russia still lacks a coherent objective for national development, resource utilisation and an active demographic policy.
He cited polling suggesting that almost half of Russians aged between 18 and 45, around 46% of respondents, do not want children, largely because of financial instability or simply a lack of desire to have them.
Russian Islam and Migration
Odintsov argued that one of the most important elements of national policy should be the preservation of religious peace and a coherent national identity.
He warned that ethnic and religious tensions that have persisted since the collapse of the Soviet Union could become extremely dangerous and destabilise Russia’s internal peace.
According to the writer, “Russian Islam” is generally peaceful. However, he claimed that some branches of Islam, particularly outside Russia, are aggressive and expansionist and seek to conduct subversive activities inside the country.
He argued that such developments cannot simply be ignored because, in his view, they concern the preservation of Russia’s present and future.
Odintsov described Russia as an Orthodox country whose internal alliance with Muslims represents one of the pillars of the state and said this relationship should be valued.
At the same time, however, he drew a distinction between Muslims historically rooted in Russia and more recent Muslim migration.
In his formulation, there are “our Muslims” and others.
He contrasted Muslims from historically Soviet societies with more recent generations of migrants who, he claimed, do not speak Russian and are effectively creating separate enclaves.
Migrants arriving from Central Asian republics are, according to Odintsov, highly religious and strongly attached to their traditions, making even limited integration difficult.
He acknowledged that their children, educated in Russian schools and receiving a secular education, may be different, although he added that this would not apply in every case.
Odintsov warned that when the number of such “new citizens” reaches several million, they will begin legally demanding their rights, which he predicted would create a serious confrontation.
He therefore questioned why Russia should, in his words, fill the country with populations he considers culturally alien.
From his perspective, Russia primarily needs more of its own citizens, particularly Russians and other Slavic peoples.
He further argued that the bureaucracy responsible for migration policy is influenced by what he described as global forces waging war against the “Russian world” and Orthodox Christianity.
At the same time, he said state measures designed to increase the birth rate had so far failed to deliver meaningful results.
According to Odintsov, financial allowances and incentives are often insufficient to produce a sustained demographic effect because social welfare is not considered financially attractive for those administering the system.
He said Russia’s maternity capital programme initially had a positive effect on the birth rate between 2013 and 2015, but that inflation later weakened its impact.
Taxes, Housing and Pronatalist Policies
To increase the birth rate, Odintsov argued that Russia needs an innovative economic model that is not dependent on raw materials.
He also called for encouraging people to live in villages and suburban areas rather than concentrating them in major cities.
Among the measures he proposed are policies resembling those used in the Soviet Union, including a tax on unmarried men over the age of 30.
He rejected what he described as the authorities’ traditional capitalist mortgage model, arguing that it was designed primarily to generate profits for banks and had reached a dead end.
First, he argued, mortgages are realistically available only to Russia’s relatively small middle class.
Second, he said mortgage debt drains the energy and financial resources of young families.
According to Odintsov, housing is being constructed but is not being sold in sufficient numbers. He argued that an alternative state-led housing programme could generate continuous growth in the construction sector, making it one of the country’s leading economic industries while attracting Russian citizens into construction jobs rather than relying primarily on migrant labour.
He also argued that the birth-rate problem would persist unless the state introduced a tax on people who do not have children.
In his view, such a tax would artificially create a social framework that would encourage men to become fathers before the age of 30, something he said existed in the Soviet Union and proved effective.
The second major measure he advocated was anti-abortion campaigning, alongside requiring women to pay for abortions themselves rather than having them covered through compulsory health insurance, except when medically necessary.
The third was greater use of public advertising encouraging marriage and large families, presenting childbearing as necessary for a dignified life and security in old age.
Odintsov also pointed to Russia’s vast areas of undeveloped and underused land, particularly beyond the Moscow region.
He argued that developing these territories, in a manner comparable to the expansion of the United States during the 19th century, could become a major engine of economic growth through electrification, gas infrastructure, housing construction, road development, industrial expansion and agricultural machinery production.
At the same time, he called for industrialisation in regional areas to manufacture the goods required for such development.
A Reverse Religious Trend
Odintsov also noted that some Muslims are converting to Christianity, although he said he had been unable to find recent data because religious communities are reluctant to publish such statistics.
He stressed that Russia is a multinational state in which Islam is the second-largest religion, meaning that serious misunderstanding between Orthodox Christians and Muslims could be extremely dangerous.
Conversely, he argued, mutual understanding between the two communities could produce significant benefits.
In his view, Orthodox Christianity and Islam differ in doctrine but share many practical moral principles, including respect for the family, honouring elders, rejection of violence and deception, compassion and assisting those in need.
On this basis, Odintsov concluded that Russia cannot become an Islamic country and that ethnic Russians cannot lose their state-forming role, despite the economic and demographic difficulties currently confronting the country.
He attributed the present situation to what he described as temporary Western external control that began during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, whom he called the “destroyer of communism”, and continued through the influence of what he described as a global government operating through pro-Western elites inside Russia.
Odintsov concluded that the time had come for Russian elites to sever their relationship with the West.
He argued that Russia would remain permanently a fortress of Christianity in what he considers its pure Orthodox form, and predicted that if the Russian people were eventually left with no other choice, they would rise up, as they had repeatedly done in the past, and expel those they regarded as their oppressors.
