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  • Russia is huge the country spans through eleven different time zones across two different

  • Continents and takes up about one-eighth of all the land on earth

  • Despite all of this though. Russia has a critical problem. Russia is shrinking it's not shrinking in land

  • Russia has plenty of that

  • Instead russia's shrinking problem is with her population, which has been nearly

  • Continuously going down for nearly 30 years

  • Now when you're only looking at the size of countries based on how much land they have Russia clearly wins that race

  • but when you factor in Russia's population of about one hundred and forty four million people

  • Russia comes in as only the ninth largest country in the world behind a lot of other countries that are

  • Significantly smaller in land like Pakistan Nigeria and most interestingly

  • Bangladesh a country that is

  • 118 times

  • Smaller than Russia but has over 20 million more people living there an even stranger case is the island of Java

  • Inside of Indonesia. Java is

  • 123 times smaller than Russia is but the islands population of

  • 141 million easily compares with Russia's entire population of

  • 144 million and it didn't used to always be this way as recently as

  • 1900 the territory of modern Russia itself without factoring in the rest of the Russian empires

  • population at the time had the third highest

  • population of any country in the world only remaining behind

  • Qing China and British controlled India

  • there were more Russians at the time than there were Americans but within a century all of that had

  • Completely changed and the biggest reason why it changed and the reason why modern Russia is still struggling so much with this

  • problem is largely because of the second world war a war which absolutely

  • devastated the Soviet Union and Russia specifically in just four years of war between 1941 and

  • 1945 the USSR lost a mind-boggling

  • 13.7 percent of her entire

  • Population if we divide the USSR up into its separate Republic's we can see that Russia itself lost

  • 12.7% of

  • all of her people more than one out of every four people in Belarus died while Ukraine

  • Lithuania Latvia Armenia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia

  • Estonia and Moldova also all took heavy losses

  • along with other Eastern European countries like Poland the fact of the matter is is Eastern Europe in general took a

  • Massive population hit in only four years and the scars that that war left upon society here can still be felt today

  • one statistic that I'm reminded about that is

  • Particularly haunting is the one about males born inside of the Soviet Union during

  • 1923 if you were born a boy

  • Anywhere inside of the USSR that year then right at Birth. You would only be given a

  • 20% chance of staying alive long enough to see your 23rd birthday in

  • 1946 80

  • Percent of all boys born in the USSR that year would be dead by the time of January 1st

  • 1946 just

  • 23 years later

  • if we take a look at Russia's population pyramid a chart which shows

  • people living inside of a country of all ages

  • You can see healthy growth at first and then a massive gash during the years of World War two in the years immediately

  • Following the war the population began to rebound but slowed down in the late 1960s

  • this slowdown was the first echo of the Second World War all

  • Those millions of young people who died in the 1940s who didn't have any children of their own

  • meant that all of their millions of unborn children

  • Weren't alive to have their own children twenty to twenty-five years later by the time of the late 1960s

  • Which caused population growth to slag?

  • fast-forward another 20 to 25 years to the early

  • 1990s and you can see the second echo of World War 2 where the great-grandchildren of

  • Everybody who died during the war would have been born had they survived the echo of wars effect on

  • Population at the time was worsened by the fact that in 1991 the USSR

  • itself collapsed which through Russia into deep economic and social

  • upheaval the birthrate plummeted while the death rates soared Russia experienced its first actual drop in population since

  • 1945 in

  • 1992 the first year after the Soviet Union's collapse

  • Massive economic and social hardships experienced in the chaos of that collapse

  • contributed to many people just deciding not to have children or to migrate away from the country and

  • Combined with a second echo of the war Russia's population

  • continued to shrink every single year from 1992 up until 2012 Russia began to grow again between

  • 2013 and 2015 but then has shrunk more every year from

  • 2016 up to the present some of this modern shrinkage can be attributed to the second world wars third echo on russian society

  • Which is happening right now

  • the

  • Great-great-grandchildren the people who died without children in the war would normally be getting born right now. And since that's obviously not happening

  • It's having a marked effect, but there are other factors at work as well

  • Another is that Russia is currently experiencing more economic hardships in 2014

  • Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula a move which added over 2 million people into Russia's population

  • pool and which still wasn't enough to boost Russia's population back to the level seen in

  • 1991 with several sanctions passed against Russia by several countries around the world as a consequence of this annexation

  • Russia shrunk from the world's ninth largest economy in 2014 a position equal to Russia's rank in population

  • Down to the world's 12th largest economy five years later in 2019 with via Canada and South Korea

  • overtaking her another problem that hasn't been mentioned yet and that

  • Certainly plays a factor is Russia's geography and the fact that most of it is pretty inhospitable in modern times 77

  • percent of Russia's entire population or

  • 110 million people live inside just the European part of Russia where the temperatures are more mild

  • But this part of Russia only accounts for 23 percent of Russia's land the rest belongs to a huge region called

  • Siberia which is the inverse of European Russia it accounts for

  • 77 percent of Russia's land, but only 23 percent of Russia's population if

  • Siberia was an independent country. It would still be the largest country on earth in size

  • But it would have a smaller population than California

  • Siberia is largely

  • Undeveloped and extremely hostile to human habitation with brutal and long winters with absurdly cold temperatures

  • because of this most of Siberia is

  • completely empty without many human settlements and as a result Russia doesn't really have as much land that can be settled by people as

  • It may seem at first

  • Bangladesh and the island of Java may be over a hundred times smaller than Russia in total land

  • But they arguably have more easily settleable and rich

  • Agricultural land than Russia does which in part helps to explain why they have higher or similar populations

  • Russia's geography has in a way always been one of the country's greatest challenges to overcome

  • And it continues to be a massive hurdle for the country to overcome in order to expand her

  • population when you combine all of these factors together along with other issues like a

  • moderately low rate of immigration in regards to Russia's size and it begins to paint an overall picture if the current shrinking

  • Population trend continues up until 2050 Russia will find itself in a position where she is only the 14th largest country in the world

  • far behind countries like Nigeria Pakistan

  • Ethiopia Bangladesh the Philippines

  • Mexico the Democratic Republic of the Congo and even Egypt

  • Those estimates are the official estimates of the United Nations though, and they're far from the most pessimistic

  • other estimates by other demographers believe that if the population shrinkage returns to the same levels that Russia experienced during the

  • 1990s the population could dwindle down to as little as

  • 110 million making Russia about equal to what Iran will probably look like at the same time in terms of population

  • Numbers the next 30 years will almost certainly be an interesting and decisive time for the Russian nation

  • Understanding Russia is complicated especially from an outsider's perspective

  • Winston Churchill once said of Russia that it is a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside of an enigma

  • So if you really want to go into some serious depth behind

  • understanding Russian history and civilization

  • There's no better book than a history of Russia from Peter the Great to Gorbachev written and narrated by Mark Steinberg

  • The entire audio book is offered on audible and it's nearly 19 hours long

  • The book would usually cost 41 95, but you can listen to all of it completely for free at audible

  • Honorable is a leading provider of audiobooks and other spoken word entertainment

  • They have an unmatched selection of great titles covering everything from science fiction and fantasy to history and business

  • I

  • Really love audiobooks because you can essentially listen to and learn about anything

  • While you're doing anything if you're stuck in a commute to work

  • It can become a great opportunity to listen to your favorite book or subject and you can actually begin to enjoy

  • Yourself best of all though is that you can start listening with a 30-day free trial and choose to listen to any one book

  • They have for free. It doesn't even have to be about Russian history. But if you're into that hey

  • And you'll get to audible originals for free, too

  • You just need to visit audible.com slash real life lore or text real life floor 2 5 0 0 - 5 0

  • 0 and as always thank you for watching

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