The history of Russia in the 20th century in one population curve: Germany lost two wars but likely finally killed the USSR

Real economic growth and social progress critically depend on the influx of new working-age population, i.e. people of 15-19 years of age. This is not only mechanical replacement of old (above 60 to 64 years of age) working population but also the introduction of new goods/services ideas and methods of work learned in the school/university education process. The history of Russia in the 20^th century is an extreme example of the influence of such population/depopulation processes on the economic and social evolution. 

Figure 1 presents several curves describing the annual change in the population between 15 and 19 years of age as reported by the OECD. The original data cover the period between 1960 and 2018 (red line). In order to recover the time series in the past and to project them into the future, one can use populations of different ages and shift them by the age difference. For example, we take the population between 5 and 9 years of age, shift it by 10 years ahead (green line), and obtain an estimate for the next 10 years. The closeness of the red and green curves before 2018 just supports the accuracy of such an approach – the deviations are much smaller than the amplitude of the curves. In the past, we shift the population between 70 and 74 years and obtain a relatively accurate estimate down to the 1910s. The difference of amplitudes in the past is larger because of the population loss with age but one can also fit the amplitude by an introduction by some compensation factor. We do not do that here. 

The history of the Russian population (the curve is synchronized with 17 years of age as the center of the 15 to 19 years of age range) is shocking – there are several deep depopulation troughs, which must have an extremely negative influence on the country and society.  The first trough (i.g. negative population growth) is observed between 1931 and 1938 with the bottom around 1935. This peak is definitely related to WWI and the civil war. The bottom in 1935 should be the result of the most intensive phase in the civil war in 1917-1920, but the start of the trough is related to the beginning of WWI. Any depopulation peak creates depopulation waves in the future as a reflection of the absence of the population giving birth to the next generation in the 20 to 30 years after the depopulation event. One can see such waves in the populations of the countries with the largest losses in WWI and WWII.  For Russia, the population recovery which started in 1940 was killed by WWII, and the fall in the annual increase in the number of 17-year-olds started in 1945 with a sharp bottom in 1949. This trough is not related to the trough in 1935 but only to WWII. Therefore, these two dramatic depopulation events separated by 15 years started two sequences of depopulation waves with a period of around 25 years – which is likely the peak of the birth rate for the population in Russia.   

The next trough was observed around 1960 (the fall peaks in 1961) and the amplitude of the fall is defined by the synchronized action of the depopulation trough in the 1930s and the absence of a normal birth rate during WWII. Both depopulation waves made the trough very deep, but it was not the worst trough in terms of length. The next fall started in the mid-1970s and extended into the 1980s. This fall was more than 10 years long because the waves from the 1930s and the 1940s came together with a 10 spacing between their peaks. This was the period when the USSR was deconstructed because of severe economic problems driven by the absence of “fresh blood” so needed for real growth and technical progress. Germany lost WWI and WWII but the population wounds from these wars were deadly for the USSR. 

In the 21^st century, the deep and long (17-year-old) population fall came to Russia in 2004 and extended into the second half of the 2010s. This is the direct aftermath (wave) of the fall between 1977 and 1988, i.e. the two-depopulation-wave structure originated in WWI and WWII. Fortunately, the oil price was high during these negative waves period and economic and social structure did not suffer to the same extent as in the 1980s. The next depopulation trough will come to Russia in 2035-2040. Russia is rising.

It is interesting that the emergence of liberal ideas is well associated with the depopulation troughs. During population growth, the conservative ideas are likely more attractive.

Figure 1. The annual increment in the number of 15 to 19 year-olds as obtained from the OECD population table for the period between 1960 and 2018