Fertility in Russia and demographic waves

The article deals with the relationship between the current fertility and structural demographic waves in Russia in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The main demographic failures and demographic upsides for almost a century of the history of the country are described. The First World and Civil wars, the post-war famine of 1921-1922 resulted in the first demographic hole in the dynamics of birth rate and the structure of the population of Russia. Exactly over the next generation, this pit was significantly deepened by the Great Patriotic War and the post-war famine of 1946-1947. The first echo of the war was the generation of 1965-1971 years of birth, the second — the generation of 1995-2000 years of birth, the minimum in size for the entire Soviet period. The demographic hole of the second echo of the war was deepened by the cataclysms of the late 20th century, as well as by two anti-timing births. The first was a consequence of the curtailment of the demographic policy in the 1980s, the second was the postponement of births due to the crises of the 1990s. On the contrary, the prewar upswing in the birth rate in Russia after the abortion ban of 1936 laid the basis for the next rise in the birth rate in the late 1950s-early 1960s and in the mid-1980s. The second echo of this rise was stimulated by the demographic policy of the 1980s. In the 2000s the third echoes of the structural upsurge began, when the children of the 1980s began to enter the most active childbearing age. Under these conditions, the Russian state intensified its demographic policy, strengthening the structural wave by increasing the birth rate. In the second half of the 2010s the rise of the structural wave ceased, and the demographic structure began to deteriorate, that again caused depopulation in Russia beginning from 2017. Despite this, the policy in the field of fertility conducted in Russia since 2007 has had a positive effect. The main achievement of these years is that the decline of the total fertility rate in real generations of women has ceased. Its level has stabilized and even began to grow a little, despite the growing complex of mostly negative factors. Recommendations for further tactics of deterring the deterioration of the demographic situation are presented further in the article.