The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

In his 2006 state-of-the-federation address, Putin called depopulation the country’s most pressing problem. “I am going to speak about the most important thing now,” he said. “What’s the most important thing? At the defense ministry they know what it is.” In Putin’s language of macho humor, the phrase was supposed to signal that he was about to speak about something that soldiers—real men—think about all the time. Yes, I am indeed going to talk about love, about women and children. About the family. And about contemporary Russia’s most acute problem: demographics. . . . You know that our country’s population shrinks, on average, by seven hundred thousand people a year. We have talked about the issue many times, but have yet to do anything of substance about it.17 Putin proposed a financial solution: more money to National Project Health (the one where Masha was facilitating the payment of 80-to-90-percent kickbacks), more money for birthing clinics, and, most important, more money for mothers. He instituted a onetime payment of the equivalent of over $8,000 to any woman who gave birth to a second child (Russian women were having an average of 1.3 children18). The “maternal capital,” as it became known, would remain an act of unparalleled generosity on the part of the Russian state toward its citizens, showing just how highly the president valued his subjects’ willingness to reproduce.

Tarter Paul Ryan, is that you?