If the economy is more successful than wouldn’t that mean that emigration is significantly less and birthrates lower to Western European levels? 800 million does seem plausible without communism and WW2, but that seems to be pushing it.
For poor countries, economic growth increases immigration because more people can afford to emigrate.
As for birthrates, in terms of resource density, population density, levels of literacy in 1900 and gdp in 1900 and 2000, Russia is most comparable to a low-ranking Latin American country. In terms of having Communism from 1922, rapid urbanization between 1930 and 1960 and a rapid rise in literacy before 1950 it is decidedly
unlike a Latin American country. Those latter factors (which are almost entirely due to policy choices) combined with the impact of WW2 entirely explains why the Soviet Union plummeted from some of the highest birthrates in the world to a Western European level of birthrates. As such, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that had there been no Bolsheviks in power, population growth was very likely to follow the path of Mexico or Argentina, which means a population in the ballpark of 800 million in the mid 80s and somewhere around 1.5 billion by the current decade.
If Russia grew at the same rate as Turkey, which also started at a similar place in 1900, had similar disasters and a similar rate of economic development over the century, it would have ended up with a population just under 800 million by the mid 80s.
Japan started in a similar position as Russia in 1900, and ended up following a similar demographic trajectory, with an extremely rapid decline in population growth rate, but combined that with a more sustainable economic path. Had Russian demographics followed the Japanese course, it would have ended up with 401 million by 1985. However, not only is Japan the one exception of all the non-Communist states that started and ended the 20th century in similar places, I am very doubtful that Russia would ever be forced down the Japanese path by a superior great power crushing them, completely occupying them to the present day and allowing them access to their larger, richer market as the US did with Japan. Without the Japanese loss in WW2, and the American choices during the Cold War, I do not think Japan would have chosen to do the things they did, which would have led to a different economic and demographic trajectory (though not, I think, a Latin American or Turkish trajectory).
So, with an eye on how similar countries evolved over the 20th century and what conditions inside Russia were actually like, 800 million subjects of the Tsar in 1985 is actually quite a modest population projection.
The impact of the Bolsheviks on the Russian population structure is so colossal it really beggars the imagination.
If Israel's creation is not butterflied away. Anyway main stream of Jewish emigrants would still flow to USA.
I wonder if the US would? If the Russian Jews thrive in proportion the faster growth rates of the general population (adjusting for their being more urbanized and educated and likely to undergo demographic transition earlier, but also assuming that there'd be no Holocaust), I wouldn't be surprised if there were 50-80 million Jews worldwide, with the bulk of those being of "Russian" heritage. If we assume that about half of the world Jewish population will gravitate to the US, that's 25-40 million Jews in the US. Is that enough that the waves of Jewish immigration would provoke more of a backlash than OTL? My gut says a serious backlash is unlikely, but I don't really know anything about the experience of Jews who immigrated to the US before 1950, when the existence of Israel and the Cold War were each things.
fasquardon