Russian population with a less unlucky 20th century

That doesn't make any sense, have you seen russia? if the USA can support this then you can be sure russia can support 250 million people with a high quality of life.

The USA has immensely more fertile land, a far more hospitable climate and its resources are well-located near waterways (either the oceans, Great Lakes or the Mississippi).

The Soviet Union was dry, cold and most of its resources were in the heart of the Eurasian continent, generally buried under permafrost.

With the exact same technology and level of development, the USA would be at least a 10% more productive per unit input, and would probably be more like 15% more productive if not more. That's just because people work better in temperate climates than they do in sub-arctic climates and because water transport is more efficient than rail transport.

Also, the US is heavily dependent on trade to support itself in its current standard of living. The US without oil imports from Venezuela or phosphate imports from Southwest Africa would not be able to live as it does.

It's a simple model but the 1900-13 trend follows the RL rate from early 1920's to 1940 and then 1960-90. I guess a higher rate rise like 1945-1960 over a sustained period would need to explain a higher estimate. IDK the leveling off in the 1990's must be due to Russian mail order brides or something.

No, it was due to a mass die-off of Russians.

For the people living inside the Soviet block, the fall of the Soviet Union was a disaster as bad or worse than the Great Depression was for the US. Those people today who curse the name of Gorbachev? They've got good reasons for doing so.

fasquardon
 
Here is a graph of Former Soviet + Finland + Poland population from 1900 (Poland and Finland only make up 10% of the total). The 1900-1913 trend is projected in blue. Note that this growth is matched IRL in some areas pre and post WW2.
adf9bC7.jpg
Can you give a source for the graph?
 
Honestly, if this Russian Empire experiences no further invasions from the west between 1918 and 2018, I can see the Ukranian population being very high. Perhaps 25% or 33% of the total population.

(I think in 1913, Ukrainians were 1/3rd of the population of the Empire - though it does depend on exactly who you count as a Ukrainian.)
Ukraine would likely industrialise and urbanise quicker than the rest of the Empire. Ukraine being closer to Europe. This would probably mean that overtime the Ukrainian birth rates would decline faster than other regions birth rate. This industrialised Ukraine might draw migrants form around the empire. Perhaps this economically and Demographically stronger Ukraine could exert a stronger influence on East Slavdom than in OTL? Perhaps more Ukrainan words will become part of Russian?
 
It's a simple model but the 1900-13 trend follows the RL rate from early 1920's to 1940 and then 1960-90. I guess a higher rate rise like 1945-1960 over a sustained period would need to explain a higher estimate. IDK the leveling off in the 1990's must be due to Russian mail order brides or something.
More like a bad alcohol epidemic turning for the worse, aswell as a drug epidemic. Emigration was also a factor.

Post Soviet Russia had very low birth rates combined with very high mortality rates, a bad combo.
 
More like a bad alcohol epidemic turning for the worse, aswell as a drug epidemic. Emigration was also a factor.

Post Soviet Russia had very low birth rates combined with very high mortality rates, a bad combo.

Also apartments were left without heat, pensions weren't paid, even wages and salaries weren't paid, the health system collapsed...

There were good reasons why lots of people were dying and people were deciding against having children.

Ukraine would likely industrialise and urbanise quicker than the rest of the Empire. Ukraine being closer to Europe. This would probably mean that overtime the Ukrainian birth rates would decline faster than other regions birth rate. This industrialised Ukraine might draw migrants form around the empire. Perhaps this economically and Demographically stronger Ukraine could exert a stronger influence on East Slavdom than in OTL? Perhaps more Ukrainan words will become part of Russian?

On the other hand, without a Ukrainian republic, the Ukrainians outside what we call "Ukraine" may have stayed Ukrainian, rather than assimilating into Russian culture. Or maybe it would have gone the other way...

It's hard to say exactly how many would claim Ukrainian identity besides "many more than do so in OTL", but I do think it is fair to say that the Russian Empire will be much more of a Russian-Ukrainian joint venture.

fasquardon
 

RousseauX

Donor
It's a simple model but the 1900-13 trend follows the RL rate from early 1920's to 1940 and then 1960-90. I guess a higher rate rise like 1945-1960 over a sustained period would need to explain a higher estimate. IDK the leveling off in the 1990's must be due to Russian mail order brides or something.
completely unrealistic, demographic transition occurs as income rises, fertility rate would have plummeted in atl Russia by the 1950s or so because a Russia without the world wars and civil war would have being a lot richer
 
completely unrealistic, demographic transition occurs as income rises, fertility rate would have plummeted in atl Russia by the 1950s or so because a Russia without the world wars and civil war would have being a lot richer

I find the straight line it draws pretty unrealistic too.

More likely the Russian population would go up exponentially before starting to level off. Now, it could start to level off anywhere between the 1950s to the 1990s. It depends on the political, economic and cultural evolution of the empire.

For example, does it stay on the course it had been on since the botched ending of serfdom, meaning excessive population is retained in rural areas, meaning demographic transition happens later? Do the political and cultural forces that kept peasants on the land get broken relatively early? What role does the Orthodox church have? How does the Tsarist regime respond to events like the great depression? What happens in China with a more expansionist northern neighbour during the 20s and 30s?

And when it does level off, how fast it levels off is also an interesting question. In OTL, the Soviets shifted from a 3rd world growth rate to a 1st world growth rate and then kept that until the Soviet Union collapsed. But what may happen is that Russia in an ATL might go from a high growth rate to very low/negative growth rate very quickly, more like what happened in South Korea.

IMO, the later Russia enters its demographic transition, the more likely it is that it does so sharply. Mostly because whatever happens, Russia has a limited resource base, and at a certain point, people will decide that they don't want to bring children into the Russia that exists around them. Not necessarily because their environment is so miserable, it may simply be that life is comfortable, but so much effort is expended on keeping it comfortable that people don't have much time to find mates and have children.

fasquardon
 
Again, assuming no more than a normal level of Jewish immigration to the United States or elsewhere, and that things get better for Jews in Russia (i.e. there is no virulently anti-Semitic government that comes to power that causes many Jews to flee the country who might not have otherwise), what percentage of the empire's population will be Jewish by 2018, with and without Poland?
 
Again, assuming no more than a normal level of Jewish immigration to the United States or elsewhere, and that things get better for Jews in Russia (i.e. there is no virulently anti-Semitic government that comes to power that causes many Jews to flee the country who might not have otherwise), what percentage of the empire's population will be Jewish by 2018, with and without Poland?
Maybe 5%?
 
Can you give a source for the graph?

The Blue line 'trend' is based on just 2 figures so it's taken with a grain of salt but no one else has actually plotted a graph to go with their wags.
www.ggdc.net/maddison/historical_statistics/horizontal-file_02-2010.xls

If you want to factor in economic growth then perhaps this may be of interest:
https://web.stanford.edu/~ikorolev/Ivan_Korolev_Russian_Revolution.pdf

Evaluating Russian Economic Growth without the Revolution of 1917
Ivan Korolev
July 5, 2017

Abstract:
This paper uses modern econometric techniques, such as the lasso and the synthetic control method, to construct the counterfactual GDP per capita series for Russia for 1917–1940. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, to predict how the Russian economy might have developed without the Revolution; second, to evaluate and compare various econometric methods for computing the counterfactual GDP per capita series. The counterfactuals based on the pre-ferred method, the synthetic control, suggest that without the Revolution Russia might have grown at about *1.6% a year in 1917–1940.

*Author notes 2.5% from 1917-1929 in his conclusion.
 
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