WI/PC. Russia with a population of 1 billion.

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
Not sure if this belongs in pre 1900 or post 1900 so apologies if so.

With a post 1700 pod, what events would allow Russia to end up with a population of 1 billion in the year 2000?

Would this be possible in regards to feeding it's population?

Would it be possible for Siberia to support this level of population?

Regards filers.
 
Couple possiblities:

1.)Russia conquers China/India or part thereof
2.)Russia adopts a very pro-immigration and natalist policy early in the 1900 and grows dramatically. The former would likely need to have a democratic Russia to succeed.
 
Couple possiblities:

1.)Russia conquers China/India or part thereof
2.)Russia adopts a very pro-immigration and natalist policy early in the 1900 and grows dramatically. The former would likely need to have a democratic Russia to succeed.
Immigration policies only work if people want to go to a country and there is a compelling need.
Why would anybody want to move to Russia? Russia is a source of immigrants, not a destination, except recently following the collapse of the USSR between the periphery to the core. The only people with worse living standards in the early 1900s are people in the colonies/China/some parts of Latin America/some parts of the Balkans/Empire Ottoman - and even for a lot of those it isn't like they're that much less developed than the Russian peasantry - and they have no reason to go to Russia instead of somewhere else. It is labor-abundant anyway too, so those people are unneeded.

Pro-nationalist policies are also a lot hard to implement than they sound; financial benefits are the easier to conceive (haha, I am such wit) of, but their effects are limited and for a state like Russia they're expensive. Some of the social policies can happen too, but those are more nebulous.

I'd say the best way for Russia to reach such a huge population, starting from the base of the Russian Empire and without any major territorial acquisitions is to do the standard delayed development approach that has sometimes happened in Africa/Latin America/parts of Asia, where they have basic medical technology so as to drop the death rate, but it takes them a really long time to then bring down the birth rate and develop economically. Given that this is one of the paths which gets discussed on Russia in the event of the Communists not appearing, where people speculate they'd be like a geographically massive Mexico, this might not necessarily be impossible. Given that Mexico started off the century with around 13? million people and now has 120 million, they actually work pretty well as an example of how to get a huge population; similar levels for the Russian Empire would clear it of 1 billion by a substantial margin.

As far as food, Russia has a huge territory, especially if the Russian Empire remains around; its rare that nations are limited in their population growth by food supplies any more. Provide their agriculture isn't a complete disaster, and its hard to do as badly as Soviet agriculture did, they should be fine.

If we're referring to 1700 POD I'm sure there are a huge number more things, but this is a post-1900 forum after all, so therefor I want to stick to post-1900 ones.
 
Russian Empire at its max borders probably could be able to feed a billion people, assuming modern fertiliser, only growing food crops (i.e. no cotton in Uzbekistan), and extensive use of cold-weather crops like quinoa in addition to what's already use--it may take GMO agriculture to bring out the full potential of the plant. I think that should be enough, if not you might have to get into more drastic measures like the Siberian River Reversal.

Siberia is huge. If over a billion Chinese live in a relatively small area of their country, I think Siberia can find room. Just put more people in the cities, and expand the transportation networks there to bring the food/resources in. Yeah, that'll be pricey, but you have at least a billion people to work with, and a GDP of 10 trillion USD easily.

Now the biggest problem--where the hell are you going to find a billion Russians? Let's see, lands Russia plus lands Russia might conceivably annex...so I guess Russian Empire + all other Slavic lands + Manchuria (all of it) + Mongolia (Inner and Outer) + Xinjiang + Tibet + Afghanistan + Persia + Greater Armenia + Thrace + Hokkaido + Korea. I'm a bit of a hurry typing this, but would that equal a billion people or would you still need some extra natalist stuff to get you over there? And why not a massive civil war in India over something to send a stream of refugees over the border? And one in the Middle East too like nowadays refugee crisis but 10 times worse and most of the region.
 
Its possible to radically expand a nations population through immigration and high brithrates. The US had ~3 million people living in it in 1776. Today it has 325 million.

That's a 107-fold increase over the course of 240 years!
 
If they can grab a good chunk of northern China it's doable. Otherwise I think the best you could manage with the land area of the former Russian Empire is maybe 50-60% higher.

The CIS has ~277 million people, the Baltics put you to ~283, ~289, then Poland hops you up to ~328 million. I'm guessing with fewer wars and more efficient agriculture 550 million is doable, but you need to either grab a good chunk of Europe or Northern China to add the hundreds of millions more needed for a billion.
 
Another thought--get potatoes in Russian agriculture as soon as possible. That'll reduce the impact of the many famines in Tsarist Russia. Have the Orthodox Church and for that matter the Old Believers and any other group (the Muslims in the Empire) hammer the point to the people to plant potatoes, so none of the anti-potato farming "devil's apple" nonsense. Then Russia will have a larger population base as it enters the industrial age, and I guess more manpower/better economy to win the wars it needs to annex all the land. And while you're importing crops from the Andes, get quinoa there too, and have the various religious groups say the same thing.

Its possible to radically expand a nations population through immigration and high brithrates. The US had ~3 million people living in it in 1776. Today it has 325 million.

That's a 107-fold increase over the course of 240 years!

The US has had constant immigration for centuries--at one point about 14% of Americans weren't born there, including massive amounts of people from the Russian Empire. It also has plenty of unstable neighbouring countries who have plenty of people who would love to live in the US. The birthrate of the US is also pretty atypical for a developed nation. I don't think Russia could do that.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
This really isn't that hard. Russia had a population of 177,000,000 in 1914 and its population was growing at 2% a year. Keeping that rate until 2000 would yield a population of 971,000,000

By world's standards that isn't all that high especially today. In cultures that believe in "be fruitful and multiply" like strict Orthodox Jews have population growth well over 4% today. Women can have 10-15 children if they marry young and don't practice birth control. With modern medicine and a very young age (Orthodox communities usually have half their population under 18) the death rate is very low

Could the population be feed? They could always import the food if they had to do so but people would be easy to feed without meat and using corn for ethanol. I'm sure the US can feed well over a billion people. India does it with less arable land than the Russian Empire had and their agriculture is rather poor

A billion people don't take up much space in an urban setting. Mexico City has a population density of 6000 per square kilometer. That's about 175,000 square kilometers or 65,000 square miles. Russia today is several million square miles.
 
Russia could easily have a much higher population than OTL,but 1 Billion seems quite excessive.

@LordKalvert:
the problem is,more wealthy countries tend to have lower population growth. Russia would need to stay poor and backward,but this significantly increases the chanches of civil war and break ups,which would reduce its land and population.
 
Russia could easily have a much higher population than OTL,but 1 Billion seems quite excessive.

@LordKalvert:
the problem is,more wealthy countries tend to have lower population growth. Russia would need to stay poor and backward,but this significantly increases the chanches of civil war and break ups,which would reduce its land and population.

Another trend that reduces population growth is mass urbanization. As more people move into cities, the lower the birth rate will fall. This has been a trend that has been going on for the past two hundred years. Mere preventing stuff like abortion and birth control from being legalized/invented isn't enough to halt the population growth rate from declining, as the trend predates the Sexual Revolution.
 
According to Robert C. Allen in Farm to Factory, had Russia continued along its pre-revolutionary trend, it might plausibly have reached a population of 700-800 million within the Soviet borders. If Russia had avoided the casualties of WW1 (or had less casualties at least) retained Poland and expanded into China and the Ottoman Empire, you might be able to push that up to 1 billion with a PoD after 1900 (a quick victory in the Russo Japanese war might be a good choice for PoD).

However, a population that high would come with costs. To get that high, Russia's education could not experience the successes of the Soviet education system and industrialization would have to proceed slower. Such a Russia might emerge as a Super-Power after 2000, just as China is in OTL, however, it would merely be a Great Power during the 20th Century.

fasquardon
 
As far as food supplies go, I did a half-assed calculation based on the area of arable land and came up with a guesstimte that a billion was quite possible. Damned if I can fine the post or the thread, though. I'll keep looking...
 
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