Why Putin is paying women to have more children... Inside Russia's super families
A special prize for parents of seven or more children– the Order of Parental Glory – was established in 2008
Surrounded by her brood of 18 children, Nadezhda Osyak winces as she recalls the pain of childbirth: ‘It doesn’t get any easier. It’s called labour for a reason.’ Nadezhda is a youthful brunette in her early 50s whose trim figure belies her astonishing maternal accomplishments.
‘I gave birth to 15 naturally,’ she says, ‘and three by caesarean. Those three were like a holiday.’ She and her husband, Ioann, a priest in Russia’s Orthodox Church, had their first child in 1984, just before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, and their 18th in 2009, by which time communism and the USSR were already distant memories.
Their motive for having such a big family? ‘Love,’ says Father Ioann, patting his wife’s hand and gazing moistly at her while she blushes. A stout patriarch of 53 with a big grizzled beard, he’s someone for whom the word ‘uxorious’ might have been invented.
The Osyaks are clearly exceptional by any standard. Anyone who is familiar with the parental treadmill of nappies, teething, Calpol and broken nights, who’s sat through Tikkabilla at 5am with a colicky child or coaxed a finicky infant into trying a spoonful of puréed sweet potato, will marvel at their achievements. But in Russia today, families like the Osyaks have an additional significance.
It’s been clear to Russian policymakers for a while that their country is facing a demographic crisis. After the break up of the Soviet Union, the population of Russia shrank by up to 700,000 a year.
Between 1992 and 2009, the country lost about six million people, or four per cent of its population.
Suddenly, the endgame of Russian history seemed worryingly imminent – and it wasn’t a nuclear Armageddon.
With too few live births to offset the death rate, the Russian population was simply slipping down the plughole of history. During the presidential-election campaign in 2012, Vladimir Putin sounded the alarm.
‘We are facing the risk of turning into an “empty space”,’ he warned, ‘whose fate will not be decided by us.’ It’s a dark and fascinating problem, with roots that go back at least to the terrible wounds of the Second World War, and the purges and man-made famine of the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
But the government has suggested one simple potential solution:
Russian parents need to make like the Osyaks and reproduce more. So far the government’s choice of aphrodisiac has been a combination of cash and propaganda. Since 2007, extra money has been given to parents on the birth of their second and third children. A special prize – the Order of Parental Glory – was established in 2008.
Parents with seven or more children (biological or adopted) are
invited to the Kremlin and receive the medal from the president himself. The Osyaks were among the first to get it. Nadezhda has fond memories of the ceremony. She was awarded her medal by President Dmitry Medvedev, during the four years when he occupied the Kremlin between episodes of Putin.
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Originally Posted by Matt Collins
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