“The Fate of the Nation”: Population Politics in a Changing Soviet Union (1964–1991)

Lovett, Jessica

Abstract

This article shows how the Soviet government perceived higher birth rates in Central Asia as a threat to national identity and the stability of the USSR. The issue of demographic change was complex, and concerns about differential fertility between republics were not informed solely by prejudice. Rather, prejudice and racism mingled with practical concerns about labor surpluses and shortages. The Central Asian Republics had low labor mobility because people were unwilling to leave their cultural community, had a low level of Russian, and tended to not to be trained in the kind of heavy industries that required workers elsewhere in the Soviet Union. I argue that rather than aiming to change these factors, the government misdiagnosed economic problems as demographic ones. They placed primary emphasis on changing patterns of reproduction to remedy the situation by changing the population itself, portraying Slavs and Central Asians as distinct groups who had a predetermined role and place in life. In doing so, Moscow elites failed to address the structural and operational issues of Soviet socialism and inflamed tensions with local leaders who saw demographic campaigns as an attack on their culture.

Citation

Lovett, J. (2023). “The Fate of the Nation”: Population Politics in a Changing Soviet Union (1964–1991). Nationalities Papers, 51(4), 888-907. https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2022.27

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 7, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jun 10, 2022
• Publication Date: 2023-07
• Deposit Date: Jun 10, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 16, 2022
• Journal: Nationalities Papers
• Print ISSN: 0090-5992
• Electronic ISSN: 1465-3923
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 51
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 888-907
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2022.27
• Keywords: Soviet Union; population politics; archival research; ethnic conflict; reproduction
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/8398056
• Publisher URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/fate-of-the-nation-population-politics-in-a-changing-soviet-union-19641991/3A66C2C2BF1B978D09D3E349D06E588B
• Additional Information: Copyright: © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities; License: This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited; Free to read: This content has been made available to all.