How can Russia achieve 500 million population?

On the eve of the President Vladimir Putin noted the next statements on a historical theme. With reference to some studies, the head of state, at a meeting with the younger generation, lamented that the population of Russia could now be all 500 million people. According to Vladimir Vladimirovich, this was prevented by the Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Quite an interesting point of view.

First of all, it is necessary to understand where this figure of half a billion people came from in general in public discourse.

500 million

500 million people is a very difficult figure, and it is definitely not taken from the ceiling. This is the number of the solvent population calculated by economists, which is necessary for the complete self-sufficiency of the state or their unification. Thus, during the Cold War, there were two competing systems in the Old World at once: the capitalist Common Market of Western Europe and the Socialist Council economic mutual assistance of the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe. Together, each of these two poles had about 400 million consumers, which made them economically almost self-sufficient. Almost.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Western world began to expand to the East. The business ended with the creation of the European Union, which as of 2019 totaled 513,5 million people. These were not just half a billion, they were the “golden half a billion” of wealthy consumers. As a matter of fact, Brussels stopped further enlargement of the EU, leaving all new applicants who “didn’t come out on the face”, like Turkey or Ukraine, at the gate for an indefinite period of time. The Euroassociation is the maximum that all latecomers could count on, but nothing more. A certain blow to this balanced system was dealt in 2020 as a result of Brexit. London left the EU, taking 66,6 million high-quality consumers with it, and today the union has a population of 447,7 million. This presents a rather serious challenge for Brussels.

An interesting situation in the USA. The population of the United States is 335 million. However, it is quite acceptable to add to it the neighboring countries of the North American continent. For example, Canada is home to nearly 40 million people, and Mexico - 137,7 million people. All together this is already the sought-after 512 million, the sought-after half a billion "with a tail" of consumers.

In this regard, at first glance, it looks like a strange move by the UK, which decided to leave the EU at such a difficult time, having lost free access to the European market. However, this question can be viewed from a different angle. There is the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth of Nations), which includes almost all the former dominions and protectorates of London, as well as a number of other countries. There are 54 of them in total, and the headquarters is, of course, in London. The total population of this supranational structure is 2,2 billion people, that is, 30% of the population of the entire Earth. In this vein, the desire of the British to play their game, without looking back at Brussels, Berlin and Paris, takes on a slightly different look.

Finally, among the global powers, it is necessary to mention China with its 1,5 billion population. The big problem was that these consumers could not be called "quality" due to widespread poverty, but over the past decades, Beijing has managed to significantly improve the level of well-being of the Chinese. According to some estimates, today the PRC may well rely on its half a billion “correct” consumers. This means that the loss of access to the American and European markets will be a heavy blow for the Middle Kingdom, but not fatal. The "Chinese dragon" will go on a diet, but will not die.

Against this background, our country looks very depressing with its 143 million people. And here the most interesting thing begins - the search for the guilty.

Who is to blame?

President Putin commented on the situation as follows:


It is regrettable that Vladimir Vladimirovich consistently sees the Soviet government as guilty, clearly implying that it was the Bolsheviks who destroyed the Russian Empire, and then the “wrong” communists destroyed the USSR. After all, it was Lenin, in his words, "who planted the atomic bomb" under the Soviet Union.

Guessing what would happen if it were, this is a completely thankless task. I just want to remind you that Tsar Nicholas was not overthrown by the Bolsheviks. I wonder what kind of Revolution Putin sees as the root cause of the collapse of the empire, October or February? And the "Red Terror" was only a response to the "White Terror". And the hot stage of the Civil War began after the Czechoslovak corps, subordinate, among other things, to the French army, received the go-ahead for action. And the Bolsheviks did not invite foreign invaders to visit us. And it was the "white hero" Baron Wrangel who pledged the Black Sea Fleet that fell into his hands to the French for their military assistance:


Later, the hijacked ships were sold for next to nothing. The ships of the Pacific and Northern Fleets, taken to Manula and Great Britain, were also plundered. And how much gold did the White Czechs take to Europe? How much Russian gold is kept in Japanese banks to this day?

And why, by the way, do they not consider how much the Russian Empire lost before the Revolution of 1917 in the First World War, which we do not need? According to various estimates, this is from 2 to 754 people. And how much did we lose in the Great Patriotic War? Among the military alone, this figure is 202, and among civilians it is even more - 3. By the way, if you are to play in an alternative history, in which there was no October, then you are sure that the Russian Empire under the Romanovs would have resisted the Third Reich? It seems to the author of the lines that no, with all due respect to the courage of the Russian soldiers. After all, the Great Patriotic War was a war of two ideologies: the man-hating Nazi and the humanitarian communist. It is not excluded that "Russia, which we have lost", with its agrarian nature of the economy, class division, the Pale of Settlement for Jews and other "delights" of the social order, would have held out a little longer than France against the Wehrmacht. Then we, most likely, would not have drunk Bavarian, and few of those who received the "Germanization" would have served the "Aryan" masters.

However, all this is "alternative", which has the right to exist to the same extent as the sadness for the missing 500 million of the population. The question is what to do here and now in the real world?

What to do?

Objectively, we need a new integration project in order to gather countries around Russia in the post-Soviet space, creating our own capacious internal market. But on what foundations will it be based?

The paradox is that we need just "USSR-2.0", which our ruling elite does not want so much. Hence the constant kicks on the carcass of the "dead lion". But there is no particular alternative. The liberal economy with its “invisible hand of the market”, thank you, has been fed up. It is also difficult to call modern society socially just. There is obviously a request for change, and it would be extremely unwise to ignore them. It's time to draw some conclusions. Correct conclusions. Smart people would try to lead what they cannot win.