In 1937, the Year of Terror, Stalin ordered the arrest of those responsible for the Soviet Union’s census because the population data did not align with his propaganda. Today, almost 90 years later, birth rates in Russia have plummeted to levels not seen since the late 18th century, according to some experts, and the Russian statistics agency Rosstat has stopped publishing much of its data.

Russia’s declining population of concern to the Kremlin, which has launched all kinds of measures to try to counter the issue: from offering family checks to severely restricting abortion and fining women who publicly defend their decision not to have children.

Now, the latest initiative from the Ministry of Culture is to ban TV series and films where women prioritize their careers over having children. The list of works affected by this ban is expected to be published after the summer. The official bulletin of the Russian Parliament has hinted that among them might be series such as House of Cards, Sex and the City, or Game of Thrones, but later the Russian regulatory agency Roskomnadzor clarified it does not plan to block these specific works.

Russian civil registry offices recorded 294,000 birth certificates in the first quarter of this year, 2.3% fewer than the 300,278 in the same period of 2024. In February, there were about 92,000 births, 7% less than in February 2024; and in March, just under 95,000 births, 4% less than the previous year.

According to Russian demographer Alexei Raksha and the media outlet Agentsvo, “these have been the months with the fewest births in the territory of the present-day Russian Federation since the late 18th and early 19th centuries.”

The Russian authorities’ response to this collapse in birth rates has been to conceal most of the data. Rosstat, in its latest March report, removed individual figures for births, deaths, marriages, and divorces, only showing the aggregate for the first quarter (294,000 births), which is slightly higher than Raksha’s estimate (288,800 births).

“This is a major development,” Raksha denounced on his Telegram channel regarding the agency’s data suppression. The respected demographer also estimates that mortality rose by 14% in April compared to the same month in 2024.

Rosstat stopped publishing mortality statistics by age and region in March 2022, just weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered what he called a “special military operation” against Ukraine, launched by land, sea, and air. In 2024, the agency ceased reporting causes of death, a figure that allowed indirect estimates of casualties on the front.

The Russian Ministry of Defense released its last casualty report in September 2022: a total of 5,937 combat deaths, despite evidence that the real number of casualties were higher. Three years later, the British broadcaster BBC and the Russian outlet Mediazona have identified at least 108,608 deceased Russian combatants through public information and press reports. And, according to an accidental leak by Deputy Defense Minister Anna Tsivileva, about 48,000 Russians are searching for their loved ones who are missing in action.

According to Rosstat, the Russian population declined last year by almost 600,000 people, 20% more than the 495,200 people lost in 2023. This means the gap between deaths and births is continuing to widen. Births decreased by 3.4%, while deaths increased by 3.3%.

Putin launched a campaign in 2008 to overcome the demographic crisis and 10 years later he decreed an ambitious plan targeting 2024 to reverse the trend. However, mortality exceeded births by 3.4 million people during this period, which included the COVID-19 pandemic (which was not met in Russia with strict restrictions) and the invasion of Ukraine. Last year, Putin signed another decree to try to “preserve the population” in the 2030–2036 period. According to the reformed Constitution, he supposedly will no longer be eligible to run for president in 2036.

“We must ensure that having a large and healthy family is prestigious and once again a topic on everyone’s lips,” Putin said at the end of April during a meeting with Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the Federation Council (the Russian Senate). A few months earlier, Putin advocated for families with seven or eight children to become “fashionable” again.

Russian authorities are trying to encourage births through two approaches: the carrot and the stick. Incentives include all kinds of financial aid to families with children and extended maternity leaves. The competition among Russian regions to please the Kremlin has also led dozens of them, starting this year, to offer checks ranging from 20,000 to 150,000 rubles ($250 to $1,870) to pregnant students, even when they are school-age teenagers. “When a child gives birth to another child, it’s not heroism, it’s a tragedy,” lawmaker Ksenia Goriacheva denounced.

The Kremlin’s other alternative is the stick: limiting individual freedoms in defense of what it calls “traditional values.” Authorities have tightened abortion restrictions, with measures ranging from making it difficult to obtain the morning-after pill to banning abortion in private clinics, as several regions have done.

The law also persecutes in both public — and often private — life those it considers a threat to birth rates: LGBTQ+ minorities and feminist groups. The latest case was last week’s detention of about 10 employees from one of the country’s largest publishing houses, Eksmo, accused of including “homosexual propaganda” in some of their books.

Additionally, last year the Russian authorities passed a law imposing fines of up to $56,000 for comments supporting the decision not to have children. Now, the Ministry of Culture has drafted an order stating that “films promoting a child-free culture will not receive distribution certificates” and will be blocked if streamed online.

Parlaméntskaya Gazeta, the official magazine of the Parliament — a kind of bulletin that collects and explains approved laws — openly speculated that several series could be targeted by this censorship. For example, House of Cards, “where the heroine Claire always puts her career first”; and Sex and the City, in which “Samantha clearly shows tendencies not to have children.” Also, the novel (later series) Game of Thrones, where Brienne “dreamed of becoming a knight and being equal to men, and to do so gave up having children,” according to the editors of Parlaméntskaya Gazeta.

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