From Russia To Russabia? Not Anytime Soon

Faced with the utter failure of their doom-laden projections for Russia’s population future to describe reality – it’s population is now not only growing in absolute terms, but even barring migration its number of births now virtually equals the number of deaths – the more guttural elements of the interwebs are now resorting to another strategy: “But it’s all due to Muslims anyway!”

A bizarre alliance of neocons, Western chauvinists, crazy Russian nationalists, Islamist fanatics, and plain Russophobes have been peddling the imminent prospect of a Muslim-majority Russian Army and a Russabia ruled from the Caucasus Emirates for almost a decade. But one does not have to be a proponent of mass Muslim immigration, or to deny that serious problems of radicalization exist in some Russian Muslim communities, to call out such projections for the fear-mongering BS they really are. Here is a graph that decisively refutes the “Russabia” thesis:

russia-will-become-majority-muslim-not

The percentage of births in Russia’s traditionally Muslim” republics in the North Caucasus (Agygea, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, Chechnya) and the Volga (Bashkortostan, Tatarstan) is a mere 13%-14% of the total – and shows no signs of increasing at a sustained and rapid rate.

It should furthermore be noted that of the above only Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia have predominantly Muslim population – and their share of total Russian births, at just a little above 5%, are today virtually the same as they were in 2006. This is especially relevant because the vast bulk of Russia’s problems with Islamic fundamentalism and armed opposition to Russian state power are concentrated there.

Only about 50% (give or take) of the populations of the other five republics is Muslim, so if anything – despite the graph being partially balanced out by Muslim immigrants in Moscow and other non-Muslim regions – it substantially overstates the actual degree of Muslim demographic influence. Needless to say, the Orthodox Russians (and ethnic Tatars) who make up half of Tatarstan’s population aren’t going on jihad to restore the Qasim Khanate anytime soon.

It should be stressed that even the figures above will only start coming into effect two decades or so down the line. That is to say, only about 13% of 20-year olds in the 2030’s will have have been born in Muslim republics; the percentage of those belonging to Muslim-majority ethnicities will be even lower, at maybe 9% or 10%. How Muslims are supposed to constitute a majority in the Army with those kinds of figures must remain a mystery.

Finally, the Muslim demographic expansion is self-limiting. A lot of the people who push Russabia (and Eurabia) are apparently under the impression that their typical family has 6 children, which in turn will have 6 children, and so on until they squeeze out everyone else. This is completely and utterly wrong. In Russia, at least, the only Muslim region with a TFR higher than the replacement level rate is Chechnya; as of 2009, it was at 3.38 children per woman, compared to 1.97 in Ingushetia, 1.96 in Dagestan, and far less in all the others – in fact, both Kabardino-Balkaria’s and Tatarstan’s TFR of 1.51 was *less* than the Russian average of 1.54. As such, far from reflecting any innate demographic strength, the current high rates of natural increase seen in Russia’s Muslim republics – or even more specifically, in Dagestan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya – are due in large part to the youthfulness of those regions’ populations. Young populations have, by definition, few old people (hence low mortality) and many young people (hence high natality). Considering that *all* of Russia’s Muslim regions with the partial exception of Chechnya – which, however, accounts for a mere 1% of its population and 2% of its newborn – are rapidly undergoing demographic transition, this is necessarily a temporary state of affairs.

Comments

  1. anything over one percent is still too many muslims

  2. alcestiseshtemoa says

    Good post.

  3. I’ll add to the chorus of praise for this post. A very minor quibble: because many Chechens do live in Russian regions outside Chechnya such as in Moscow, the data strictly for Chechnya somewhat underestimates Chechens’ actual country-wide demographic impact – although it is clearly still quite small in comparison to that of the general Russian population.

  4. Matt5898 says

    Рождаемость кавказских мусульман меня давно не пугает, они уже прошли демографический переход. Про татар и говорить нечего, это зеркальное отражение русских.
    Но в тоже время Руссабию можно получить, если продолжать дружить с 50-миллионной Средней Азией, которая со страшной силой мигрирует в Россию. Так что не все так гладко, особенно в Москве, Тюменской обл. и на Ставрополье. Там проблема уже сравнима с западно-европейскими городами. Да и по переписям видно что очень много стало “оседающих” здесь узбеков и прочих киргизов, которые раньше были сезонными рабочими.
    PS Если тут нельзя писать по русски то сорри.

  5. Truth is; that:

    If any one can have access to Russian map of Year 1100; he will realize that actual Russian state at time was just Moscow and it surrounding area. Its size was not bigger than Kosovo. But today Russia has largest land mass. How? Russia snatched land of Muslims in Caucasus & central Asia. Now Central Asia has got freedom & Russia must return also Caucasus to Muslims from whom it was snatched by force. First Muslim State in that region was Volga-Bulgharia [Bashkiristan] in years 966 which was older than so called later Russia. What is called Russia today is in fact land of Muslims snatched by Communists & Crusaders etc. Even today Bashkiristan (Bashkortostan) is the biggest republic in Russia population wise. This article has not said whole truth.

    • This is Muslim “history”. The Russian state at 1100 was the Kievan Rus’, a state with a larger extension than just Moscow.

    • I second Vlad. I’ll also add Mongols and their later descendants – the Tatars – attacked Kievan Rus first, and thereafter a general state of war remained constant. Not only did the Russians gather strength and assume a great victory over the Tatars at Kazan, in 1552, the battles continued until the Asians were pushed back to their original homelands and then the vast expanses of Siberia were colonized. This is all Russia.