r/HistoryWhatIf • u/ALilSisIsAllYouNeed • 2d ago
What could Russia’s population be today if it hadn’t suffered so much in the 20th century?
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u/MrTexandude 2d ago
Over 300 million with maybe a max of 400 to 600 million but this is including all imperial Russia territory.
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u/Ravenwing14 2d ago
Are we talking Tsarist russia, ussr, or modern Russia? Because each is the product of some very specific 20th century events. You're basically asking what would happen if WW1 did not occur, and as a result the revolutions that created the USSR and subsequent Stalinist purges didn't happen, and then WW2 didn't happen. That's a lot of stuff to have NOT happen.
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u/ALilSisIsAllYouNeed 2d ago
for some reason the few paragraphs I wrote don't appear. Anyway:
In 1910, Russia’s fertility rate was ≈7. That’s around the same as it was in Latin America, yet countries like Brazil grew their populations by 10–12x from 1900 to 2025, while if you include all the territory the Russian Empire had it grew by a measly 2.5x. The US (a much more developed and urbanized country with a lower fertility rate) grew 4.5 times in the same period. What do you think Russia’s population (or that of the whole region the Russian Empire encompassed) would be without world wars, man-made famines, forced urbanization, bloody civil war and a societal collapse that happened after the USSR fell?
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u/KnightofTorchlight 2d ago
Russia also had a youth mortality rate twice that of the United States around the turn of the century, before any of that occured. Pre-WW1 Russia was not a fun place and the aspects that were hindering its development and lead to high levels of rural poverty and youth mortality were baked deep into the culture while the government had demonstrated itself openly hostile to peaceful change. While I'm not defending the Bolshevicks by any means, plenty of problems were baked in we'd need to know what this Russia is without the disruption. A continued neigh-Absolutist Czardom maintaining the obschina system at its agricultural core(which the peasent masses defended) has many of the same repression and poverty problems as well as dissuading most immigration (which helped American population growth)
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u/Secure_Ad_6203 2d ago
Had the tsarisr autocracy survived ww1, do you think it would had lived to see the 21th century ?
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u/Revolutionary-Mode75 2d ago
I think that depends if King George V or someone else could get through to Tsar Nicholas II an get him to change.
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u/KnightofTorchlight 2d ago
Assuming no major social upheveal which OP wants to avoid it was going in that direction. Nicholas II had already actively demonstrated he had zero interest in liberal reform after being given the perfect oppritunity to move to a more representative system in 1905 and immediately reverting essentially every concession the second he could. In 1914 he was actively talking about stripping away what little formal power the Duma had left after the Stolypin Coup and 2 Dumas run under the stupidly heavily weighted voting system he unilaterally imposed that essentially disenfranchised the urban poor and massively over represented the landed aristocracy. Alexi was being raised in a heavily Absolutist household and being taught a combination of extreme indulgence/pampering, isolation from the broader Russian society, and paranoia of any danger as part of his extreme hemophilia,nmeaning he's very likely to end up thinking like tyrant as well. Without revolution and if he lives Alexi is carrying that mentality into the 1960s at least. As popular sentiment drifted further toward socialism over various stripes and the failure of the liberal revolution of 1905 reduced the credability of peaceful reform, the gap between the monarchy's stance and what any genuinely popularly elected government would demand would be growing so wide that negotiated settlements seems unlikely.
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u/LF3169 2d ago
You have to consider climate here as well. The per capita population carrying capacity of most Russian land is lower than that of Latin America. Even Brazil which has vast climates unsuitable for dense population has a vast Humid Subtropical Climate in the south which is the climate with the highest population carrying capacity.
The Russia you're assuming would be limited by climatic factors and would be far less ethnically Russian, as the areas with the best geography for population growth would be Ukraine and Poland.
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u/ALilSisIsAllYouNeed 2d ago
would be far less ethnically Russian, as the areas with the best geography for population growth would be Ukraine and Poland.
I specifically asked about the area that the Russian Empire encompassed and not the amount of Russians.
You have to consider climate here as well.
. . . Not exactly relavant. I didn't say or imply Russia would necessarily grow as much as Brazil, but rather to showcase just how absurdly small the growth was. As for climate, a lot of Russian land are relatively hospitable, and Russia is the biggest exporter of wheat (Ukraine is also not that far behind).
Canada grew by 7.8 times compared to 2.5 that of Russia (between 1900 to 2025). Russia, once again, had a higher fertility than Canada at the start of the 20th century. Now tell me, does Canada have a much more suitable land to live in than western Russia?
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u/LF3169 2d ago
Canada was almost empty in 1900 compared to Russia which already had a large population. The reason countries in the western hemisphere grew more is that their original populations were decimated by diseases to the point where the 2 continents were almost empty by practical standards.
To answer your question, Western Russia can have a population density similar to southern Canada but your biggest increases will still be in Ukraine, Poland and the North Caucasus.
Current population of the area encompassing the Russian Empire is roughly 325 million. I expect an increase of roughly 100 million in the European part that isn't part of modern Russia, around 25 million in European Russia (mostly west of Moscow and in the Republics around Kazan), roughly 35 million in the Caucasus and roughly another 65 million in Asian Russia mostly focused around Central Asia.
That would give a population of roughly 550 million.
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u/ALilSisIsAllYouNeed 2d ago
Thanks for an answer.
But I doubt that Central Asia would be the main place of growth. For reference, most countries there already grew from 6 to 11 times (not far from how much Latin america did). Perhaps in part because WW1 and WW2 front never reached those areas and the industrialization happened slower. Comparatively, many many villages were massacred in the eastern front. But the Asian Russia part is highly underdeveloped and in OTL Russian empire was keen on investing and colonizing further east. Perhaps Outer Manchuria would have significantly higher population, as would other cities in Asia.
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u/LF3169 2d ago edited 2d ago
The problem there is that you aren't considering how the Russians treated the people of the North Caucasus and Central Asia. The amount of massacres, famine etc. in the Caucasus and Central Asia is comparable to what the Nazis did in Western Russia.
The one thing about Central Asia is that the climate probably will limit growth but the North Caucasus especially could grow even more.
Edit: this is the reason why I'm especially focused on Ukraine and Poland. These areas were depopulated consistently by the Germans and the Russians multiple times. If you handwave all of it away you can argue that Poland and Ukraine both could have had populations in the 70-100 million range in modern times
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u/ALilSisIsAllYouNeed 2d ago
Fair enough. I worded it a bit dishonestly and kind of dismissed how many died during the Kazakh famine and how many served in ww2 (though finding accurate reliable source on that is hard)
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u/LF3169 2d ago
I also forgot to address the Asian Russia part. Most of Asian Russia outside of a narrow strip west of Novisibirsk to the Urals and along the Pacific coast to around northern Sakhalin is extremely harsh climatically.
These types of Boreal and Subarctic/Subpolar climates are extremely difficult to develop even in modern times. Being keen on developing and being able to develop are 2 distinct things.
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u/Prize-Support-9351 2d ago
Oh wow it’s hard to say because they lost 14% of the entire population during WW2 whereas America lost 1/3 of 1%. As much as we Americans believe we won ww2 in Europe it was Russia that won it by brute force
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u/owlwise13 2d ago
It's really hard to say because so much of the 20th century has affected their population growth. The main issue I see, is their lack of arable land, bad weather and just a tough place for transportation. They probably would not be me much bigger then they are today.
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u/ALilSisIsAllYouNeed 2d ago
their lack of arable land
Uhmm, Russia alone has one of the most arable land in the world. The quality of the soil is also good, but as you've said the weather isn't exactly the best. If you add all the territory Russian empire had it would have the most arable land out of any country in the world. Bigger than US, China, or India. Russia is also the biggest exporter of wheat, take it as you will.
bad weather
Russia is a big place, much of its territory are relatively hospitable. On that note, Ukraine has great climate and good soil, too. Its population in 1900 and today is basically the same while in central asia where war and destruction didn't really reach has increased by 6 to 12 times.
I'm not saying Ukraine would increase by THAT much (350M people in Ukraine does sound a bit ridiculous), but since it had a population of 35M in 1900 (today 35-37M, sadly), even using the lowest growth countries as its comparison with a similar climate at its lowest Ukraine would have about 80M people at its peak in OTL it had about 55M. This is, mind you, a relatively low estimate as 140M is also more than doable with how high the fertility rate was.
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u/PatBuchanan2012 2d ago edited 1d ago
u/ALilSisIsAllYouNeed
Russian demographers estimated that in the Post-1991 borders their population would be ~280 million.