Introduction

The process of declining birth rates in the developed world has led to a long-coming crisis. In the United States, the baby boomer generation (born 1946-1964) constituted one of the largest generations in American history, with their kids named the millennials (1981-1996) coming to be the largest ever. This demographic increase created a vast amount of new labor and emerging talent for an economy on the rise. Paired with a large percentage of education, these groups have helped to make the US economy the largest in the world. As for Western Europe and the USSR, the story was much different.

While nations such as Austria and France experienced a smaller version of this baby boom, this generation did not have kids to the same extent as America. That is to say, there is no large millennial generation to be had. Likewise, the USSR did not experience any such fertility increase at all for either time period. As a result, these countries usually have a very highly educated older workforce, without a younger generation large or skilled enough to replace them. Germany in particular has adopted this model, leading a complex high-value export economy. Relaxed immigration policies and family government programs have looked to fill this dearth of people, with mixed results. In contrast to countries across the pond, Western Europe has largely pulled from the lower educated rungs of foreign societies.

One example that can be noted is that the average immigrant from Turkey to the United States has likely been both college educated and ethnically Turkish from the western parts of the country, whereas in Germany a large percentage are unskilled Kurds and Turks from the Armenian Highlands. These groups of new immigrants often live in ghettos across major cities and have little interest in integrating into common German society. Over thirty years of this process have not resulted in meeting the expectations originally laid out at the beginning.

The importance of demographic trends for Rusyns is in multiple domains. A first concern is the depopulation of Carpathian Rus regions. Even if we did have a healthy population pyramid, there is no economy to afford them to stay. Lack of industrialization and supporting economic industries look to exacerbate a decline if Rusyns have a low birthrate. Another is the proportional ethnic representation in their relative countries. Our people already make up a small percentage of those in which they reside, and the difference in relative proportion from, as an example, 2% or 5% is not useless in its value. A higher percentage means more weight in foreign politics, the economy, and domestic policy.

A third concern is the replenishment of elites to fill the needed roles in our organizations and industry. With an already poor transfer of knowledge between the current guard to whatever can be called the new, there may not even be enough people to fill roles blindly and learn on the job. This reality can and will lead to the shrinkage of Rusyn activism work on a global scale.

The Rusyn Reality

Information on demographic trends among Rusyn communities is virtually nonexistent aside from large national censuses. Either these populations are too far out in the periphery of mind and area like Pryashiv Rusyns, who have a population estimated at roughly 100,000, or their nation has stopped taking statistics at all like in the case of Ukraine. Lemkos in Poland and Rusyns within Romania are such a small population base to be able to gather much information without access to monetary resources and institutional support. Given this, we will look at the best we have available to make an accurate judgment.

Zakarpattia

Since the last credible census in Ukraine is from 2001, its data and some tenuous research and predictions from 2011 are the best we have to go off of at the moment. At first glance, the Rusyn majority oblast of Zakarpattia is doing remarkably well compared to the rest of Ukraine, with a fertility rate at 1.9. The neighboring region of Galicia (Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, and Lviv oblasts) is hovering around the 1.4 to 1.5 range. Both of these numbers are below the replacement rate of 2.1, but a score of almost 2 puts an attempted resurgence of fertility in a much better position because achieving a 0.2 increase is less of a distance than 0.5 or 0.6.

How accurate these numbers are in the present day is hard to say. Data published by Eurostat shows a significantly worse picture of the oblast and country. It estimates that the actual fertility rate of Ukraine today is around 1.14, and Zakarpattia at 1.6. This actually puts Zakarpattia as the most fertile region, with the second being Rivne Oblast at 1.54. Since eleven years have passed after the data from 2011, these results are probably more accurate. Another issue is that it is also unknown what percentage of this higher fertility number comes from the large Roma and Hungarian populations that reside in the territory. If these statistics have remained roughly consistent, and we believe Rusyn fertility is roughly in line with this number ~0.1 in either direction, then this effectively means the decline of the total Rusyn population will be slower than that of other ethnic groups in Ukraine. Permanent emigration does not seem to be as severe here as in other Rusyn regions, with seasonal work being the main option to make income.

Pryashiv Region

Analytical assessment of Rusyn demographic trends is nearly as haphazard as in Zakarpattia. While the overall region of Pryashiv sits at roughly 1.5 to 1.7, what the statistics are for Rusyns in particular is up for debate. Multiple problems obscure the ability to have a completely accurate assessment of the available data. There remains an under-counting of the number of Rusyns that live in the region by as many as 50,000 – 100,000 people. It is also unknown what precise effects the large Roma population has on the overall birthrate, but as research shows (Reproductive Health of Roma Women In Slovakia) their overall birth rate in Slovakia is 4.3. Because of this combined with their lifestyle and observed trends, it is not unreasonable to assume that the average fertility rate of Rusyn communities in Slovakia is lower than the 1.5-1.7 figure. In fact, it is a certainty that the actual level of non-Roma ethnic groups are substantially lower than this figure.

Conclusion

The demographic changes occurring in the rest of Europe will also affect Rusyns and their future. Whether we can help shift the tide of this oldening process by raising our own fertility rates will help determine if this change will be a positive one. The population pyramid of the Rusyn nation is likely similar in its shape to other European peoples, meaning that overall population numbers are on the decline. Specific fertility rates are variable and dependent on the nation in which they reside, but most Rusyn groups are likely around a rate of 1.5. Rusyn areas in Zakarpattia likely have an overall higher fertility rate between 0.1 to 0.3 higher than in western areas like Pryashiv and Lemkovyna.

Careful management of factors like industrialization, education differences between women and men, and establishing the connection of larger families to a prosperous future in the minds of Rusyns might help produce this result. Examination of societies with high fertility like those in the North Caucasus and Central Asia may also help to provide answers to how to combat this issue. Geopolitically speaking, this is not a contest between an ever-growing foreign population versus a dying Rusyn one, but of who can turn their situation around the quickest. For the sake of increasing our geopolitical position and continuing our current institutional structures, focusing on this issue is a must. If we do not, then expect the Rusyn nation’s position in ten, twenty, or even thirty years down the line to remain largely unchanged except for a higher rate of depopulation in our ethnic homeland due to an aging populous.