Seeing Russia’s population decline

A few weeks ago, Russia released preliminary census results showing that country’s population had shrunk by 1.6 percent since 2002. That was a bland statistic. Now we have a colorful story that illustrates just how tragic certain regions of Russia have become.

Writing in Time, Simon Shuster reports from Pskov – a northern region that borders Estonia but has seen more population decline than anywhere else. He finds a village where people have little to do but drink – it has no hospital, no school even. It’s a sad tale.

I went to Pskov a couple of years ago, because you can visit the summer estate and grave of poet Alexander Pushkin just outside town. It’s striking just how “thrown away” the region feels, its roads riddled with potholes so big that you can’t drive faster than 30mph. What makes it all the more striking is that it isn’t a region in the cold depths of Siberia but one that should be one of Russia’s richest, lying as it does on the border with the EU.