Until the important public dialogue on Third World population issues began in the Soviet Union in 1965, ideological limitations and bureaucratic interests prevented policy makers from recognizing the existence of a world or national “population problem.” Since then, freer discussions of the Soviet Union's surprising decline in birth rate and labor shortages have led to serious policy questions. Conflicting policy goals, however, have resulted in only modest pronatalist policies.
The Soviet population problem is a result of interregional disparities in population growth rates between the highly urbanized Soviet European populations with low birth rates and the least urbanized Central Asians with dramatically higher birth rates. As a result, these essentially Muslim people will provide the only major increases in labor resources and an increasing percentage of Soviet armed forces recruits. Policy planners are thus faced with difficult options. Current policies stressing technological transfers from the West and greater labor productivity, however, are unlikely to solve further labor shortages and regional imbalances. Ultimately, non-European regions will be in an improved bargaining position for more favorable unionwide economic policies and for a greater role in policy-planning.
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