The totality of the state—whether in Mussolini's regime or Stalin's regime—manifests not only in the constant presence of the state in a person's private life but also in the encroachment on human nature (besides exploiting and encouraging all that is base). The totalitarian person marches or leads round dances (according to Dugin), experiences «strength through joy» (a deliberately optimistic program of one regime in the 1930s). The only question a totalitarian person asks: «Should we stand still?» Under sparkling uplifting music, athletic young men and women in white shorts walk across the square, but none of them is guaranteed that their marching step won't transform into a march in rags through eternal frost. The totalitarian person must be unified, which means reflection, doubt, care, despair, loneliness, the very variability of life must be amputated. Those deviating from the unifying legislative or social norm must be thrown out of society, or better yet, punished. Numerous legislative initiatives of the era of mature Putinism are aimed at this, where repressions are «sanitary norms» (it's no coincidence that dissent in the USSR was considered, among other things, a mental deviation), and everything that disposes to diversity, including in thinking, is a «destructive ideology» contradicting the list of «traditional spiritual and moral values».
The Kremlin's Biopolitics
One of the latest initiatives is the ban on loneliness. In the summer, the children's ombudsman of Tatarstan came up with such an initiative. And at the end of 2024, Olga Borisova, a deputy of the Kirov region legislative assembly, proposed a bill prohibiting a lonely, selfish, and consumerist lifestyle. Over there, in the West, they have a consumer civilization, while here, despite a whole garage of «Bentleys» and «Mercedes» and impressive mansions of some officials and deputies, the «priority of the spiritual over the material» reigns, as stated in the president's decree on «traditional values». Eradicating loneliness means increasing birth rates. Quite in line with the position of State Duma deputy Alexander Ilytyakov «give birth while the birthing machine works». The function of the totalitarian person is to think of nothing and reproduce soldiers for Putin and workers for the military-industrial complex. Loneliness interferes with this.
Such a biological approach to human nature is hard to call highly spiritual. Of course, thoughtless reproduction cancels the material, because having many children usually leads to poverty. But it also leads to insufficient attention to the moral and educational development of children, and sometimes to their neglect. The state cannot provide material help indefinitely, as the new head of the Kursk region, Khinshtain, recently stated with touching frankness: the state needs to fight, and you are here about rebuilding homes and property acquired through hard work. One should think about the spiritual, about the spiritual. And give birth until you drop within the framework of the Kremlin's biopolitics. No loneliness, no despair—this is from the philosophy of the decadent bourgeois philosopher from the unfriendly country of Søren Kierkegaard, our iconic philosophical figures show a much more traditionalist approach, take the same fascism lover Ivan Ilyin.
In thoughts about the spiritual, one such regime reached the technology of population reproduction Lebensborn, which was questioned during the Nuremberg trials. There, too, they «gave birth while the birthing machine works». But all this—from banning abortions to mass fertility checks—is in vain. Because the main thing that determines reproductive behavior is the ways of existence in modern societies that have undergone demographic and sanitary transitions. Which does not imply reckless reproduction and allows a person to self-develop as they wish and plan their life as they see fit, even if they are a woman. In modern societies, a person gets an education, builds a career, and a little later than in archaic societies, a family.
«Think about the people!»
And here not everything—far from everything!—is determined by the material, as Putin and representatives of the recent State Council on «supporting families» (December 20, 2024) think. Yes, there are material factors, but they will not contribute to an increase in birth rates in the near future—a country spending taxpayers' money on «defense and security» on a scale larger than even the late USSR cannot provide a favorable economic background for reproductive behavior.
But there are also demographic factors—the emergence of small generations. And this is not due to the political «rocking» of the country, as Putin believes, but to the elimination of previous Soviet generations by wars and devastating repressions against those who «rocked» the country.
There are also modernization factors—well, people in modern societies do not give birth as much as in archaic ones. Lifestyle matters too—it cannot be changed by prohibiting loneliness, child-free, «selfishness». There are also biological factors: if the number of men significant for population reproduction is in trenches or relocation/emigration, there is no one to replenish the nation's gene pool—a living male specimen is also needed for the «birthing machine», and the specimen is somewhere far away. Isn't this female loneliness?
Thus, a «same-sex» family is reproduced: grandmother, mother, daughter, and in this construction with a dubious material base. As researchers point out in the work «Demography and Savings», demographic trends in Russia are the same as in developed countries, and among them is the growth of the share of households consisting of singles, and (attention, State Council!) as per capita incomes grow. According to the latest census, the size of households is decreasing (two-thirds of them consist of one or two people), the share of singles increased from 25.7% in 2010 to 41.8% in 2021. A delicate correction by researchers from predominantly state organizations—the formation of a single household model is influenced by a factor that is not present in developed countries: «Relatively higher mortality rate of men of young and middle age».
So, as Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev said, «think about the people, think about the people». But think about them broadly: not only as «birthing machines» and conscripts.
And finally, psychological factors: in conditions of unprecedented uncertainty about the future, formed by Putin's «stability», «safety», «sovereignty», for a significant part of citizens, even those not politicized, childbirth is an action postponed until better times.
Time for rocking
But our leadership is unfazed, because expert support for its activities is either absent or they are afraid to report viewpoints contradicting the main vector of «state» thinking to the autocrat. It, the leadership, at the State Council meeting asserts: «As I have said more than once: a large family with many children is and should be the image of Russia's future». Every speaker uses the traditional Russian word «family-centricity». What is it for? So that later the police and military enlistment office chase the boy born by the «birthing machine»? So that, as one Orthodox priest put it, it wouldn't be a pity when one of the many children dies in combat? Women will give birth to more? The State Council is considering «social nutrition» for families (well, yes, once again, having many children is often poverty). However, families need normal nutrition within a normal, non-militarized economy.
Deputy Yana Lantratova sees the problem in Western propaganda, as if not everything Western has been dusted with DDT: «Books. Half of the modern books sold now are books by Western authors». And what, to ban the classics of children's and adolescent literature that nurture those values that are universal?
Deputy Chairwoman of the State Duma, initiator of the «law of laws» on «banning everything» Anna Kuznetsova:
«...Industry: clothing, toys, stationery. Besides quality and accessibility, they should also convey our values. For example, with colleagues from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Industry and Trade, we released such notebooks for the first time since Soviet times—this is the crew of the tank «Alyosha», who met with you (with the president. — A. K.). Our children should be surrounded by the best: clothing, toys conveying our values, what is important and dear to us...»
Question: can, in light of Lantratova's and Kuznetsova's speeches, for example, «transmit» Karlsson? Or is this not our «value», because Karlsson is from a NATO country and generally looks kind of strange, isn't he a quadrobear with child-free, and also promotes gluttony and hooliganism? What about Pippi Longstocking, she's generally beyond redemption...
And here is the result. Tatyana Golikova, master of numbers:
«...For simple population reproduction, that is, for its preservation, we need a total fertility rate, that is, the number of children per woman, of 2.1, and for expanded reproduction—2.3. According to 2023 data, you know these numbers well, we have a total fertility rate of 1.41. And by your (Putin's. — A. K.) decision from January 1, 2025, those regions with a total fertility rate below this figure—1.41—and there are 41 such regions, will receive additional financial support in the amount of the same 75 billion rubles, to form regional programs supported by the federal budget to support birth rates in their subjects of the Russian Federation...»
Again money... This is some kind of economic determinism, close to Marxism, which, as we have already discussed, will not work fully.
And here is Putin's explanation of demographic problems:
«...Then the Great Patriotic War, and after that, we again rocked the domestic political situation. Firstly, during the Great Patriotic War, the birth rate dropped in 1943–1944, and then we again rocked the domestic political situation, collapsed the Soviet Union, and again a demographic failure. Because the level of planning for an ordinary citizen was reduced to zero. It was unclear to an ordinary person what would happen tomorrow. What can we talk about and how can we plan a family? And again the same failure as during the Great Patriotic War...»
Rocked when—during the thaw or something? And Stalin didn't rock anything—millions of people and «birthing machines» destroyed by him, millions of ruined families, millions of poor? Planning horizon? Now it is about 30 seconds for the Russian population. Young men have this horizon not from «session to session», but from one conscription campaign to another.
Yes, our authorities have no time to rock. They must ban everything, because prohibitions are a social pandemic, and there is no one to fight it with «sanitary measures»: more stupidity, more cruelty—this has become a political and social norm. For more effective «banning everything», the same Anna Kuznetsova came up with the «Institute for the Study of Traditional Values». «Scientists» have already been involved in the task, who are ready to write a «glossary» (why not use the Russian word «dictionary»?) of these very traditional values for taxpayers' money.
It seems the degradation has reached the bottom. But this is definitely not the bottom. Alcohol with a doctor's note, the ban on Western music and foreign agent songs on streaming platforms... Who will offer more? The establishment of a totalitarian regime is the movement of a steamroller that has no reverse gear. Unless it stalls for some reason.
* Andrey Kolesnikov is considered a «foreign agent» by the Russian Ministry of Justice.
Photo: kremlin.ru