> > By Michael Wines

> > RYAZAN, Russia - If Ina Chaikovskaya does not have it all, she has more than > most women in this ancient military town: brains and pluck, an apartment and > a Zhiguli sedan bought with profits from her own business, a pointed wit. > > What she does not have, and would like, are a husband and children. At 37, > she is running out of time.

> > "There are no normal men," she complained, curled up in jeans and a sweater > on a sofa, her companion - a 7-month-old orange tabby cat - staring out the > balcony window. "They've all got an inferiority complex because they can't > earn enough money to support a family. All of them live with their mothers. > They all earn 1,000, 1,500 rubles a month," $35 to $55, roughly. > > "Who would want to bear a child with a man like that?" she asked. > > In Ryazan, a struggling industrial city southeast of Moscow, the answer is > clear: hardly anybody. In the last decade, the marriage rate here has > plummeted 30 percent. The divorce rate has leaped 60 percent.

> > Not surprisingly, the birthrate is down 40 percent, too. > > This is the flip side to Russia's decade-long epidemic of rising mortality: > a baby bust of alarming speed and size, winnowing the nation's population by > millions - and likely to continue for years. Europe's highest- fertility > country just a decade ago, Russia today is right down there with Spain and > Italy as the lowest.

> > New births last year in Russia occurred at the rate of 8.4 per 1,000 people, > compared with 13.4 in 1990. Put another way, Russia's fertility rate - the > average number of babies a woman is expected to bear - was just 1.17, down > from 1.89 in 1990. > > The outlook, then, is for a shrinking, aging population when there is a > crucial need for young people to rejuvenate Russia's farms, re-energize > industry and rebuild the economy. > > The twin trends - rising deaths and declining births - are both rooted in > the social and public-health upheavals that have swept the nation since the > Soviet Union entered its death throes in 1991. Both trends have confounded > experts, who expected them to be neither as serious nor as prolonged as they > have been.

> > The country's health care has collapsed in the last decade, along with the > people's health. Public hospitals and clinics are short of money and > medicine; doctors earn near-poverty wages; infectious diseases like > tuberculosis are epidemic. > > No one doubts the decay has fed a rise in mortality unparalleled in recent > peacetime history. And no one believes this is merely a medical issue. > Rather, it is a signal that poverty and stress are eroding the government's > ability to care for its own. > > Experts, including some at United States intelligence agencies, fear > deteriorating public health could lead to political upheavals at worst, or > aid emergencies at best.

> > Low fertility is the norm in many Western nations, of course, thanks largely > to women's emancipation and widespread birth control. Even in Russia, > birthrates crept slowly downward for decades before the 1990's. > > But the latest plunge is different: driven not by women's broader choices, > but by the fact that many of their options - marital, medical, social, > financial - have been all but obliterated by the earthquake that destroyed > the Soviet Union. > > Some turnaround surely will occur, but when, nobody knows. Experts once > believed that Russia's mothers would start bearing children again after the > upheavals of the early 1990's. Instead, Russia's birthrate fell another 10 > percent.

> > By all estimates, the population will continue to shrink. Russia has already > lost 3.3 million people since its population peaked in 1992. It will lose > tens of millions more, experts predict, regardless of whether births pick > up. The only question is how many. > > According to projections prepared at the United Nations, Russia will > contract in the next five decades from its current 145 million people to 121 > million, the level of 1960. > > One Russian demographer, Sergei Yermakov, of the Research Public Health > Institute, says Russia could shrink to as few as 80 million people, 10 > million fewer than at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917.

> > "Children are being put off right now," said Sergei V. Zakharov of the > Russian Academy of Sciences, perhaps the leading expert on Russian > fertility. "They are going to end up being born. The question is how many - > two or three. But the answer to that question isn't clear."

> > The Reasons Why

> > Ms. Chaikovskaya does not think the birth drought will end soon. After a > decade of social upheaval and poverty, creating a child here seems less an > act of love, lust or even calculation than it is an act of pure will, and > perhaps faith. > > "No one wants to have babies," she said. "Even the middle class starts > thinking, Can we afford to have babies? Everybody knows that everything in > Russia is bad right now."

> > The province of Ryazan, a Maryland-size patch of flat, black earth etched > with S-curves by the Moscow River on its way toward the Volga, ranks 82nd in > fertility among Russia's 89 provinces. The birthrate - seven babies per > 1,000 women each year - is one-sixth below the Russian average. In the past > two years, one of Ryazan's four maternity hospitals has closed.

> > Ask women why, as the Family Planning Center in Ryazan asked 500 women who > sought abortions last year, and one answer dominates: they cannot support a > family. They lack money (97 percent), or space in the matchbox flats they > share with parents (15 percent), or confidence that they can regain their > jobs after childbirth (8 percent). > > Valentina Shevachkina, director of the family planning center, says 15,000 > of the clinic's clients polled from 1997 to 1999 wanted an average of two > children - "if the government takes some responsibility for their education > and upbringing - if the state gave some form of assistance."

> > The state can't - or won't. Even the $2-a-month stipend guaranteed everyone > under 18 is almost $1 billion in arrears nationwide, and marked for a budget > cut next year. In parts of this province, it has not been paid since 1998. > > If $2 sounds like a pittance, think again. In a region of slender incomes > and phone-booth apartments, it takes very little to derail motherhood.

> > Olga Marshalko, 23, a hospital intern in Kasimov, on the Oka River east of > Ryazan, and her bricklayer husband have postponed pregnancy until they can > escape their two-room flat in a dormitory. > > "Another serious problem is money," she said, "but it wouldn't prevent us > from having a family." Why not is a puzzle: the Marshalkos take home $46 a > month. > > In Ryazan, 28-year-old Natasha, who declined to give her last name, is 28 > and pregnant with the first of what she hopes will be two children. > > She also worries about money, and says her parents will do much of the > child-rearing, for if she takes the maternity leave ostensibly guaranteed by > the government, her employer could replace her quickly.

> >

In Economic Free Fall

> > For times here are hard.

> > The Ryazan countryside suffers the same devastating poverty that ravaged > most rural areas after the Soviet system of collective farming fell apart. > Meat production has fallen 85 percent in a decade, the grain harvest by > two-thirds. > > In that same period, one-sixth of Ryazan's 500,000 rural residents have died > off or fled to the cities. Only a trickle of migrants from even poorer > places like Ukraine and Kazakhstan has warded off faster shrinkage. > > Ryazan, the regal if fraying provincial capital, once grew as the farms > emptied out. But four years ago it began losing people, too, a victim of the > post-Soviet collapse in military production that was the city's financial > linchpin. Only lately have a few industries like power generation and oil > refining begun to pick up some of the slack. > > When Vladimir Gornov, an associate professor at Ryazan State Technical > University, surveyed local economic conditions in July, one-fifth of > respondents said bread was the staple of their diet.

> > "The baby-boom generation has grown up, and the post-baby-boom generation > isn't having any babies," he said. "The working-age population in the > countryside is simply drinking itself to death. I don't know whether it > would be better for them to have babies or not." > > A decade ago, there were an average of 55 births for every 1,000 Ryazan > women under age 20. Last year the average was 29. The same sort of drop > occurred among women between 20 and 24, the most productive ages for Russian > motherhood.

> > When Ryazan entered the 1990's, 4 marriages in 10 were ending in divorce. By > the decade's end, the figure was almost 6 in 10, mirroring the rise > throughout Russia. > > The reasons are the same as those for the dramatic drop in new marriages. > Poverty, social upheaval, loosened sexual mores and deteriorating public > health are not the glue of a good relationship. And while women everywhere > say a good man is hard to find, this seems especially true in Ryazan, where > alcohol-related deaths and the murder rate have rocketed upward. > > Those are markers of social breakdown among men, though women are complicit > in at least some of that breakdown: one in five Ryazan births last year was > out of wedlock, double the rate in 1990 - a factor that breeds poverty and > instability.

> > The Issue of Infertility

> > It was infertility counseling day one recent afternoon and there must have > been 30 women crowding the sofas outside the Family Planning Center in > Ryazan. > > "We have 2,000 infertile couples being treated here," said Ms. Shevachkina, > the director, "and some couples don't go for help at all."

> > Nobody knows how many Russian couples are infertile: maybe one in 10, as the > nation's obstetrician-general says, or one in five, as the Health Ministry > reported in April, or one in six, as some doctors in Ryazan estimate. The > comparable rate in the United States is about one in 12.

> > One legacy left by Soviet medical planners can be summed up in a word: > abortion. It has had substantial effects on the ability of women to > conceive. Contraception was never a priority under Communism; if anything, > it was viewed as anti-growth. Birth control pills were rare; condoms were > unreliable. > > So by the 1980's, the average Russian woman was having nearly four > abortions. Under President Boris N. Yeltsin, the government opened 260 > family counseling centers and, by subsidizing interuterine devices and birth > control pills, cut the overall abortion rate by a third. But the > Communist-controlled Parliament wiped out the program's budget. > > Seventy-five percent of Russian women still rely on abortion to control > family size, and with subsidies eliminated for contraceptives, that rate may > rise. > > Ms. Chaikovskaya said Ryazan women are wary of the pill and IUD's, worried > about side effects. At Maternity House No. 1, the 37-year- old chief doctor, > Andrei Turchyannikov, agreed. > > However much doctors may advise about these other methods of birth control, > "many women think, `Well, if I get pregnant, I can just have an abortion,' " > he said. "Our women continue to think abortion is not a frightening thing, > like getting your tooth fixed."

> > Such a casual attitude has stark consequences, Ms. Shevachkina said. When > the family planning center studied 500 women who were unable to have a > second child, in 1994, they concluded that for half of them, infertility > stemmed from past abortions. > > "I think little has changed since then," she said. > > But abortions have declined; if infertility is rising, as many seem to > believe, the blame probably lies with the spread of Western sexual mores and > the explosion of venereal diseases that followed. There, too, some doctors > believe, men are most at fault.

> > Aleksandr B. Tereshenko, the specialist in male infertility at the family > planning center, said half the center's infertility cases now involve men, > compared with 20 percent earlier in the decade. He blames alcohol, a > deteriorating diet and venereal disease, from herpes to chlamydia to > hepatitis, for much of the shift.

> > Finding Fathers Abroad

> > This is a nation where bigger has always meant better. And Russian > politicians, including President Vladimir V. Putin, have seized this year on > their nation's dwindling birthrate as evidence that the Russian race is > besieged, and must be reinvigorated.

> > Mr. Putin even suggested in November that the secret to Russia's population > revival lay in luring back millions of Slavic Russians whose ancestors were > dispatched by Stalin to populate the Soviet empire, and who now live in > independent former Soviet republics.

> > In fact it is not that simple - and perhaps not quite so dire. Russia has > been beset by fertility declines again and again in the last century - > during the war that followed the 1917 Communist takeover, during the famine > that followed Stalin's collectivization of farmland in the 1930's, during > World War II - and suffered no lasting aftereffects.

> > Births even swelled a bit in the 1980's, as the Kremlin offered women bigger > apartments and other incentives to mothers. A small part of the decline in > the 1990's reflects the fact that women sped up their pregnancy plans to > reap those benefits, and had fewer babies later on. > > Perhaps the best analogy to Russia's current dry spell - a steep drop in > births during the Depression in the United States - also ended in a dramatic > rebound.

> > "What we saw in the U.S. in the 30's was a very large decline in the total > fertility rate," said Barbara Anderson, an expert on Russian population > trends at the University of Michigan. "But I know from looking at cohorts of > women at the time that it was virtually total postponement. When things got > better, it recovered."

> > Many of Ms. Chaikovskaya's friends are not prepared to wait. They are > leaving Ryazan. > > She can tick them off, rapid-fire: Olya met an American on the Internet and > is happy in the United States. Sveta found a Ukrainian and went to Kiev. > Lena ran off with a Portuguese pipefitter; so did another Olya. Larisa is > living with a man in Yugoslavia. > > Ms. Chaikovskaya says she is still betting on success in Ryazan. > > "I'd like a daughter," she said, and after making a stable life for herself. > "Now I'm thinking I can do it. But I'm also thinking it's too late."

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