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rfmcdonaldOne reason I'm glad I can read French is my ability to read INED's very interesting Populations et Sociétés, a monthly publication concentrating on a particular population-related matter, like fertility or immigration or aging or epidemiology. This June, INED (in the persons of France Meslé, Gilles Pison and Jacques Vallin) produced an interesting comparative population history of France and Ukraine in the 20th century, "France-Ukraine : des jumeaux démographiques que l'histoire a séparés". At the beginning of the 1920s, the French and Ukrainian populations (the latter within current frontiers) were comparable, each just a smidgen above 41 million. Thereafter, there was a divergence.
The authors blame this divergence on Ukraine's particularly tortured 20th century history, marked by massive Stalinist and Nazi killings in the 1930s and 1940s respectively, an earlier demographic transition, low and declining life expectancy, and most recently massive emigration. The result is that while the latest estimates suggest that there may be 75 million French by 2050, Ukraine's population is likely to be barely half that, at 38 million or so. Some writer, I forget who, said that Ukraine comes second only to China in absolute numbers of dead inflicted by totalitarian regimes. Since Ukraine has never had barely more than a tenth of the Chinese population, this can be expected to have left a mark.
The authors blame this divergence on Ukraine's particularly tortured 20th century history, marked by massive Stalinist and Nazi killings in the 1930s and 1940s respectively, an earlier demographic transition, low and declining life expectancy, and most recently massive emigration. The result is that while the latest estimates suggest that there may be 75 million French by 2050, Ukraine's population is likely to be barely half that, at 38 million or so. Some writer, I forget who, said that Ukraine comes second only to China in absolute numbers of dead inflicted by totalitarian regimes. Since Ukraine has never had barely more than a tenth of the Chinese population, this can be expected to have left a mark.
