Russia's demographic turn.

[Cail]

For the first time since the fall of Soviet Union, Russia's population started to grow. According to latest published data, in the period between January and October of 2009, Russia's population had grown 0,004%(Russian Wiki - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Демогра...0;#cite_note-0).

According to this data, as compared to the previous year, mortality has decreased, and the birth rates increased, resulting in 0.004% grow as opposed to -0.08% decline.



Ethnically speaking, modern Russia's population consists of:

Russians - 79.8%
Tatars - 3.8%
Ukrainians - 2%
Bashkirs - 1.2%
Chuvashs - 1.1%
Chechens - 0.9%
Armenians - 0.8%
....
Other microethnoses.

[Cail]

By the way, could it be connected to the fact that Russia droped to the 23rd position of alcohol consumption per capita per year .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol...ion_by_country