Duma Deputy Says Moscow Must Establish Paid ‘Holiday For Sex’ To Boost Russian Birthrate – OpEd
By Paul Goble
Georgy Arapov, a New People Party deputy in the Duma, has called on the Russian government to create a paid vacation to be called “a demographic week” to help Russians overcome their stress and single people find partners so that they will have sex and boost their country’s fertility rate which now stands at 1.41, far below replacement level.
Not surprisingly, this proposal (tass.ru/polia/23961183) has become the occasion for much laughter about proposals coming out of the Russian legislature; but it is significant as a sign of just how worried many in the Russian capital now are about the demographic collapse of their country.
Nikolay Yeremenko, a docent of Moscow’s Finance University, says that he at first thought this was “fake news” but then remembered that in recent weeks, others have called for eliminating the word “marriage,” banning mortgages for studio apartments, and requiring Russian women to wear mini-skirts so as to increase the birthrate (rosbalt.ru/news/2025-05-19/nikolay-yaremenko-kto-kak-provedet-otpusk-dlya-seksa-5393305).
The scholar says that this latest proposal won’t work any better than those which have come before. Its absurdity and the impossibility of implementing the proposal are obvious. All that it shows is how worried such people are and how unwilling they are to face up to the real requirements for more births: higher incomes and more hope for the future.
Perhaps, Yeremenko says, what Russia really needs is a week for Duma deputies and their ilk to take the time off to reflect on reality rather than to continue to come up with proposals which show just how far from reality they have now drifted.
