Empires have always understood that wars are won not just with guns. They are won in classrooms where the language of instruction changes; in passports where nationality is erased; in relocations where outsiders become “insiders” and locals become strangers.
Russian policy embodies this logic with remarkable consistency: demography is not statistics, but strategic weaponry.
Stalin brought this practice to its extreme. The deportations of Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, and Kalmyks were not merely punishments for a mythical “betrayal” in World War II, but radical purges of territories from the “undesirable,” combined with the settlement of “loyal” groups. Populations became clay for Russian authorities: move, break, scatter - and a new ethno-demographic balance was created.
Here we confront an extreme case of what Michel Foucault, a French 20th century philosopher, called biopolitics: the governance of life and death, birth and mortality, health and the bodies of a nation.
In Russia, biopolitics becomes thanatopolitics - the politics of death. For Russia people are not communities, but resources: some “excess” can be removed, others sent to die, and still others settled as a living shield.
It’s filled with examples of deliberate demographic engineering, used as a tool for imperial expansion, consolidation of power, and suppression of national movements. Let's look at some of these examples.
Donbas (Donets Coal-Industrial Region)
In less than a century and a half, Donbas transformed from sparsely populated steppe and borderlands into one of the densest industrial clusters of the empire - and later, the USSR. This rapid economic transformation was accompanied by large-scale population flows, urbanization, and shifts in identity structures.
The nature and direction of these changes were not “neutral” - they created a social and ethnocultural fabric that state policies (imperial, Soviet, modern) could then instrumentalize.
After World War II, Donbas was devastated and depopulated. A large number of Russian workers were brought in for reconstruction and industrialization, significantly changing the demographic balance. In 1926, 639,000 ethnic Russians lived in Donbas, while Ukrainians made up 60% of the population. By 1959, the ethnic Russian population had reached 2.55 million.
As early as the first half of the 19th century, the southeastern territories of Ukraine attracted attention due to mineral deposits; with the arrival of railways and investment (mostly foreign), the first mines and metallurgical plants emerged. This prompted the first internal migrations - seasonal and permanent.
From the 1860s to the 1890s, the region experienced massive growth: British, Belgian, and French investments in coal and metallurgy, the creation of factory towns (e.g., Yuzivka - future Donetsk), and railway construction. Labor was needed - and it arrived.
Workers came from central provinces of the Russian Empire, from neighboring Ukrainian territories, and to a lesser extent from Poland, Germany, Greece, and Jewish communities. By the early 20th century, Donbas had become a major multiethnic industrial hub with significant Russification of the working class.
Stalin’s five-year plans and industrial programs caused an even greater influx of workers, technical specialists, and administrative personnel from across the USSR. After World War II, reconstruction involved massive population movements: deportations, relocation of Gulag prisoners for labor, and resettlement of workers’ families.
These waves intensified urbanization and increased the proportion of Russian-speaking populations in urban centers.
Industrialization created a new “class identity”: miner/metallurgist - more often defining the local community than “a peasant from X village.”
This class cohesion was accompanied by linguistic and cultural Russification in workplaces and administrative spaces: Russian became the language of governance, technical education, and interethnic communication.
This did not imply the total disappearance of Ukrainian language or local traditions - yet the social status of the language and the visibility of its speakers changed, especially in industrial cities.
Donbas industrialization was not merely a market phenomenon: it had strategic significance for the USSR. The state encouraged relocation (through incentives, grants, work assignments), built housing and infrastructure, and organized technical schools.
After 1917, the planned nature of the Soviet economy entailed centralized workforce redistribution (e.g., sending skilled workers to industrial centers) and the use of forced labor during industrialization and reconstruction.
Additionally, foreign capital brought an early influx of technical specialists and managers, further changing local demographics.
Demographic changes in the region and its Russification led to Russian language and culture becoming dominant in a region that was originally much more Ukrainian-speaking—and then gave Russia the opportunity to use this region as a springboard for claims of “ancestral Russian lands,” protection of Russian speakers—and ultimately to start a war.
Crimean Tatars
The fate of the Crimean Tatars is among the most brutal examples of Russian demographic engineering.
The deportation of nearly 200,000 Crimean Tatars on 18 - 20 May 1944 to Central Asia (mostly Uzbekistan) was a rapid and violent act of forced relocation. This caused catastrophic losses: estimates suggest 20 - 46% of deportees died from starvation and disease within the first three years of exile. Crimean Tatars were prohibited from returning home until 1989.
This event was the culmination of a long process of demographic change in Crimea. Before the first Russian annexation in 1783, Crimean Tatars made up roughly 98% of the peninsula’s population.
By 1897, this had fallen to ~34%, and by 1939 to ~19%.
According to Refat Chubarov, head of the Mejlis, approximately 50,000 Crimean Tatars left Crimea between 2014 and 2024 due to security concerns and the need to preserve their cultural identity.
The Crimean Tatar case is a horrific example of demographic engineering through genocide and ethnic cleansing, followed by the deliberate settlement of a preferred group (Russians).
The sharp reduction of the indigenous population and its replacement was a calculated step to consolidate Russian control and create a “demographic fact on the ground” that could justify future territorial claims. The relocation of Tatars in 2014 demonstrates the continuity of this coercive policy.
Circassians
The Circassians (self-designation — Adyghe) are one of the most ancient indigenous peoples of the Caucasus. Historically, “Circassians” was a broader term that encompassed a number of tribal groups (Shapsugs, Natukhai, Bzhedugs, Kabardians, Temirgoys, and others).
The Circassian genocide (1863 - 1878) involved systematic mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and forced relocations of up to 90% of the Circassian population during the Russian conquest of Circassia. This brutal campaign caused the deaths of 1 - 1.5 million people.
Only about 3% of the Circassian population remained after the genocide. Ottoman archives record over a million Circassian immigrants arriving from the Caucasus by 1879, nearly half of whom died en route across the Black Sea from disease.
Russian records from the late 19th century indicate only 106,798 Circassians remained in the Caucasus. The primary motives were Russian imperialism, Russification, and Christianization. Famine was openly used as a weapon against Circassian villages.
The Circassian genocide serves as a foundational historical precedent for Russia’s use of mass extermination and forced relocation as a tool of demographic weaponization.
It was a deliberate policy to eliminate disloyal indigenous populations, consolidate imperial control over the Caucasus, and promote Russification - a model of extreme violence later echoed in Soviet and modern Russian practices.
Chechens
The fate of the Chechens is another example of brutal demographic engineering by Russia. On 23 February 1944, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the mass deportation of approximately 400,000 Chechens and their Ingush neighbors to Central Asia and Siberia.
This was part of a wider Soviet program of forced resettlement affecting millions of ethnic minorities. The accusation was “mass collaboration” with Nazi invaders, despite many Chechens fighting in the Red Army.
The deportation caused the deaths of 123,000 - 200,000 Chechens and Ingush, representing one-quarter to one-third of their total population - the highest death rate among ethnic groups affected by Soviet relocations.
Chechen sources claim up to 400,000 deaths. According to the 1939 census, 407,690 Chechens and 92,074 Ingush were registered in the USSR.
The 1944 Chechen deportation is a vivid example of punitive ethnic cleansing and population transfer used as a tool of war and state control. Subsequent Russian settlement was a deliberate attempt at demographic replacement.
Later Chechen demographic recovery highlights the limitations of such policies in the face of strong national identity and high birth rates; nevertheless, the original intent and devastating human cost remain significant.
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan under Russian/Soviet rule provides a stark illustration of colonial demographic engineering too.
By the late 19th century, Kazakhstan became a major destination for migration within the Russian Empire, with large-scale settlement of Russian and Ukrainian peasants after the integration of the Kazakh Khanate.
The 1897 imperial census showed Kazakhs at 81.7% (3,392,751) of the population, Russians 10.95% (454,402), and Ukrainians 1.91% (79,573).
Early 20th-century peasant immigration deprived Kazakhs of their best lands, limited their nomadic movements, and forced them to rely on trade with settlers for survival. The 1920s and 1930s saw new economic policies causing massive Kazakh outflows.
The catastrophic famine of 1930 - 1932, caused by livestock requisitions to feed Moscow and Leningrad, killed one-third of the Kazakh population, turning them into a minority in their own republic.
Official Soviet statistics from the 1939 census claimed Russians (40.0%) outnumbered Kazakhs (37.8%). Reassessments suggest Kazakhs (40.4%) still slightly outnumbered Russians (38.4%). Nevertheless, the Kazakh population declined by nearly 40% between 1926 and 1937, while the Russian population nearly doubled.
Kazakhstan’s demographic history is a vivid example of colonial engineering, combining colonization, resource exploitation, and famine-induced depopulation to fundamentally alter the ethnic balance.
Deliberate policies rendered Kazakhs a minority in their own homeland, a profound and enduring demographic shift aimed at integrating the territory into the Russian sphere and exploiting its resources.
Russian history shows that demography was never just about birth rates or censuses. Imperial, Soviet, and Putin-era Russia treats populations as a malleable resource: they can be reduced by famine, forcibly relocated, diluted with settlers, destroyed in war, or - conversely - used as a living shield for geopolitical ambitions.
This publication was compiled with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It’s content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Renaissance Foundation.
