The Russian government is bringing back awards previously doled out under the Soviet Union, giving over $16,000 to mothers who are raising at least 10 children.
The reward, Mother Heroine, was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday and will give Russian mothers a one-time payment of 1 million rubles ($16,000) as soon as their 10th living child turns 1 year old, according to Putin’s decree. The program’s revival comes as Russia is facing a decrease in its population, both through people leaving the country and a decrease in the country’s birthrate, according to the Moscow Times.
The Soviet Union created the Mother Heroine program in 1944 as a means to help repopulate Russia during World War II. The program was discontinued in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union.
To qualify for the payment, the 10th child must still be alive on his or her first birthday, and all children must be properly cared for and educated. In the case in which one of the children is killed in a war, a terrorist act, or an emergency situation, the mothers can still receive the reward, according to the decree.
Rebekah Koffler, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officer who focused on Russia, claims Putin is reviving this program as a means to offset Russia’s war with Ukraine, which began in February. However, the program will not succeed in Russia’s current form because “no rational young woman will have 10 children in Russia,” she told Fox News Digital.
“First, the economic conditions don’t allow this. There’s no culture of having so many children,” Koffler said. “Since religion was outlawed in the USSR, the religious groups, like Catholics, who would otherwise have many children, do not.”
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The population of Russia has fallen to 145.1 million as of 2022, according to Rosstat’s latest demographic report. The country’s population shrank by an average of 86,000 people every month between January and May this year, surpassing the previous record of 57,000 departures a month in 2002, according to the agency.
