ABSTRACT
The radical political and economic transformations in the former Soviet Union are occasioning fundamental reassessments of social and economic prospects of this region. To the extent that these changes involve people, they influence and are influenced by the composition and distribution of the population of the region. Demographic characteristics and trends thus represent an important element of the setting in which the current societal changes are taking place in the Soviet Union’s emerging successors. This paper discusses the principal demographic trends over the recent past in the 15 republics of the former Soviet Union and presents projections of the future populations of these newly independent states.
