But what about Dugin's life in the post-Soviet times? Surely he himself was able to create a large traditional family? As you probably know, Dugin's wife divorced him and went to live with a woman, becoming an LGBT activist and opening a lesbian cafe in Moscow called Dietrich, named after Marlene Dietrich. Dugin's late daughter Daria, judging by her Instagram and TikTok, led the life of a typical Millennial woman of high income from the big city, showing off designer clothes and posting photos from parties. She was 30 at the time of her death but had no children, although she was briefly married to a university friend but divorced after a few months. Six months after her death, it was announced that a street would be named after Daria Dugina in Russian-occupied Melitopol. A Russian journalist wrote on his blog that day: "It's funny when they name a street after the person you took amphetamines with)"

The birth rate in Russia has reached the lowest level in the recorded history of the country. Fewer children were born in 2023 than in the worst year in modern history, 1999, which was the peak of the economic and social crisis in the country. It should be kept in mind that a significant share of those born nowadays are children of immigrants, as well as children born in the Muslim regions of the Caucasus, which in the 1990s were less religious, lacked the current level of subsidies from Moscow, and suffered from inter-ethnic and territorial conflicts. The graph shows the number of births in 2023 including Crimea (data not included in the graph until 2014) and Chechnya (due to wars and de facto independence, statistics were not collected from 1993 to 2003).

The graph also shows that there has been no rise in the birth rate under Putin. This is one of the favorite claims of the Western right, that the allegedly successful social policy of Putin's government has led to some baby boom. In reality, the rise in the birth rate in Russia in the 00s and early 10s was due to the fact that a relatively large generation born in the late 70s and early 80s entered the fertile age. The birth rate would have risen anyway.

Attendance at Orthodox churches on Christmas Day in Russia has almost halved over the past 10 years. In 2015, it was reported that 2.6 million believers attended Christmas services across Russia. In 2024, there were 1.4 million of them, according to the Russian Interior Ministry report. That's about 1% of the country's population. Attendance at church services on special occasions such as Christmas or Easter is many times higher than on ordinary Sundays.

In the last ten years, 76 people have been killed and over 230 injured in school/college shootings in Russia. By comparison, in the European Union, with a population three times the size of Russia's, only four children have been killed in such attacks in the same years.