At the Eastern Economic Forum, within the framework of the youth program "VEF Junior", an event called "School of a Young Governor" was held, where Grigory Kuranov, Deputy Permanent Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Far Eastern Federal District, spoke to an audience consisting of students and high school students. He told the youth this:
“Some of the foreign Anglo-Saxon scientists considered that in order to live normally and calmly, there should be no more than a billion people on Earth, that very “golden billion”. But the "golden billion" is not the "golden youth" at 100%. No, out of this “golden billion”, about 200 million are wealthy, and 800 million are servants.
A billion should remain on Earth, and 8 billion on Earth. What needs to be done in order to reduce the population of the Earth and live as they see fit? Quite right, introduce a different system of values. And to reduce the population – how will it be? It will be an artificial famine, these are artificial epidemics, this is the introduction of the concepts of basic values that what the hell is a family for you, a family can be of the same sex and you don’t need children, nothing at all, and so on and so forth.
The next step after the epidemic – some believe that there will be some kind of epidemic of infertility. They will come up with something, some kind of artificial virus that will cause infertility. The goal is to reduce the population to a billion. According to our country, according to the calculations of these comrades who… this is called transhumanism, according to their calculations, Russia should have… 50 million is enough. There are now 150 million of us, and there should be 50, that is, every third should go to another world.
50 million is enough for the extraction of those minerals that we have left in a huge volume, for work in hazardous industries, because this is harmful, all this should remain in our country, and products that contribute to a high standard of living, they will go there, and these 200 million of that "golden billion" will live.
Accordingly, by and large, there is, on the one hand, patriarchy – a man, a woman, twelve children, – on the other hand, there is a movement towards the "golden billion" with the destruction of the remaining families. Everyone will decide which side he is on."
The statement about every third person who has to go to another world so that 50 from 150 million is left is reminiscent of an old joke about the “new Russian”, who didn’t stop getting rich in school with deuces in all subjects: “I buy for a dollar, I sell for three, here on these two percent and live. But this is not the most anecdotal in the speech of Putin's official.
The idea of the "golden billion" Kuranov, perhaps, learned from the speech of his top boss. In July, at the Strong Ideas for the New Times forum, Vladimir Putin said :
“The model of total domination of the so-called golden billion is unfair. Well, why should this “golden billion” of the entire population of the planet dominate everyone, impose its own rules of conduct based on the illusion of exclusivity? It divides peoples into first and second grade, and therefore is inherently racist and neo-colonial, and the globalist, supposedly liberal ideology underlying it is increasingly acquiring the features of totalitarianism, holding back creative search, free historical creation.
One gets the impression that the West simply cannot offer the world its own model of the future. Yes, of course, it was no coincidence that this “golden billion” became “golden”, achieved a lot, but took its positions not only thanks to some implemented ideas – to a large extent, it took its positions due to the robbery of other peoples both in Asia and in Africa. But how – it was so: India was robbed so much. Therefore, even today the elites of this “golden billion” are terribly afraid that other centers of world development may present their own development options.
But no matter how much the Western and supranational elites strive to preserve the existing order of things, a new era is coming, a new stage in world history.”
But neither in the West, nor anywhere else, except for the post-Soviet space, this idea is not known. For the first time, the expression “golden billion”, apparently, appeared in 1990, when an article by the Soviet economist Anatoly Tsikunov (pseudonym – A. Kuzmich) “What is the “golden billion” of people on Earth and why are the Soviet people?" The author argued that perestroika in the USSR is part of a global restructuring, the purpose of which is to subjugate the rest of the world to the developed countries of the West and, with the help of transnational corporations, turn it into a raw material colony. According to this Soviet dogmatist, the transition to capitalist relations in the USSR was undertaken in order to organize the access of TNCs to the country's resources. Tsikunov's article, in particular, stated :
“The fact that after 1945 Russia was able to completely restore its economy in 10 years, reach the frontiers of the world is a consequence of the temporary respite that it received after the war and the right to use its raw materials for its own needs. The goose that laid the golden eggs was allowed to breathe the air of freedom and stand on its feet.
But already in the 50s, the plan of the “US Act of October 10, 1951 on mutual security” of the Western bloc and its member countries began to be actively implemented. In section 514, it was planned: “To reduce the depletion of US resources and ensure the corresponding supply of important raw materials to the countries of the bloc …” at the expense of the countries producing raw materials, that is, the USSR, China, South Africa, India, etc. This was how the legal foundations of the “golden billion of the population under the sun of prosperity” were laid. ””.
In fact, Section 514 of the law provides for up to $55 million to US-friendly states to produce products that the US is in short supply. That is, the very idea of the “golden billion”, which aims to capture all the resources of the Earth, is based on a fake of the Soviet era.
Further development of the concept of the "golden billion" is based on pessimistic forecasts of the catastrophic consequences of overpopulation of the Earth in the spirit of the theory of Thomas Malthus that appeared in the 18th century; however, the gloomy neo-Malthusian prophecies were never justified. Modern technologies, including the introduction of transgenic crops into agriculture, have made it possible to get rid of the threat of mass starvation (not to be confused with a temporary shortage of certain products as a result of disruption of supply chains, as happens with grain and vegetable oils due to the war in Ukraine) . And the problem of energy shortages in the future can be solved through the development of energy-saving technologies and the use of renewable sources.
There is no practical sense in reducing the population of the Earth, if only because it is not clear how to ensure that the inhabitants of depopulated countries are engaged in exactly the kind of production that the “golden billion” needs. Western companies have massively moved production to China and the countries of Southeast Asia, and they are quite satisfied with the high population of these countries, they willingly use the low-cost labor force there.
As for same-sex families, here Kuranov contradicts himself: you can’t enter into his concept the fact that such families are legalized precisely in those countries whose inhabitants, in his opinion, are included in the “golden billion”.
What does the transhumanism about which Kuranov speaks have to do with it, it is impossible to understand. In fact, transhumanism is the idea of using the latest technologies to increase the mental and physical capabilities of a person, protect against diseases, and overcome the aging of the body. It has nothing to do with the reduction of the human population.
The creation of a virus with desired properties, in particular, one that would cause infertility, is unrealistic at the present stage of the development of science. But this is meaningless: such a virus exists in nature. In men, mumps (mumps) often leads to infertility. Kuranov obviously did not think of something else: if the insidious Anglo-Saxons set themselves the goal of causing an epidemic of such a disease in Russia, the problem would not be to create a virus, but to infect the population with it. Infection with parotitis occurs from person to person by airborne droplets. Apparently, spraying an aerosol with a culture of the virus would require a huge number of low-flying drones, which are hardly possible to deliver to Russia.