Economic demography as a science and practice in the works of B. Ts. Urlanis

The anniversary of prominent scholar provides a valuable opportunity to re-examine his academic legacy. A retrospective analysis of the works of the renowned Russian demographer, B. Ts. Urlanis, reveals insights that remain highly relevant to contemporary demographic research. This article focuses primarily on Urlanis’s contributions to economic demography and his perspectives on global population development. The problems of creativity of Russian demographers after the revival of demography as a science in the 1960s, connected with the ideological restrictions of that time, are particularly highlighted. These ideological barriers hindered the progress of the humanities in general and demography in particular, resulting in isolation from global concepts advanced by European and American scientific communities. The author concludes that Urlanis's seminal work, Demography as a Science —published in the "Population" series by the Center for the Study of Population Problems at Lomonosov Moscow State University — effectively established a development program for Russian demography that remains vital for the current generation of researchers.