MOSCOW: Despite geopolitical problems in a number of fronts, Russia has tried to steal a march on the West in the area of family life and marriage, which have increasingly become major global concerns. Officially atheist from the 1917 revolution that created the Soviet Union until the end of the Cold War in 1991, Russia is now trying to lead the revival of Christian values in Europe by defending the natural family from the global “homosexual lobby.”

This is driven mainly by Russia’s demographic winter, which had cost the country an annual loss of 250,000 people. From 1991 onward, Russia had been hoping to have 600 million people by the year 2000; when the year came, it had no more than140 million. Last year, for the first time in 20 years, the birth rate exceeded the death rate. From 1.3, the birth rate is now 1.7--still below the 2.1 replacement level.