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Russian province gets set for 'Conception Day'

A Russian province is readying for "Family Contact" day -- unofficially being called "Conception Day" -- in an effort to boost flagging birth rates, officials said on Monday.

The special day for encouraging procreation was dreamt up by the governor of Ulyanovsk province, Sergei Morozov, who this year awarded prizes ranging from a television to a Russian-made all-terrain vehicle for giving birth on Russia's Constitution Day on June 12.

President Vladimir Putin has made fixing Russia's ongoing population slump a national priority.
This Wednesday's event is timed precisely nine months ahead of next year's Constitution Day so that mothers "ideally should give birth on June 12," said a spokeswoman for the administration, speaking by telephone to AFP.

A series of concerts and exhibitions are being organised to promote family values and employers are being encouraged to grant a discretionary day off, said the spokeswoman.

"The purpose is to improve the demographic situation and support family values," she said, adding that a four-year programme of building and improving kindergartens was under way to support families.

On Monday, the independent national paper Novye Izvestiya reported that local people had taken to referring to Wednesday as "Conception Day," although it also noted some dissent.
"We've already sunk to the level where the governor is ordering us on what day to conceive a child and on what day to give birth," the paper quoted local human rights activist Alexander Bragin as saying.

The administration spokeswoman said that next year's prizes for giving birth on Constitution Day had not yet been decided but underlined that "there definitely will be prizes."

The tradition of awarding prizes for giving birth dates back to Soviet times, when women could be named "Hero Mothers" for having especially large families.

The city of Ulyanovsk, previously Simbirsk, located 900 kilometres (560 miles) east of Moscow has a special place in national mythology as it was named after the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, whose real surname was Ulyanov.