Surrounded by her brood of 18 children, Nadezhda Osyak winces as she recalls the pain of childbirth: ‘It doesn’t get any easier. It’s called labour for a reason.’ Nadezhda is a youthful brunette in her early 50s whose trim figure belies her astonishing maternal accomplishments.

‘I gave birth to 15 naturally,’ she says, ‘and three by caesarean. Those three were like a holiday.’ She and her husband, Ioann, a priest in Russia’s Orthodox Church, had their first child in 1984, just before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union, and their 18th in 2009, by which time communism and the USSR were already distant memories.

Their motive for having such a big family? ‘Love,’ says Father Ioann, patting his wife’s hand and gazing moistly at her while she blushes. A stout patriarch of 53 with a big grizzled beard, he’s someone for whom the word ‘uxorious’ might have been invented.

The Osyaks are clearly exceptional by any standard. Anyone who is familiar with the parental treadmill of nappies, teething, Calpol and broken nights, who’s sat through Tikkabilla at 5am with a colicky child or coaxed a finicky infant into trying a spoonful of puréed sweet potato, will marvel at their achievements. But in Russia today, families like the Osyaks have an additional significance.