MOSCOW  In a southern Moscow park, the newest romantic seat, courtesy of Russian officials, is a wooden bench with a back shaped like outstretched angel wings and a curved seat that encourages couples to slide closer together.

On Tuesday, Alyona Safina, 21, who works for the youth branch of Prime Minster Vladimir V. Putin’s United Russia party, scuttled around the park making preparations for an inauguration ceremony for the Bench of Reconciliation. Couples were urged to sit on the bench and work out their differences, as Ms. Safina hung tiny ribbons of white, blue and red, the colors of the Russian flag, around the rim of a nearby fountain.

It was one of many events across Russia for the first Day of Family, Love and Fidelity, a holiday that is the government’s latest attempt to help halt Russia’s population loss.

Last year, as president, Mr. Putin declared 2008 the Year of the Family. On Sept. 12, a holiday called Family Contact Day encouraged Russians to stay home and engage in marital intimacy in the hopes of producing children on Russia Day, nine months later, on June 12.