The LA Times Moscow correspondent Kim Murphy published a lengthy three part story this past weekend titled “The Vanishing Russians.” The series exposes some frightening facts and stories about the state of Russia’s demographic crisis. The explanations for this crisis bounce between a sordid legacy left by the Soviet Union and the current politics of Russia. Still, her ricocheting between past and present is left without structural logic. This is to her credit as well as to her fault. While the human toll of Russia’s demographic crisis can be touched, the very structural nature of role of capitalism as a system is left to run freely roughshod over the bones of its victims without indictment.
This point will be addressed below. First, some summary and discussion of her nevertheless excellent investigative series.
Part one of the series, “A Dying Population” introduces the problem via personal stories and statistics. The demographic crisis in Russia is now well known. Increasing mortality and declining birth rates since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has created a population scissors crisis in the nation of 142 million people. Still the narratives and figures continue to be striking. For example, according to Murphy, abortions outpace births by 100,000 with 10 million Russian women infertile because of botched abortions. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has lost 700,000 people a year. During Soviet times, Russian men’s average life expectancy is 59 years old, with a 48.5 percent chance of them dying between the age of 15 and 60. Finally, according to Sergei Mironov, the chairman of the upper Duma, “if the trend didn’t change, the population would fall to 52 million by 2080.”
Other factors have helped Russia’s population slide. AIDS, illness, alcoholism, drug use, and suicide have all been factors in exacerbating the demographic crisis. The latter, suicide, was an increasing escape from the hardships of the 1990s. Economic collapse, social instability, and of course the harsh dark Russian winters certainly added to people’s propensity to off themselves. Murphy writes,
Russia’s suicide rate, at about 36 per 100,000 people, is second only to that of Lithuania, according to the Serbsky National Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry. In some remote areas of Russia, the rate exceeds 100 per 100,000.
Nikolai Zavada, a 21-year-old musician who goes by the name Serial Self-Killer, posted a song on http://www.mysuicide.ru , a well-known website that was later shut down because of public pressure:
I’m going out.
And it doesn’t matter whether it’s up or down.
Or who’s holding your hand, an angel or otherwise….
The cold has worn me out.“People have a lack of hope,” Zavada said in an interview. “That all their efforts are in vain. And also, they have a feeling of eternal emptiness.”
Such narratives read similar to archival documents I’ve read about incidents of suicide from the 1920s.
The increasing gap between deaths and births is only one aspect of the problem. This gap is being aiding by an increasingly corroded health care system. This is the subject of part two, “For the Sick, No Place to Turn.” Not longer with the support of the state, Russian health care is wilting under capitalist reforms. Like most countries, the welfare state has met its death knell. The mantra of privatization is even heard in Russia. As the public system crumbles, those who can afford the emerging private system do so, while those who can’t, must rely on a public system that is losing the competitive war as more would-be state doctors are entering private practice. The logic of the market is draining the public sector of means and minds, and the private grows fat on the corpses of the former. A small present of chocolates, tea, or even blat gets you very far today.
The poor status of Russians’ health is not simply because of alcohol and bad health care; it is also because the widespread environmental damage caused by the Soviet state. Soviet socialism was to make man the ultimate tamer of nature, but nature’s revenge is an indiscriminant litany of effects: cancers, poisoning, birth defects, suffocation, and contamination.
If a crumbling health care system is the second pillar of demographic crisis, the third is migration and higher birthrates among non-Russian populations. Part three, “The Future Looks a Lot More Diverse”, points to an issue that is not just indicative of Russia. Sometimes derisively called “the Empire Strikes Back” in academic parlance, Russia is part of a regional shift as former colonial subjects from all former European empires are now tipping the demographic scales by flooding into the metropole. And like in Britain, France, and Germany, the face of the burgeoning domestic Other is not white or Christian; he/she is dark and Muslim. With political Islam (a term I’ve adopted from Mahmood Mamdani) replacing “communism” and “nationalism” in the discourse of global politics, these Muslims are more and more simply being associated with “terrorist.” Via what Mamdani calls “culture talk,”, the “good” Muslim is eventually eclipsed by the “bad” Muslim. In the end, the political effects of demographic crisis are multifaceted. The population decline of Russians will eventually correspond to a decline in cultural and political influence.
“Demographic trends,” Murphy writes,
suggest that the decrease is likely to continue. Although most experts are skeptical, a former U.S. government expert on Russian nationalities recently predicted that Russia would have a Muslim majority within 30 years.
In addition to its own Muslim population, Russia is home to an estimated 10 million illegal immigrant workers from the largely Muslim former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The city of Moscow has swelled to 10.4 million people, and one-fifth of them are Muslims. The Russian capital has the largest Muslim population of any city in Europe.
Along Moscow’s wide boulevards, minarets rise next to the onion domes of Russian Orthodox churches. Across the country, there are 8,000 mosques, up from 300 in 1991, when Soviet strictures on religious observance were lifted. Markets more often than not are run by immigrants from Azerbaijan. Construction sites would come to a halt if not for low-paid workers from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
These developments explain the sharp rise in Russian nationalism, racism, and racial violence in a nutshell.
There are roughly three explanations given to explain the ills that inflict Russian society. The first is derived from an argument in academic and policy circles that Russia is still in a state of “transition.” Suspended somewhere between state socialism and capitalism, this argument says, the ills of “development” are harsh, but necessary. It is the birth pains of Russia entering the globalized world. Under this logic social and economic inequality is acceptable because it will condition the spoiled population to embrace a Protestant work ethic.
The second argument lays the blame solely on Putin. By this logic capital is not the problem; Putin is because he has put breaks on a process of liberalization that so flourished in the 1990s. The usual crimes are listed: the persecution of the oligarchs, especially Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the centralization of power, the transformation of United Russia into a party/state, the revival of Soviet traditions, and political repression. These are crimes for sure, but as a Russian friend recently told me, “I don’t like it when Americans explain Russia’s ills to me. The 1990s were so difficult that I understand why many people choose stability over freedom.”
The third explanation is an extension of the second. Russia’s problem is Russians themselves. They drink too much, don’t work enough, are slavish to power, and are racists as well as other reductionist reasoning. The problems let alone the solutions have no social existence—they reside in genetics itself. Such reasoning only makes Russians defensive toward their Russianness. And rightly so.
The point of the matter is that all three of these explanations are merely mystifications. The first posits what Fredric Jameson calls a “singular modernity”: all roads may seem different, but there is only one road to capitalist modernity, a road where the length and severity of overcoming backwardness is measured according to that of “Western” norms of development. The second shrouds the severe costs of the Soviet Union’s collapse as it does smooth over the tremendous wake which spreads to this day. The third is one facet of the worse forms of neo-Darwinism.
1991 was supposed to bring prosperity. It did to some. But that is the nature of capital. It only ever brings prosperity to some. Given the Third Worldesque nature of capitalism in Russia, where Moscow stands at the center with the gravitational pull of the sun, the ruinous effects of the market are only that much greater. This is not to belie the responsibility of the Soviet Union. If that system worked in the first place, it wouldn’t have collapsed. But to constantly evoke the ghosts of the past masks the realities of the present. The same could be said for placing people like Putin at the apex of Russia’s misery. No doubt, his role is crucial but there is no reason to give him more credit that he deserves. There are some real structural reasons for the crises Murphy explores in her series. She gives attention to some of them.
There is one, however, that remains buried in the human narratives she presents. It is capital and its inherently contradictory nature. Within its very being, as Karl Marx observed, are wondrous powers of creation but those creative qualities are not without wonton destruction. Russia is and will continue to be a reflection of capital’s janus face.
One other point I might add to the male death rate, that I’ve learned from conversations with Katja – is what might be termed a “Russian Risk culture”. Particularly in construction jobs, but not uncommon among the young male population, is a sort of coolness associated with doing risky, dangerous, life-threatening things. Katja says if you do something really stupid and risky and you live to tell about it … that is considered very cool. It isn’t even so much a concept of bravery, just some sort of social acceptance due to your surviving some lame-brained stunt. Russian roulette meets MTV’s “Jack-ass”.
I have a list of other various bookmarks on this topic, including papers about genetics playing a role in suicidal tendencies among Russian populations (although generally Ugro-Finnic are the hot topic in that area) and also genetics from Mongol invasions leaving a fingerprint of susceptibility to alcoholism.
As usual, very well written and interesting discussion Sean. New skin for the blog is very newsy also.
“As a Russian friend recently told me, ‘I don’t like it when Americans explain Russia’s ills to me. The 1990s were so difficult that I understand why many people choose stability over freedom.’”
This is classic Russian stupidity. So, let’s let the country become a desert rather than let the Americans have the satisfaction? Disgusting.
I grow so wearing of hearing Russians complaing about how hard the poor little babies had it in the 1990s. Do they think they had it rougher than the millions who went to the gulags and died in World War II? The fact is, Russian behavior was FAR better in the 1990s, during their alleged poverty, than it is now, when they are supposedly in an economic boom.
Russians refuse to take responsbility for their actions and those of their government. You write that “Russia is and will continue to be a reflection of capital’s janus face” but you’re mistaken: capital is not to blame, the Russian people are to blame. If things go on as they are, there will BE no Russia. By 2150 it will be an unpopulated desert.
Saw the series in the Times but didn’t have the time to read it, thanks for the summary.
And I’ve read Mamdani’s book “Good Muslim Bad Muslim”. Simply great. Put the entire Political Islam/ War on terrorism thing into its cold war fall-out perspective. Not just a book about Muslims, really a late 20th century world history book. I may just assign it when I teach my own world history class. Quite mind-blowing in its complexity, though very readable.
>>>capital is not to blame, the Russian people are to blame.
Bravo, LR, bravo.
You sound like a new Novodvorskaya to me (the most stupid and useless person of the liberal camp in Russian public opinion)
Read what she said recently:
” ? ??? ??? ? ??? ???? ??????????? ?????????????????
- ????? ??????? ????????????? ??????? ? ???????. ?? 93-?? ? ??????, ??? ????? – ?????? ???????, ??? ?????????? ??? ????????????. ? ??? ?? ?????? ??????? ????????? ????????. ?????????, ??? ?? ????? – ??????????? ?? ???????????, ? ?????????? – ??????????? ?? ??????.”
Does it mean she was fighting against the people, not the system all her vain life?
Read the following research. It’s fun:
http://www.psycho.ru/biblio/hr/motivation/sosed_vasya;2003040234.html
Oops, the rest of the above link:
a;2003040234.html
“Soviet Union… If that system worked in the first place, it wouldn’t have collapsed.”
Many people will disagree with this popular statement. That system could work ONLY if there was a strong leader. And it did work to a certain point. Problem was that there were NO strong leaders after Khrushev. Gorbachev was probably the weakest of them, and he let a stronger Yeltsin tear the country apart. While Yeltsin’s idea of a new Russia might’ve seemed good, it could only work if he actually spent some time building a new democratic country. But he didn’t. All his energy went into fighting with Gorbachev and communists, and destroying USSR. After that, he thought the market and democracy would start working on their own. But they didn’t! At that point he already didn’t care, and the rest we know.
to blame the soviet union for the demographic free-fall russia finds itself in, is misguided. after all, male life expectancy started to decline long before the ussr was relegated to the annuls of history. the implosion of that giant with legs of clay only accelerated the trend. for proof, look at female mortality and life expectancy. they did dip in the nineties but have recovered since and held up nicely though the 98 default and everything else that came russia’s way. in fact, russia’s female life expectancy looks respectable. the problem, therefore, has roots that run much deeper than the mayhem of the soviet collapse. to say contrary would be classic marxism, with its precept that economics underpins consciousness, which does not hold up on closer examination. for otherwise america, the richest country on earth, would not have worse health indicators or violent crime statistics than the much poorer new zealnad or czech republic.
much is made of russian alcoholism, which is undoubtedly a problem, but a comparative level of alcohol consumption in finland, sweden, or norway has not precipitated a similar drop in male life expectancy. which is not to suggest that alcohol is not a factor in russia’s demographic malaise; it is, just not a pivotal one.
what i strongly disagree with, as a medical professional above all, is the assumptions that r being made and popularized about russian population based on its current demographics. extrapolating trends far into the future is never scientifically accurate or justifiable in the best of circumstances. applying extrapolation curves to something as murky as the procreative behavior of future generations is akin to using an 8-ball to predict the outcome of the next elections. after all, at the time of peter the great russia had a population only a quarter as strong as france’s, and look where france and russia r now numbers-wise.
as far as prophesizing a russia with a muslim majority by 2030, this may come about, even without immigration. for russian muslim nationals, male mortality did not skyrocket as for slav russian males, and the kind of risky behavior that is widely credited with causing the problem – alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide, reckless driving, violent domestic disputes – is much less common among russia’s muslims. however, tatars, russia’s largest muslim group, have seen their numbers dwindle also of late, albeit not as fast as slav russians. so, russian population – as a whole and all of its groups, except some north caucuses ethnic cohorts, – is receding. and even if muslims form a majority in russia someday, there will be fewer of them then than now.
Excerpts from an article I really liked – http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/2006-70-6.cfm
Myth 9) Russia’s low life expectancy is a bad thing.
Not necessarily true. Those of you with no stomach for a little cynicism may want to skip this section, the rest, please bear with me.
This point is not about economics per se, but about some larger sociological factors, which also impact on economics. There is no adult in Russia today who was not born under the previous regime. In other words, the vast majority of the population has been brought up to think along lines of official Marxist-Leninist ideology about a wide range of things, including public policy in generale, and conomics in particular. As time passes, these generations seem to forget all the bad things about the previous regime, and increasingly become rather nostalgic about Soviet economic policies. Since these generations also tend to vote more than younger people who are not overly affected by such ideas, government policies in Russia must by necessity take into considerations the sentiments of the older generations. But since Marxist-Leninist ideas are not exactly a good basis for sound public policy, accommodating ideas based on Marxist-Leninist thinking cannot be good public policy. If Russia’s current low life expectancy means that the generations whose ideas about public life are largely informed by Marxism-Leninism is dying off quickly, this means that demand for public policies based on Marxist-Leninist ideas is decreasing. Politically, this can only be a good thing, with definite benefits for the economy.
MISHUK: Who in your opinion is the most intelligent and useful person in the liberal camp?
MHN PAREE: There’s a flaw in your reasoning. They may die off, but not before inculcating the next generation with propaganda that they have no inclination to break free of. What’s more, a Neo-Soviet Union is arising as fast as the old one disappeared, crushing the flow of information, exiling foreigners and denying the young generation any hope of thinking in new ways.
sean,
i would very much like to read ur opinion on this piece appearing in the latest issue of the economist
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8031597
the magazine seems to have come to define russia using the f-word, fascism. strong stuff, especially applied to a country that lost 30 million of its people fighting the scourge. yet somehow i don’t think this is irrational exaggeration, although the tone of the article is too shrill to be really convincing. with fewer hysterical fin-de-sielce notes it would have vollyed the point accross much better. still, food for thought.
Astana, I’m assuming that this is the passage from the Economist article that is of issue:
“Yegor Gaidar, a former prime minister, draws an analogy with inter-war Germany, which like post-Soviet Russia experienced economic chaos, then a period of stabilisation in which post-imperial nostalgia took hold. Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the few remaining independent parliamentarians, worries that Mr Putin seems to be switching from an imperial idea of Russia towards one more resembling a “Reich”.
History also offers a term to describe the direction in which Russia sometimes seems to be heading: a word that captures the paranoia and self-confidence, lawlessness and authoritarianism, populism and intolerance, and economic and political nationalism that now characterise Mr Putin’s administration. It is an over-used word, and a controversial one, especially in Russia. It is not there yet, but Russia sometimes seems to be heading towards fascism.”
I’m hesitant to use this term fascism to describe Russia. First because I think we can condemn what is going on without using terms that often lacks definition. The term is just too loaded. Unlike most, however, at least the Economist has provided a definition: fascism is “a word that captures the paranoia and self-confidence, lawlessness and authoritarianism, populism and intolerance, and economic and political nationalism that now characterise Mr Putin’s administration.” Now if we accept this definition, then one can make an argument. But I would not buy it for the following reasons. I should first state that there are fascist elements in Russia, but Putin is not one of them.
First, I think the Weimar analogy doesn’t fit. Those who use it severely underestimate what life was like in Germany in the 1920s. Complete, and I mean complete, economic collapse where a wheel barrel full of marks couldn’t buy a loaf of bread because the inflation rose by the hour, complete political chaos where the not only the far right, but also the far left threatened revolution. We shouldn’t forget that the German communists tried to ferment a revolution and were crushed. The fascists were naively brought in by the ruling classes as an anti-communist bulwark. Millions of demobilized soldiers, battered and torn from four years at the front, now returning to mass unemployment. A country defeated and humiliated by war and the Versailles Treaty. Complete cultural crisis. I can go on, but very little of this fits Putin’s Russia.
Second, in my view, fascism belongs to this specific historical period, where you did have the combination of authoritarianism and populism. But more specifically, fascism developed in a particular historical context in Italy, Germany, Romania and fascist movements became stronger in France and elsewhere. Mostly, I would say that they developed in response to a threat to the radical left. It was a right populist movement that came to power. That kind of historical situation simply doesn’t exist in Russia. Putin did not achieve power, nor does he maintain it through populism. Quite the opposite actually.
Thirdly, one can say what they want, but there isn’t an effort underway in Russia to radically change or suspend the Russian Constitution. Nor is it seeking to implement “emergency powers” or to create what Giorgio Agamben calls the “state of exception.” Though I have to say that to call fascism lawless is a misnomer. Fascism was legal as was Stalinism in the sense that they legislated authoritarianism.
Lastly, to call Russia fascist or on its way to fascism because it exerts state power over its population and its neighbors would then indict the entire nation state system as fascist. Did not the United States round up hundreds of Muslims in 2001 jail and deport them under the pretext of immigration law? The same pretext the Russians are using? Did the US also not legislate detention without trial? Did its Congress not eliminate habeas corpus two weeks ago thereby creating a Presidential dictatorship? Does it not have registration for foreign nationals from Muslim countries and North Korea? Does it not use its state power with impunity to subordinate states it categorizes as “rogue”? Unfortunately, it has done all of this and I don’t see the Economist, let alone anyone, writing articles about the U.S. moving toward fascism. And I wouldn’t either. Something else is going on and I think using terms like fascism does more analytical harm than good in both the case of Russia and the United States. Mostly because it conjures a variety of historical memories—Hitler, aspirations global domination, war concentration camps, holocaust—that just don’t fit.
Now one can say that Putin is not being politically smart and rather impulsive in how he is dealing with both the Georgian crisis and Politkovskaya murder. And the idea that her murder was done to destabilize the Russian state is ridiculous. For me how Putin is handling things shows two things. 1) He is bad under crisis. We can see how ineffective he is now compared to the Kursk, Beslan, etc. 2) He has little control over the lower rungs of the Russian state. I happen to believe that the raids on Georgians are more locally directed rather than from the Kremlin. That is unless evidence is provided that suggests otherwise. This is the type of stuff that happened time and time again in the Soviet period. The center says one thing and the locals go beyond the centers wishes.
I don’t mean to make light of what is going on in Russia now. It is right to condemn Putin but to speak of fascism sounds like it is more a polemical weapon than a description of reality.
Damn Sean, you’re good. Did you just write up this response off the top of your head? I agrre with everything you just said, and am impressed at how well you can articulate your argument. It would take me hours to get that out.
As far as what mhn paree said, I don’t agree. First off, the men are the ones dying off, not the women. How does that play in with the dying off of those who lived under communism? Secondly, what are the kids today being taught in school? Are they being inculcated with the idea that the Soviet Union was good, that Russia was a great power at the time? Are these not people who did not experience the Soviet Union at all? In my experience it’s the late 20 to 40 somethings that don’t have a romanticized view of the USSR. It’s either the old or the young. I’ve met more than a few late-teen early 20 Russians, who were much to young to remember much about the USSR, who have been raised on Soviet films and such and resent where Russia is today in comparison.
As a not-so-long-ago student of one of Moscow’s universities, I can tell you that our education was very pro-democratic. It didn’t necessarily critisize USSR much, but it focused more on modern society and economy. I knew a lot of pro-democratic students, as well as people with nationalistic views, and those who just cared about their career. So it’s all pretty much divided, just like in most societies I guess. Nobody teaches children specifically anything, it’s their family and surrounding friends that make them decide which side to pick, based on their experience and knowledge of the Soviet times.
sean,
u took the words right out of my mouth, i’ll echo johnnie’s sentiments here.
somehow i doubt the auteur himself really believes that russia is heading toward fascism. calling putin’s russia fascist is a strong polemical tool, it grabs ur attention and holds it, makes u think. but the longer u ponder it, the clearer it becomes that it does not mesh. what we r witnessing in russia now is an animal of a different species that cannot be called fascism even for the lack of a better word. i’d agree with u 100%, history is not a process of endless repetition, past is past, water under the bridge. even if putin wanted to create a fascist russia, i don’t think he’d pull it off. what seems to be emerging however, is neo-stalinism-lite liberally sprinkled with xenophobia and racism. don’t take me wrong, i’m not arguing that russia is about to resurrect gulags , but the ease and frequency with which the word ‘enemy’ has re-entered public discourse, is indicative and for me, who remembers vividly what soviet union was *really* like, frightening. of course, a counter-argument can be made that this is just a pavlovian reflex on the part of those who remember what the word ‘enemy’ really meant not so long ago and with what alacrity those labeled as such perished in the meat grinder otherwise known as the soviet corrections system. i’m not saying we r witnessing a buildup to a rerun of that, perish the thought. but i might be forgiven for fealing more than a slight pang of unease at the sight.
as for gaidar, i’d beg to differ with u. his analogy is not as specious as it might seem to u. his point is that we r living through a transition from a period of relative freedom to one of not-so-benign doctatorship. the broken off shards of the soviet union went through an equally gut-wrenching economic collapse in the nineties. i’m not about to start a pissing contest about who suffered more, the germans in the 20s or the post-soviets in the 90s, but it pays to remember that the recent prosperity in both russia and kazakhstan is skin-dip, very thinly spread and is far from having redressed the setbacks and inequities suffered after the ussr went super-nova. wiemar germany also knew a period of economic boom and cultural elan, not unlike what it is going now, with the booming economy sweetening the pill of rapidly withering liberties for both weimar germans and today’s russians, for hitler did not initiate the curtailing of liberties, they had been rolled back by successive hindenburg-appointed governments. which is not to say that fascism or nazism is next for russia. no, what is in store, i’m afraid, is increasing autocracy and government heavy-handedness butressed by even greater reliance on extreme nationalism.
whether this is what is in putin’s design, i don’t know. even if it is not, the tightening of the screws has an internal logic all of its own, all it needs is one push from on high, and then the enthusiastic midling henchmen will keep the momentum going with little input from above. it does not take much to induce the russian government machine to use a firm hand, its instincts r the same, they have not changed. the blueprint for heavy-handedness is embedded in the state’s dna, and once it starts replicating itself, it might be too late even for putin to put the genie back in the bottle. especially considering that he has no channels for negative feedback, and in the almost feudal court that is the kremlin now, none of his retinue would risk being the messenger of bad news. witness the oft-repeated allusions to mysterious outside forces whenever something ugly happens that makes the kremlin crimson-faced. with the kursk, it was allegations that an american attack submarine sunk the russian u-boat. with beslan, it was all those foreign nationals, including black africans, that took the children hostage, although no body was produced later to confirm this. with the hate crimes in saint pete, it was subersive foreign forces that wanted to embarrass russia in the leadup to the g-8. with the politkovskaya murder, it was exiled russians who killed the journalist to sow consternation both in russia and abroad. what is this if not ample evidence of a bunker mentality, a silo weltanschauung that has divided the world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ already there r tentative witch hunts for enemies (the attempted round-up of georgian school children) which r bound to get worse. of course, america went through a if-u-r-not-with-us-u-r-against-us phase after 9-11, but unlike america, russia does not have an independent judiciary, an unbiased media, an unfettered civil society to hold the executive in check. the stage is set for something far uglier than a sovereign democracy, whatever this might be. putin has realized the depth of the precipice he was staring and pulled overzealous officials back this time. however, with no checks or balances and untrammeled unchallengeable power, there is no guarantee that the green light won’t be given the next time around to get down to it in earnest. to me, the thought is shuddering.
SEAN:
You miss the forest for the trees. You constantly talk about how NOT to describe Putin. He’s NOT a fascist. He’s NOT a Neo-Soviet. But you never give your idea of how he SHOULD be described, IN SUCH A WAY AS TO CONDEMN HIM in a way that is readily accessible to people and leads to opposition. Without doing this, in essence, you’re serving Putin’s interests by simply muddying the waters and helping him cling to power.
There is no need to define Putin beyond what he is – the elected President of the Russian Federation. In 2 years time when he has stepped down from the Presidency, are writers still going to be throwing around such over-loaded language and terms to describe him or his time in office?
Pundits and others seem too busy talking about what Russia is moving towards, with language full of dark and ominous terms. It is much better (and difficult enough) to simple discuss what the situation in Russia currently is and to do that – without embellishment, without exaggeration, without bitterness, without bigotry, without insults, without prejudice.
I think Sean’s analysis and response was really well written and spot on. This whole topic is worthy of submittal to JRL or anywhere else that might publish or distribute conversations and analysis of Russia today.
W.SHEDD: You didn’t even read what Sean wrote, you blockhead, which was that “PUTIN SHOULD BE CONDEMNED.”
Don’t drink and post my dear.
By the way, do you say “the elected President of [the USA]. In 2 years time when he has stepped down from the Presidency, are writers still going to be throwing around such over-loaded language and terms to describe him or his time in office?” when George Bush is the topic? Do you defend him this way to foriegners?
Truly, your duplicity knows no bounds.
shedd,
well, i don’t think anyone can be totally subjective in analyzing reality. it’s is bound to be colored by perception. and perception springs from our backgrounds. sean’s analysis reflects his lack of first hand experience of life in the soviet union. mine, somewhat wistful perception of the events unfolding, is a throwback to the euphoria of the late 80s and early 90s when democracy and equitable prosperity seemed to be ours for the taking. of course, sean is extremely well read and what he doesn’t know about the soviet union is probably not worth knowing, but there’s no substituting for actually *living* in that country: standing endlessly in line to buy basic necessities, having to go to the kgb every time u wanted to go abroad, whispering in the kitchen for fear of ur neighbors rating u out, etc etc etc. no amount of reading and research can fill in for that. so when i see russia’s making a tentative turn back to what i hoped had been demolished once and for all, i can’t help but feel a sickening sense of deja-vu. and if my concern seems embellished, exaggerated, bitter, prejudiced etc, well so be it. if i had an option of going back to a prosperous stable country not unlike urs if things headed south here, then i’d probably be as nonchalant as the next guy. alas, i can’t and i won’t.
i meant objective, not subjective, of course, in sentence 1
There is a lot to respond to here, so I will just make three quick points. I’m just happy to see that there was some real substantive discussion. And I think the addition of Astana’s participation is mostly responsible for it.
On the issue of demographics. I agree with Astana on the problems of demographics. But still I think they are interesting and give us some idea of general and possible trends. They do not, however, factor in sudden events and chance. So I think they are good for discussion and trying to think about the state of affairs, but they certainly shouldn’t be taken as total evidence of the present let alone the future.
On the legacy of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Its funny, the legacy of the old tsarist ideology and culture was exactly the argument the Bolsheviks used in the 1920s and 30s! But anyway, that is another issue . . . I think that this legacy is best though in generational terms. The few completely Sovetskie people left are of the war generation. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev generations are an interesting hybrid that can be cut in a variety of percentages. In terms of the power of Marxist-Leninist ideology, I recommend this book: Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Yurchak is an anthropologist at Berkeley. In my opinion, I don’t think we should overdetermine the force and substance of M-L ideology in the late Soviet period. As Yurchak argues, by the 1960s much of the words were refilled with different, and often contradictory meanings.
Lastly, all of our discussion points to the problem of “transitional society.” I question the usefulness of transition for several reasons. Briefly, it suggests a linear, even an eschatological development of society where there is an ideal goal. A country in transition has to be transitioning to something. Second, it measures a country’s “transition” (read backwardness) with other states that are identified as “advanced” (hence my mention of Jameson’s idea of singular modernity.) Third, who decides when the transition is over? Here I think that it never ends because those in transition, developing, modernizing or whatever label you want to ascribe, will never catch up because they never will be exactly like the European and American model. They will always be, as Homi Bhabha eloquently put it, “almost, but not quite.”
Since we are discussing Demographics here, a little insight-
There is little doubt that for Russia to be a power through the 21st century its demographic trends must be reversed. There also seems to be no question that Russian mothers, short of feats of fertility unseen in the industrialized world, cannot save Russia alone.
“You have to do this in a variety of ways,” said Murray Feshbach, a demographer at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, who studies the Russian population and its health.
The problems can be found in the numbers. Russia has roughly 143 million people, and the population drops an average of 700,000 each year, largely because of the wide gap between the number of those born and the number who die. More babies will help. But as the population shrinks, Feshbach said, it risks an accelerating collapse that fertility itself cannot reverse.
There are signs that Russia is waking to the problems. Last month, the Kremlin pushed through a roughly twentyfold increase in its paltry financing for AIDS prevention, diagnosis and treatment – a sign of an understanding of the severity of the problem, said Dmitry Rechnov, a deputy director of AIDS Foundation East-West, a private organization here.
“If we keep on this track, there can be a number of positive developments,” he said.
Still, the Kremlin’s attention to public health has been uneven, and expected increases in mortality related to infectious disease would push up a death rate already driven above norms in industrial countries by high rates of heart disease, cancer, alcoholism, accidents, violence and suicide.
The potential consequences are clear. In a report released last year, the World Bank warned that if Russia did not adopt comprehensive public health programs, it risked a shrinking work force, destabilized families, strains on national security and a drain on its gross domestic product.
And not everyone agrees that cash incentives, which are not part of a comprehensive health program, will even achieve what the Kremlin hopes – more healthy and productive children.
If Putin’s proposals pass, as they almost certainly will, then next year, mothers will receive bonuses worth about $9,000 for giving birth, as well as a graduating scale of monthly cash allowances for infants and subsidies for day care.
Putin did not go as far as past Kremlin leaders, like Stalin, who encouraged women to give birth by offering Medals of Maternal Glory to repopulate a country thinned by repression and war.
A series of measures like what Stalin did plus immigration(selective no doubt), involvement of college graduates from other countries etc, ethnic Russians to come, workers’ permits etc are immediately required!
Baby boom the answer for Russia?
By C.J. Chivers The New York Times
SUNDAY, MAY 14, 2006
MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin of Russia drew from the Soviet past last week when he championed the role of motherhood in preventing Russia from becoming a state short of citizens.
The Russian population is shrinking, and demographers warn that it is within a generation of plummeting. If the most pessimistic models hold, the decline could make the country a vast, underpopulated state within four or five decades, a country with too few healthy people for a competitive work force or a capable army.
Russian life, for the peasantry and the proletariat alike, has always been unforgiving. And in a speech reminiscent of Soviet pledges of the state helping the masses so that the masses might help the state, Putin chose the familiar Soviet solution of encouraging stalwart reproduction, telling the obedient Russian Parliament to enact programs of financial incentives to women to have more children.
The Kremlin-friendly news media here – a place that often feels like the land of the single-child family – crowed in approval. The president had spoken: Here is the money, he had essentially said. Russian mothers, fulfill your role.
Beneath the enthusiasm was a question Putin did not address. Will cash incentives work? The data would say: not quite.
There is little doubt that for Russia to be a power through the 21st century its demographic trends must be reversed. There also seems to be no question that Russian mothers, short of feats of fertility unseen in the industrialized world, cannot save Russia alone.
“You have to do this in a variety of ways,” said Murray Feshbach, a demographer at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, who studies the Russian population and its health.
The problems can be found in the numbers. Russia has roughly 143 million people, and the population drops an average of 700,000 each year, largely because of the wide gap between the number of those born and the number who die. More babies will help. But as the population shrinks, Feshbach said, it risks an accelerating collapse that fertility itself cannot reverse.
This is in part because the low birthrate is more than two decades old, and the number of women ages 20 to 29, the most fecund segment of the population, has already fallen to 12 million, he said. In the next several years, women that age will fall to 8 million or fewer – a small contingent to bear the next generation.
And as analysts at the World Bank and the United Nations have pointed out, the threat to the population is not just low birthrates, but high death rates.
The Russian people are deeply unhealthy, so much so that there is no demographic group in the industrial world as ailing and prone to fatal injury as the Russian male, whose average age at death is about 59. Abysmal mortality trends separate Russia from other industrial countries that offer incentives to stimulate population growth, including Japan and Australia.
Moreover, pernicious infections have entered the Russian population since Soviet times, making the country a growing reservoir of people recently infected with tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis C.
Many of these infections have not yet turned into high rates of disease, but the public health authorities say that as the incubation periods run their course over the next several years, their effects on national health will be evident.
Tuberculosis is already at epidemic levels, and an expected surge in AIDS cases and hepatitis complications could, by the most dire models, kill more than half a million people a year in a generation or two.
There are signs that Russia is waking to the problems. Last month, the Kremlin pushed through a roughly twentyfold increase in its paltry financing for AIDS prevention, diagnosis and treatment – a sign of an understanding of the severity of the problem, said Dmitry Rechnov, a deputy director of AIDS Foundation East-West, a private organization here.
“If we keep on this track, there can be a number of positive developments,” he said.
Still, the Kremlin’s attention to public health has been uneven, and expected increases in mortality related to infectious disease would push up a death rate already driven above norms in industrial countries by high rates of heart disease, cancer, alcoholism, accidents, violence and suicide.
The potential consequences are clear. In a report released last year, the World Bank warned that if Russia did not adopt comprehensive public health programs, it risked a shrinking work force, destabilized families, strains on national security and a drain on its gross domestic product.
And not everyone agrees that cash incentives, which are not part of a comprehensive health program, will even achieve what the Kremlin hopes – more healthy and productive children.
If Putin’s proposals pass, as they almost certainly will, then next year, mothers will receive bonuses worth about $9,000 for giving birth, as well as a graduating scale of monthly cash allowances for infants and subsidies for day care.
Putin did not go as far as past Kremlin leaders, like Stalin, who encouraged women to give birth by offering Medals of Maternal Glory to repopulate a country thinned by repression and war.
Even were Putin to do so, the numbers suggest, without shifts in attitudes and widespread improvements, the traffic at maternity wards would remain slower than the Russians’ rush to the grave.
MOSCOW President Vladimir Putin of Russia drew from the Soviet past last week when he championed the role of motherhood in preventing Russia from becoming a state short of citizens.
The Russian population is shrinking, and demographers warn that it is within a generation of plummeting. If the most pessimistic models hold, the decline could make the country a vast, underpopulated state within four or five decades, a country with too few healthy people for a competitive work force or a capable army.
Russian life, for the peasantry and the proletariat alike, has always been unforgiving. And in a speech reminiscent of Soviet pledges of the state helping the masses so that the masses might help the state, Putin chose the familiar Soviet solution of encouraging stalwart reproduction, telling the obedient Russian Parliament to enact programs of financial incentives to women to have more children.
The Kremlin-friendly news media here – a place that often feels like the land of the single-child family – crowed in approval. The president had spoken: Here is the money, he had essentially said. Russian mothers, fulfill your role.
Beneath the enthusiasm was a question Putin did not address. Will cash incentives work? The data would say: not quite.
There is little doubt that for Russia to be a power through the 21st century its demographic trends must be reversed. There also seems to be no question that Russian mothers, short of feats of fertility unseen in the industrialized world, cannot save Russia alone.
“You have to do this in a variety of ways,” said Murray Feshbach, a demographer at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, who studies the Russian population and its health.
The problems can be found in the numbers. Russia has roughly 143 million people, and the population drops an average of 700,000 each year, largely because of the wide gap between the number of those born and the number who die. More babies will help. But as the population shrinks, Feshbach said, it risks an accelerating collapse that fertility itself cannot reverse.
This is in part because the low birthrate is more than two decades old, and the number of women ages 20 to 29, the most fecund segment of the population, has already fallen to 12 million, he said. In the next several years, women that age will fall to 8 million or fewer – a small contingent to bear the next generation.
And as analysts at the World Bank and the United Nations have pointed out, the threat to the population is not just low birthrates, but high death rates.
The Russian people are deeply unhealthy, so much so that there is no demographic group in the industrial world as ailing and prone to fatal injury as the Russian male, whose average age at death is about 59. Abysmal mortality trends separate Russia from other industrial countries that offer incentives to stimulate population growth, including Japan and Australia.
Moreover, pernicious infections have entered the Russian population since Soviet times, making the country a growing reservoir of people recently infected with tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis C.
Many of these infections have not yet turned into high rates of disease, but the public health authorities say that as the incubation periods run their course over the next several years, their effects on national health will be evident.
Tuberculosis is already at epidemic levels, and an expected surge in AIDS cases and hepatitis complications could, by the most dire models, kill more than half a million people a year in a generation or two.
There are signs that Russia is waking to the problems. Last month, the Kremlin pushed through a roughly twentyfold increase in its paltry financing for AIDS prevention, diagnosis and treatment – a sign of an understanding of the severity of the problem, said Dmitry Rechnov, a deputy director of AIDS Foundation East-West, a private organization here.
“If we keep on this track, there can be a number of positive developments,” he said.
Still, the Kremlin’s attention to public health has been uneven, and expected increases in mortality related to infectious disease would push up a death rate already driven above norms in industrial countries by high rates of heart disease, cancer, alcoholism, accidents, violence and suicide.
The potential consequences are clear. In a report released last year, the World Bank warned that if Russia did not adopt comprehensive public health programs, it risked a shrinking work force, destabilized families, strains on national security and a drain on its gross domestic product.
And not everyone agrees that cash incentives, which are not part of a comprehensive health program, will even achieve what the Kremlin hopes – more healthy and productive children.
If Putin’s proposals pass, as they almost certainly will, then next year, mothers will receive bonuses worth about $9,000 for giving birth, as well as a graduating scale of monthly cash allowances for infants and subsidies for day care.
Putin did not go as far as past Kremlin leaders, like Stalin, who encouraged women to give birth by offering Medals of Maternal Glory to repopulate a country thinned by repression and war.
Even were Putin to do so, the numbers suggest, without shifts in attitudes and widespread improvements, the traffic at maternity wards would remain slower than the Russians’ rush to the grave
MHN PAREE:
“A series of measures like what Stalin did . . .”
Have you gone mad? Whilst Stalin was taking “measures” by giving medals to mommies, he was also rounding up Russians by the millions and killing them off in gulags.
The very last thing in the world Russia needs right now is to be told it needs to copy Stalin more. That is, unless the goal is to have Russia go extinct.
Putin has already recognized that bribing mothers to have babies won’t increase the population, and he’s already adopted Stalin tactics. A proposal to tax mothers who DON’T have children is in the works, and if that proves in effective you can be sure that sterner measures will follow.
But not because Putin actually wants the population to grow. He’s far too weak to be able to control a dynanmic, thriving population. He wants the country weak and sick, therefore much easier to control. That is why there is no serious policy on AIDS, smoking, drinking and the like, and will be none until the Kremlin fancies itself strong enough to exercise Stalin-like control.
No, these tactics are just more measures to impose controls on the population to the extent the Kremlin can.
Stalin’s policies are responsible for Russia’s current situation, not the cure for it.
People have been saying things like “there are signs that Russia is waking to the problems” for hundreds of years. If Russians were really waking up, would they be favoring a proud KGB spy with 70% approval ratings in polls while the national population plummets rapidly to zero?
SEAN: You still don’t give any guidance as to what name should be applied to Putin, if not facist or Neo-Soviet, that aptly describes and condemns him in an accessible manner.