58. Åslund, How Capitalism Was Built, 188; repeated again on 205.
59. Here I admittedly overlook the interwar independence of the Baltic republics. On alcohol consumption patterns see country reports in World Health Organization (WHO), Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health (Geneva: WHO, 2011), http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/en (accessed March 11, 2011). Likewise, see the “mortality belt” in Elizabeth Brainerd and David M. Cutler, “Autopsy on an Empire: Understanding Mortality in Russia and the Former Soviet Union,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 1 (2005): 107.
60. Wendy Carlin et al., “Barter and Non-Monetary Transactions in Transition Economies: Evidence from a Cross-Country Survey,” in The Vanishing Rouble: Barter Networks and Non-Monetary Transactions in Post-Soviet Societies, ed. Paul Seabright (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 240–41. Note the similarities in Ukraine: Viktor Zubanyuk, “Ukraine Takes the Strain,” Business in Russia/Deolvye lyudi 69 (1996): 98–99.
61. Åslund, How Capitalism Was Built, 205. Khalturin and Korotaev dismiss simple pessimism as the primary factor in the demographic crisis: Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 13.
62. Hilary Pilkington, Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia (New York: Routledge, 1998), 170.
63. Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 300; see also 16–47.
64. Vladimir Shlapentokh, “Trust in Public Institutions in Russia: The Lowest in the World,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39, no. 2 (2006): 154–55; Nicholas Eberstadt, Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications (Seattle, Wash.: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2010), 270; Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review 65, no. 1 (2000): 40–41, 46–48. For World Values Survey data see http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSAnalizeStudy.jsp (accessed Nov. 27, 2011); Daniel Treisman, The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 374, 86.
65. Inglehart and Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy, 263. For more confirmation see European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Life in Transition: After the Crisis (London: EBRD Publications, 2011), 98. See also Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Neil Munro, Russia Transformed: Developing Popular Support for a New Regime (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 128.
Chapter 21
1. Michael Specter, “The Devastation,” New Yorker, Oct. 11, 2004, 67–68. See also Cullen Murphy, “Watching the Russians,” Atlantic Monthly, February 1983); Murray Feshbach, “The Soviet Union: Population Trends and Dilemmas,” Population Bulletin 37, no. 3 (1982). See also chapters 16 and 18.
2. “Fact of Life in Russia,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, May 19, 1996; Mark G. Field, “The Health and Demographic Crisis in Post-Soviet Russia: A Two-Phase Development,” in Russia’s Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare during the Transition, ed. Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 11.
3. I largely agree with blogger Anatoly Karlin’s reservation—not that Russia’s demographic situation in the 1990s was particularly rosy, but that such apocalyptic pronouncements of Russia’s demographic demise have continued through the present, overshadowing marked improvements over that time. See Anatoly Karlin, Da Russophile (blog), http://darussophile.com/category/demography (accessed May 5, 2012).
4. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev, Russkii krest: Faktory, mekhanizmy i puti preo-doleniia demograficheskogo krizisa v Rossii (Moscow: KomKniga, 2006), 5. On origins of the term Russkii krest see Anatolii G. Vishnevskii, “Russkii krest,” Novye izvestiya, Feb. 26, 1998. A more optimistic assessment can be found in Anatoly Karlin, “Russia Demographic Update VOO,” Da Russophile (blog), Oct. 24, 2011, http://darussophile.com/2011/10/24/russia-demographic-update-7 (accessed May 5, 2012).
5. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev, “Vvedeniye: Alkogol’naya katastrofa: Kak ostanovit’ vymiranie Rossii,” in Alkogol’naya katastrofa i vozmozhnosti gosudarstvennoi politiki v preodolenii alkogol’noi sverkosmertnosti v Rossii, ed. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev (Moscow: Lenand, 2010), 23; Nicholas Eberstadt, “The Dying Bear,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 6 (2011): 96. A comparison of percentage of population lost can be found in Daniel Treisman, The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 368–69.
6. Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 25; Eberstadt, “Dying Bear,” 96.
7. “Fact of Life in Russia,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, May 19, 1996. Similarly see Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 127.
8. Nicholas Eberstadt, Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications (Seattle, Wash.: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2010), 135–38.
9. Nicholas Eberstadt, “Drunken Nation: Russia’s Depopulation Bomb,” World Affairs 171, no. 4 (2009): 59; David E. Powell, “The Problem of AIDS,” in Russia’s Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare during the Transition, ed. Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 124–25; Alexander Winning, “Fight against TB Plagued by Shortfalls,” Moscow Times, June 9, 2012, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/fight-against-tb-plagued-by-shortfalls/460119.html (accessed June 9, 2012).
10. See Andrei Demin, ed., Alkogol‘ i zdorov’e naseleniya Rossii: 1900–2000 (Moscow: Rossiiskaya assotsiatsiya obshchestvennogo zdorov’ya, 1998); Andrei Vroublevsky and Judith Harwin, “Russia,” in Alcohol and Emerging Markets: Patterns, Problems and Responses, ed. Marcus Grant (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edwards Brothers, 1998), 213. On “Disease #3” see Vladimir Solovyov, “The Paradox of Russian Vodka,” Michigan Quarterly Review 21, no. 3 (1982): 407; David Powell, “Soviet Union: Social Trends and Social Problems,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 38, no. 9 (1982): 24. On Russia’s alcohol-related mortality being the highest in the world see Andrew Stickley et al., “Alcohol Poisoning in Russia and the Countries in the European Part of the Former Soviet Union, 1970–2002,” European Journal of Public Health 17, no. 5 (2007): 447.
11. “Fact of Life in Russia,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, May 19, 1996; Daria A. Khaltourina and Andrey V. Korotayev, “Potential for Alcohol Policy to Decrease the Mortality Crisis in Russia,” Evaluation & the Health Professions 31, no. 3 (2008): 273.
12. Stickley et al., “Alcohol Poisoning,” 446–47; Mark Lawrence Schrad, “A Lesson in Drinking,” Moscow Times, March 5, 2011.
13. This is why famed Swedish doctor-turned-alcohol-reformer Ivan Bratt declared that absolute consumption statistics are “utterly valueless.” Marquis W. Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1936), 112. In this section I refer to a standard half-liter bottle of 80-proof vodka, conventional 750 milliliter bottles of wine at 12 percent alcohol, and international standard 0.35 liter bottles of beer at 5 percent alcohol. Stickley et al., “Alcohol Poisoning,” 446–47; Schrad, “Lesson in Drinking.”
14. Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 21; Vladimir P. Nuzhnyi and Sergei A. Savchuk, “Nelegal’nyi alkogol‘ v Rossii: Sravnitel’naya toksichnost‘ I vliyanie na zdorov’e naseleniya,” in Alkogol’naya katastrofa i vozmozhnosti gosudarstvennoi politiki v preodolenii alkogol’noi sverkosmertnosti v Rossii, ed. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev (Moscow: Lenand, 2010), 227.
15. Garrett, Betrayal of Trust, 137.
16. Aleksei Mitrofanov, “Prazdnik teper’ vsegda s toboi,” Izvestiya, Feb. 17, 1999, 8; Murray Feshbach, “Russia’s Population Meltdown,” Wilson Quarterly 25, no. 1 (2001): 19; Hedrick Smith, The Russians (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1976), 121. On the traditional Russian drinking culture see chapter 7 and Walter Connor, Deviance in Soviet Society: Crime, Delinquency and Al
coholism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 39–42.
17. Richard Weitz, “Russia: Binge Drinking and Sudden Death,” Eurasianet.org, Dec. 15, 2010, http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62577 (accessed Dec. 17, 2010). Higher death rates among Russian men is based on a 2010 presentation by Martin McKee, co-director of the European Center on Health and Societies in Transition; the audio podcast can be found at http://csis.org/event/new-insights-catastrophic-level-mortality-russian-men.
18. Aleksandr Nemtsov, Alkogol’naya istoriya Rossii: Noveishii period (Moscow: URSS, 2009), 241; Francis C. Notzon et al., “Causes of Declining Life Expectancy in Russia,” Journal of the American Medical Association 279, no. 10 (1998): 798.
19. Martin McKee, “Zdorov’e rossiyan: Chto nuzhno predprinyat’, chtoby izmenit’ situatsiyu k luchschemu,” in Alkogol’naya katastrofa i vozmozhnosti gosudarstvennoi politiki v preodolenii alkogol’noi sverkosmertnosti v Rossii, ed. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev (Moscow: Lenand, 2010), 141; Martin McKee et al., “The Composition of Surrogate Alcohols Consumed in Russia,” Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 29, no. 10 (2005): 1887–88; Vladimir M. Shkol’nikov, Evgenii M. Andreev, and Dmitrii A. Zhdanov, “Smertnost’ trudosposobnogo naseleniya, alkogol‘ i prodolzhitel’nost’ zhizni v Rossii,” in Alkogol’naya katastrofa i vozmozhnosti gosudarstvennoi politiki v preodolenii alkogol’noi sverkosmertnosti v Rossii, ed. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev (Moscow: Lenand, 2010), 98.
20. David A. Leon et al., “Nepit’evoi alkogol‘ v Rossii: Potreblenie i vozdeistvie na zdorov’e. Chto nam izvestno?” in Alkogol’naya katastrofa i vozmozhnosti gosudarstvennoi politiki v preodolenii alkogol’noi sverkosmertnosti v Rossii, ed. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev (Moscow: Lenand, 2010), 156, 59.
21. Garrett, Betrayal of Trust, 136; Eberstadt, “Drunken Nation,” 61. During the 1990s alcohol directly killed 31 out of every 100,000 people in Russia and 54 out of every 100,000 men. Nuzhnyi and Savchuk, “Nelegal’nyi alkogol’ v Rossii,” 271; Aleksandr Nemtsov, “Mnogo pit’, vse-taki vredno,” EKO, no. 281 (1997): 187; Vroublevsky and Harwin, “Russia,” 213.
22. A. M. Harkin, ed., Alcohol in Europe—A Health Perspective (Copenhagen: W.H.O. Regional Office for Europe, 1995); Vladimir S. Moiseev, Alkogol’naya bolezn’: Porazheniya vnutrennikh organov pri alkogolizme (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Universiteta druzhby narodov, 1990), 18–20, 54–55.
23. Nicholas Eberstadt, “Russia: Too Sick to Matter?” Policy Review, no. 95 (1999): 9; Larry Husten, “Global Epidemic of Cardiovascular Disease Predicted,” The Lancet, Nov. 7, 1998, 352; Sonni Efron, “Grim Prognosis,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 12, 1995, 1.
24. Eberstadt, “Russia: Too Sick to Matter?” 9.
25. Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 17–19; William Alex Pridemore, “Vodka and Violence: Alcohol Consumption and Homicide Rates in Russia,” American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 12 (2002): 1921; Eberstadt, “Drunken Nation,” 60–61; “Fact of Life in Russia,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, May 19, 1996.
26. Shkol’nikov, Andreev, and Zhdanov, “Smertnost’ trudosposobnogo naseleniya,” 98; Goskomstat Rossii, Sotsial’noe polozhenie i uroven’ zhizni naseleniya Rossii: Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii, 1998), 310.
27. Average life expectancy among Russian men bottomed out at 57.6 years in 1994. Aleksandr Nemtsov, “Tendentsii potrebleniya alkogolya i obuslovlennye alkogolem poteri zdorov’ya i zhizni v Rossii v 1946–1996 gg.,” in Alkogol‘ i zdorov’e naseleniya Rossii: 1900–2000, ed. Andrei K. Demin (Moscow: Rossiiskaya assotsiatsiya obshchestvennogo zdorov’ya, 1998), 105; Anders Åslund and Andrew Kuchins, The Russia Balance Sheet (New York: Petersen Institute for International Economics, 2009), 86.
28. Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 24–25. Every additional liter of alcohol consumed per year reduces a man’s life expectancy by 10.5 months but only 4 months for a woman. Andrei V. Podlazov, “Demograficheskaya demodernizatsiya i alkogolizatsiya Rossii,” in Alkogol’naya katastrofa i vozmozhnosti gosudarstvennoi politiki v preodolenii alkogol’noi sverkosmertnosti v Rossii, ed. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev (Moscow: Lenand, 2010), 116. The widest Soviet sex differential between 1980 and 1983 was 10.2 years. W. Ward Kingkade and Eduardo E. Arriaga, “Sex Differentials in Mortality in the Soviet Union,” in Social Change and Social Issues in the Former USSR, ed. Walter Joyce (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), 115.
29. Feshbach, “Russia’s Population Meltdown,” 16–17; Eberstadt, “Drunken Nation,” 54. TFR and other demographic data can be found at the website of Goskomstat Rossii, the state statistical agency: http://www.gks.ru/dbscripts/Cbsd/DBInet.cgi?pl=2403012 (accessed Jan. 14, 2012.)
30. “Fact of Life in Russia,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, May 19, 1996.
31. Feshbach, “Russia’s Population Meltdown,” 16–17; Eberstadt, “Drunken Nation,” 54. Relatedly, “90 Percent of Russian Men Suffer from Erectile Dysfunction,” Pravda, Jan. 11, 2012, http://english.pravda.ru/health/11-01-2012/120204-erectile_dysfunction-0 (accessed Jan. 12, 2012).
32. Garrett, Betrayal of Trust, 135. See also Victoria I. Sakevich and Boris P. Denisov, “The Future of Abortions in Russia,” Paper presented at the European Population Conference 2008, July 9–12, in Barcelona, Spain, http://epc2008.princeton.edu/download. aspx?submissionId=80419 (accessed Feb. 2, 2012).
33. Nikita Mironov, “Rossiya vymiraet, potomu chto v strane ne ostalos’ muzhchin,” Komsomol’skaya pravda, June 24 2009, http://www.kp.ru/daily/24316.3/508858 (accessed Nov. 5, 2010); Paul Goble, “High Mortality among Men Undercuts Moscow’s Pro-Birth Policies,” Moscow Times, June 30, 2009; “Endangered Species,” in Nemtsov, Alkogol’naya istoriya Rossii, 294. 2010 census figures are available at http://www.perepis-2010.ru/results_of_the_census (accessed Feb. 1, 2012). Murray Feshbach is quoted in Garrett, Betrayal of Trust, 130.
34. Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 19.
35. Ibid., 18; Eberstadt, “Drunken Nation,” 55; Nemtsov, Alkogol’naya istoriya Rossii, 108.
36. Judyth Twigg, “What Has Happened to Russian Society?” in Russia after the Fall, ed. Andrew C. Kuchins (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), 152–53.
37. Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 18; Jake Rudnitsky, “Bleak House,” The eXile, Jan. 22, 2003, http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6802&IBLOCK_ID=35 (accessed Jan. 2, 2013); Eberstadt, “Dying Bear,” 100; Eric Rosenthal et al., “Implementing the Right to Community Integration for Children with Disabilities in Russia,” Health and Human Rights 4, no. 1 (1999): 83; Garrett, Betrayal of Trust, 138.
38. Twigg, “What Has Happened to Russian Society?” 151. Also see Fred Weir, “Russia’s Shrinking Population Mars Putin’s Superpower Ambitions,” Global Post, Nov. 3, 2011, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/111102/russia-population-superpower-health-soviet-union?page=0,2 (accessed Feb. 2, 2012). This is why I find it important to support organizations like the Russian Orphan Opportunity Fund, which provides educational and vocational development: http://www.roofnet.org/mission.
39. Garrett, Betrayal of Trust, 139–40.
40. Richard Galpin, “Russia’s Disabled Suffer Neglect and Abuse,” BBC News, Oct. 12, 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8302633.stm (accessed June 26, 2011); Rimma Avshalumova, “Finding Work Is Difficult for Disabled,” Moscow Times, Feb. 14, 2012, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/finding-work-is-difficult-for-disabled/453103. html (accessed Feb. 14, 2012); Rosenthal et al., “Implementing the Right to Community Integration for Children with Disabilities in Russia.” One in nine families with disabled children reports familial strife with regard to alcohol. Ethel Dunn, “The Disabled in Russia in the 1990s,” in Russia’s Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare during the Transition, ed. Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000).
41. Laurie C. Miller et al., “Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
s in Children Residing in Russian Orphanages: A Phenotypic Survey,” Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 30, no. 3 (2006): 531. Likewise, see Khalturina and Korotaev, “Alkogol’naya katastrofa,” 19; Tatiana Balachova et al., “Women’s Alcohol Consumption and Risk for Alcohol-Exposed Pregnancies in Russia,” Addiction 107, no. 1 (2012): 109.
Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State Page 73