The Numbers Vladimir Putin Doesn’t Want You to See

[William769]

Russians prefer alternative reality.

In the days since Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea, the Russian people are once again feeling good about their country. A robust 63 percent of them say they consider Russia a “great power,” according to a survey released this week by the Levada Center, a respected Russian polling firm. The survey also found that Putin’s approval rating is now at 80 percent, a 17-point rebound from his all-time low, just one year ago.

In 2000, when Putin had just been elected the first time, I wrote a profile of him for this magazine. The reality I discovered in the numbers then was shocking. They represented the greatest challenge Putin faced: the dire demographics of Russia.

I found that two out of three Russian men who died, died drunk. The country’s death rate far exceeded its birth rate: in 2000, life expectancy for men was only 58, and for women 71. The syphilis rate among girls 10 to 14—a statistical category that boggles the mind—had gone up 40 times the previous decade, and only 30 percent of boys between the ages of 15 and 17 were considered healthy. Cheap heroin from Afghanistan was rolling in, and an H.I.V. epidemic spread by dirty needles was taking hold. Predictions then were that Russia, with a population of 146 million, could become a nation of fewer than 100 million people by 2025, and hardly a superpower: The country was aging and the birth rate was plummeting. Putin himself in his first State of the Nation address in July 2000 warned the Russian people, “We are in danger of becoming a senile nation.” When Putin annexed Crimea, I only half facetiously wondered whether this was his way of tackling the population deficit.

But overall I assumed there had to have been a nice bounce since 2000. After all, Russia was now considered a BRIC, a major emerging economy. Moscow had gained in population by 1.5 million. Like everyone else, I had read the endless style-section stories about rich Russian “It girl” art collectors and the billionaire Russian oligarchs cavorting in St. Tropez. Russia won the most medals—33—in the recent Winter Olympics, held on its home soil in Sochi.

But when I started calling specialists in Russian demography, I learned otherwise. “Demographic decline is the clearest way to see longtime decline in Russian power,” Nicholas Eberstadt, the author of Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications, told me. He put Crimea in a whole new context: “Putin has to take more risky behavior to counterbalance this decline in power.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/03/numbers-vladimir-putin-doesnt-want-you-to-see

[MADem]

1. Holy shit! That article is fascinating--great find!

And here we are, spitting, screaming and getting pissed off about the health dangers of e-cigs!

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/03/numbers-vladimir-putin-doesnt-want-you-to-see

Despite a recent slight uptick in births versus deaths, life expectancy now stands at 64 for males and 76 for women (137th and 100th in the world, respectively). According to the U.N.’s World Health Organization, the life expectancy for a 15-year-old boy in Haiti is three years higher than for a Russian boy the same age. A drop in fertility by 50 percent between 1987 and 1999 has resulted in a reduced number of women now at childbearing age, which is beginning to affect the country in a major way: Two thirds of all births in Russia take place among women between the ages of 20 and 29, and this population will decline from 13 million currently to 7 or 8 million in the coming years.
According to Murray Feshbach, a Georgetown professor emeritus and the dean of Russian demography in the United States, Russia’s working-age population is also declining by a million people a year, a faster rate than the decline of the overall population, which in 2013 stood at around 143 million, 3 million less than when Putin took office. Moreover, only 30 percent of Russian babies born are born healthy. Eberstadt told me that many unhealthy Russian babies are “discarded” —sent to government institutions where they often develop cognitive difficulties. Unhealthy children grow up to be unhealthy adults: half of the conscripted Russian army has to be put in limited service because of poor health.

Twenty-five percent of Russian men still die before the age of 55, many from alcoholism and the violent deaths, plus other diseases it fosters. A protégé of Feshbach’s, Mark Lawrence Schrad, has recently published a book called Vodka Politics, which analyzes how vodka has been used throughout Russian history, from tsars to dictators, as a means of social control. Cheap vodka and cigarettes were among the first free-market products available after Communism. When a partial government crackdown regulating sales of alcohol in 2009 occurred and vodka’s price went up, some hard-core alcoholics simply switched to perfume or antifreeze. The government also jacked up prices on beer, often imported or owned by foreigners, and further drove the population to harder stuff. Schrad, a political scientist at Villanova, has also written that 77 percent of kids between the ages of 15 and 17 drink vodka regularly; in rural areas, the percentage can be as high as 90.

Russia, meanwhile, has more heroin addicts than any other country. To become truly grossed out, one only has to go to the Web to see the damage of krokodil, a homemade opiate that heroin addicts in Russia shoot that rots their skin and organs from within. A thriving needle culture inevitably means H.I.V., and between 2000 and 2012 the number of new cases of H.I.V. increased six fold. Many of those infected also suffer from tuberculosis. Russia is second only to India (with 1.3 billion people) in the number of cases of M.D.R. (multidrug-resistant) tuberculosis...

[William769]

2. I guess the only way to prop up his population is to invade other Countries.

I wonder how many die from depression related causes? I know one Group in particular that it would be very high in (that is the one's that escape the beatings).

[MADem]

4. Who wouldn't be depressed? It's a repressive shithole where life is cold, brutish and short.

Between the Pussy Riot/Keep quiet and Gay/No way attitudes Pootie is shopping, he should hire Ari "Watch What You Say, Watch What You Do" Fleischer as his publicist!

But hey, there's plenty of vodka, heroin and krokodil! A real worker's paradise...

[okaawhatever]

5. I think I see a motive behind all the recent anti-gay laws/propaganda/rhetoric. I think they're

going to be set up as fall guys for all of societies ills. HIV from IV drug use and lack of clean needles? It's not heroin, it's the gays. Ditto some of the other issues. Putin and the Kremlin need to address a lot of social and health problems in Russia, I think they may have just figured out their campaign. People getting away from the church, breakdown of "traditional values", homosexuality, etc. They're working from the same playbook as some of the evangelical neo-cons.

[MADem]

7. I am horrified to have to agree with you. I think you're right.

Those awful heroin-toting, tuberculosis-carrying, krokodil shooting gays--it's all THEIR fault!! Aided and abetted by those pastel colored balaklava-wearing Pussy Rioters!!!

Profound for the irony-impaired.

[uponit7771]

11. +1

[JustAnotherGen]

12. That was my first thought too n/t

[LiberalEsto]

14. The Soviets forcibly kept Russians away from the church for many years

Because of this, many people weren't raised with religion in their lives, and aren't raising children with religion either. It's stopped being a habit. This has happened in formerly Soviet-ruled countries as well.

[ProSense]

13. Horrific and tragic, and

all the more reason why the attempts to portray the country as a socialist paradise was delusional.

[JDPriestly]

3. Alcoholism. More generally, addiction: The scourge of the planet.

[sheshe2]

6. Kicking for exposure.

The best I can do tonight. Late and I have to go.

[Cha]

8. This isn't the first time I've read about Russia's decline.. But, they love putin.. yay, Crimea..

from your link, William..

"Russia, meanwhile, has more heroin addicts than any other country. To become truly grossed out, one only has to go to the Web to see the damage of krokodil, a homemade opiate that heroin addicts in Russia shoot that rots their skin and organs from within. A thriving needle culture inevitably means H.I.V., and between 2000 and 2012 the number of new cases of H.I.V. increased six fold. Many of those infected also suffer from tuberculosis. Russia is second only to India (with 1.3 billion people) in the number of cases of M.D.R. (multidrug-resistant) tuberculosis."

Rid the country of Gay People but don't take away their Vodka or Heroin it turns out..

Something the putin pushers don't want to acknowledge.

Thank you for this, William~

[RobertEarl]

9. Could be radiation

Russia is near Chernobyl and the Soviet Union played fast and loose with nuclear waste for decades.

Here is an old NYT article that broaches the subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/02/world/plunging-life-expectancy-puzzles-russia.html

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. And it could be...

that 60% of Russian men smoke and the per capita consumption of alcohol is the equivalent of 60 bottles of vodka per person per year.

[Xolodno]

15. Putin's first terms was fixing the mess..

...that Yeltsin left behind. Boondogle in Chechnya, tattered economy controlled by oligarchs (from economic reforms recommended by the west), being chained to IMF loans, etc.....Russia was set up to be a client state under Yeltsin. Putin undid most of that or put it in check...and now he's trying to undo the damage left from the Soviet Union...while at the same time restore national pride.

The price has been the loss of civil liberties...and he can get away with this because what most don't realize...civil liberties are still better now than they were under the Soviet Union. In the past, Pussy Riot would have had a one way ticket to Siberia never to be heard of again....or just flat out executed...or both.

He can only do this for so long and someone after him will have fix his mess in that regard.