Abstract
Among the many scourges that are haunting post-Soviet Russia is a health and demographic crisis of major proportions, with ominous implications reaching into the third millennium. Indeed, the health of the population has been one of the major casualties of the collapse of the Soviet regime, and of the transition to a new political and economic system, although the crisis had its origins considerably earlier, in the 1960s. The major aspects of that crisis consist of a yearly decrease in the size of the population, stagnant or decreased life expectancy, increased premature mortality, the return of infectious diseases, rising morbidity, a degradation of the environment, and practically every other index related to the well-being of the population, including a length of life differential between the sexes in favor of women unprecedented in peace time and unique in the world in its magnitude. Since 1994 there have been some improvements as the population adjusts to the new conditions, although it is too early to determine whether this trend will continue, given the renewed shocks caused by the economic crash of August 1998.
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Notes
France Meslé and Vladimir Shkolnikov, “La Mortalité en Russie: une crise sanitaire en deux temps,” Revue d’Etudes Comparatives Est-Ouest 26, no. 4: 25–34.
The expression was coined by A. Zinoviev. See Michael Ellman, “The Increase in Death and Disease Under ‘Katastroika,’” Cambridge Journal of Economics 18 (1994): 329–355, ref. 1.
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See, for example, Mark G. Field, David M. Kotz, and Gene Bukhman, “Neoliberal Economic Policy, ‘State Desertion,’ and the Russian Health Crisis,” in Jim Y. Kim, Joyce V. Millen, Alec Irwin, and John Gershman, eds., Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Courage Press, 2000), 155–173.
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Cited in Judyth L. Twigg, “Russia’s Space Program: Continued Turmoil,” Space Policy 15 (1999): 69–77.
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These figures are usually considered underestimates for purposes of international comparisons, because of the manner in which the Soviets defined infant mortality. What is important is that, in Soviet terms, the infant mortality went up. For details, see Mark G. Field, “Soviet Infant Mortality: A Mystery Story,” in Advances in International Maternal and Child Health, eds. D. B. Jelliffe and E. F. P. Jelliffe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 25–65.
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Cited in Peter Walberg, Martin McKee, Vladimir Shkolnikov, Laurent Chenet, and David Leon, “Economic Change, Crime, and Mortality Crisis in Russia: Regional Analysis,” British Medical Journal 317 (1 August 1998): 312–318.
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For a more detailed discussion, see Vladimir Shkolnikov, Mark G. Field, and Evgenii M. Andreev, “Gender Gap in Russian Mortality in Time and Socio-Demographic Dimensions,” in Challenging Inequities in Health: From Global to Local, eds. Margaret Whitehead, Finn Diderichsen, Timothy Evans, and Abbas Bhuiya (Oxford University Press, in press).
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It should be noted that in state-controlled economies, economic frustrations become political frustrations because the public perceives the political sphere as the basic mechanism for distribution of all economic goods and as the source of prosperity, but also because the experience of economic problems has been infused with a sense of political injustice and moral outrage. See Peggy Watson, “Explaining Rising Mortality Among Men in Eastern Europe,” Social Science and Medicine 47, no. 7 (1995): 923–934.
Aron Antonovsky, Health, Stress, and Coping: New Perspectives on Mental and Physical Well-Being (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1979).
France Meslé and Véronique Hertrich, “Sex Mortality Differences in the Baltic Countries” (paper presented at the International Conference of Vilnius, 8–9 October 1998, on Regularities and Inconsistencies of Demographic Development: Preconditions for the Replacement of Generations, Paris, INED, 1998).
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V. M. Shkolnikov and L. P. Malkov, Prodolzhitelnost’ zhizni v Rossii (Moscow: Tsentr demografii i ekologii cheloveka), in progress.
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M. E. Kimmerling, “Inadequacy of the Current WHO Re-Treatment Regimen in Russia: MDRTB [multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis] in a Central Siberian Prison,” International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (1999), in press.
Laurie Garrett of Newsday, cited in Murray Feshbach, “Dead Souls,” The Atlantic Monthly, January 1999, 26–28.
Hermann Feldmeier, “Die Rückkehr des Fleckfieber in Russland: Wiederaufleben alter Seuchen in Osteuropa,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Internationale Ausgabe, 8 March 1999, 5.
“Russians Have the Weakest Hearts,” Segodnia, 11 September 1997, 2, in CDPSP XLIX, no. 37 (1997): 17.
A recent and very useful exception is William C. Cockerham, Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1999).
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© 2000 Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg
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Field, M.G. (2000). The Health and Demographic Crisis in Post-Soviet Russia: A Two-Phase Development. In: Field, M.G., Twigg, J.L. (eds) Russia’s Torn Safety Nets. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62712-7_2
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