Half of Russians Now Depressed, Helping Kremlin Now but Undermining Russia over Longer Term, Academy of Sciences Study Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 2 – Forty-nine percent of Russians are now depressed, with more than two-thirds of these suffering severe forms of that feeling, according to a new study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, a finding that is leaving society incapable of resisting the state now but also incapable of development in a positive way later.

            Each quarter, the Academy’s Institute of National Economic Forecasting releases a report on the state of Russian society. The latest one contains these depressing statistics (ecfor.ru/publication/kvartalnyj-prognoz-vvp-vypusk-71/); and a commentary on its findings highlights why they are so worrisome (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/106073).

            According to the report, most Russians are depressed because of the current state of the Russian economy and their own future economic prospects rather than any other issue such as the war in Ukraine. Economic concerns naturally hit better off people much less than others and young people just starting out especially hard.

            Drawing on data from the Institute’s report, the Krizis-Kopilka portal says that this level of depression is having a variety of serious consequences. Among the most important are the breakdown of ties, a focus on immediate needs rather than long-term goals, an unwillingness to have children, rising petty crime, and a retreat into silence or faith in cults.

            In this situation, the portal continues, “the state will begin to interact not with society, but with a crowd of individuals who require only one thing, the solution of their immediate problems. The authorities will thus be forced to solve an endless chain of small problems rather than be in a position to develop a strategy for the whole.”

            In the short term, this state of affairs may help the powers that be by precluding open protests about larger issues; but in the longer term, the portal says, it will make it impossible for the country to achieve any major breakthroughs or even develop in a normal way in the coming years, putting it further behind other countries and at risk of exploitation by them.