Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 24 – The Russian
government and state-controlled media discuss only a small portion of Russia’s
demographic problems and seldom do that entirely honestly because they are
multiplying at a rate beyond the Kremlin’s willingness or ability to do something
about (rusmonitor.com/moskvichi-my-vymiraem-no-ob-ehtom-pozzhe-reportazh-sotnik-tv.html).
But this week brought a flurry of reports
about five issues where the facts are very different from what the Putin regime
typically claims and where the consequences of Russia’s future are potentially
very great indeed. The five are:
·
Russian Roads are Killing
People at an Alarming Rate. Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev says that Moscow is solving the country’s notorious problems
with highways, but no one much believes him (babr24.com/msk/?IDE=169914). But not only are Russia’s roads in bad shape, but
they are causing accidents that mean Russia with just over a quarter of the
population of the EU suffering almost the same number of highway deaths (gre4ark.livejournal.com/510734.html).
·
Because of Super-High
Adult Male Mortality, Russian Men Work Far Fewer Years than Do Men in Other
Countries. Vladimir Putin and the Russian authorities prefer
to talk about their efforts to boost the birthrate rather than to do something
about the super-high mortality rate among working age males, something that
would certainly be far more costly and difficult. But a new Moscow study finds
that as a result of excessive deaths among working-age Russian men, this cohort
works on average far fewer total years than do workers in other economies. The
study also makes clear that Russian women work nearly the same number of years
as women elsewhere because they do not suffer from the same problems, often
related to alcohol consumption, that plague men (iq.hse.ru/news/214043304.html).
·
Incarceration Rates
in Russia are Down, But More Children are Landing in Jail. Moscow has taken great pride in pointing out
that the number of people behind bars in that country has fallen by a third
over the last decade (snob.ru/selected/entry/133606), but it has rarely been willing even to acknowledge
that arrests among the very young are rising because of the spread of criminal
subcultures like AUE that celebrate violating the law among school-age children
(ura.news/articles/1036273655).
·
Russian Brain
Drain Running at Seven Times the Rate Moscow Acknowledges. Many
commentators have long pointed to the fact that educated Russians are leaving
the country to work elsewhere, but according to the latest reports, the number
doing so is now seven times that which the government acknowledges (finanz.ru/novosti/aktsii/realnaya-utechka-mozgov-iz-rossii-okazalas-v-7-raz-vyshe-oficialnoy-1013732124). What is especially depressing is that in contrast
to the 1990s when the educational level of those coming to Russia was roughly
the same as that of those leaving, today, the new arrivals are significantly
less well-educated than those leaving, pushing the overall educational attainment
level for the country as a whole down sharply, with obvious economic and
political consequences already in evidence (ura.news/news/1052321035 and polit.ru/article/2018/01/23/migration/).
·
More than a
Million Russians Live in Some Form of Slavery. According to the
Walk Free Foundation, 1,050,000 Russians – seven tenths of one percent of the
population -- currently are kept in some form of slavery. As a result, Russia
ranks seventh in the world, the foundation says, in terms of the number of
slaves (kommersant.ru/doc/3527335
and kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5A672EB8EE335).
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