Pandemic Only Exacerbating Russian Death Rate Kremlin’s Social Darwinism has Pushed Up, Zhelenin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 2 – The Kremlin is trying to blame the pandemic for all the rise in deathrates among Russians; but in fact, Aleksandr Zhelenin says, those rates had been on the rise already, the result of the Putin regime’s social Darwinism that has condemned many Russians to shortened lives already and that will condemn still more.

            Despite the claims of state media, the Rosbalt commentator says, the coronavirus was “not the only cause” of the rise in death rates, the fall in birthrates, and the consequent decline in the number of Russians. Many other things that the regime has done or not done are more responsible (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2020/12/02/1876035.html).

            Among these are “the decline in the real incomes of the majority of the population, the closure of medical points in the villages, the worsening of access to medical services as a result of the reduction in the number of hospitals and clinics throughout the country, and the absence of positive life prospects for many people”

            The pandemic has only highlighted these problems and made their impact worse, Zhelenin continues, a classical example of the fact that “the true essence of every specific state just as of every individual is revealed in extreme circumstances.” When times are good, shortcomings don’t stand out, but when times are bad, they do.

            What is clear now if it wasn’t clear earlier is that the Putin regime has adopted the crudest form of social Darwinism, one in which the regime takes care of its rich supporters but leaves to their fate everyone else. As a result, far more Russians are suffering and dying than would otherwise be the case.

            The pandemic shows this. Initially, the Kremlin responded more or less well, approving a lockdown that actually kept the coronavirus under some control. But that came at the cost of harm to the economy, and so the Kremlin retreated from protecting the people in order to ensure that its profits did not go down.

            Now, when infections, hospitalizations and deaths are far worse than last spring, the Kremlin has retreated into its typical pattern of lying about what is going on. It says the pandemic is under control, which it isn’t, and the economy is on the way back, which is anything but true.

            As a result of Putin’s choices, “the Russian people now has returned to wild capitalism, where everyone is on his own and only the strongest survive.” In the 1990s, the regime could blame the Soviet past, but now, the propagandists don’t even address the problems: their constant refrain is that everything is fine, a claim everyone can see is not true.

            But the Kremlin propaganda machine is silent not only about today’s problems but about any bright future, an implicit acknowledgement that one isn’t coming for the overwhelming majority of the population and a reason that fewer and fewer people see having children as something rational under the circumstances.

            “And so,” Zhelenin concludes, “the present and the future are both depressing. The pandemic and the economic crisis (both worldwide and our own, self-created) are thinning the ranks of Russians. This situation can be changed only if the entire system is changed. But that is prohibited, and so the country and its people are in a dead end.”

            Those who believe in social Darwinism may not be unhappy about this, but it is a terrible tragedy for everyone else.