Soviet Myth of Caucasian Longevity Just That and Other Russian Regions are Offended, ‘Svbodnaya Pressa’ Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Near the end of Soviet times, the New Yorker featured a cartoon about longevity in the USSR. The aged figure in it in North Caucasian dress was asked to what he attributed his great age. He responded, while eating a bowl of porridge, “I have never criticized the state.”

            That cartoon was a Cold War echo of a myth the Soviets promoted that the oldest people in the Soviet Union and indeed in the world came from the North Caucasus, a myth that the Putin regime has continued and thus offended other regions in the Russian Federation, the Svobodnaya pressa portal reports (svpressa.ru/health/article/534937/).

            In fact, Russian researchers say, there were then and are now relatively large numbers of people in the Middle Volga and Sakha who have lived more than 100 years; and they and their governments are angry that Moscow writers focus only on the centenarians of the North Caucasus.

            Living so long reflects a variety of factors, including but not limited to genetics, diet, activity levels, and family support. In portions of the North Caucasus, Moscow scholars say, these factors combine in ways that boost the chances people will live to great age. But those factors are present elsewhere, these Russian investigators say.

            Focusing on the North Caucasus alone reenforces the view that living to a great age is the result of genetics alone rather than reflecting as well personal choices and social patterns, something that discourages people living elsewhere from taking the necessary steps or demanding them from their government to ensure that some of them will also live longer.

Creation of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences in 1991 Prevented Mass Emigration of Scholars and Helped Other Turkic and Muslim Countries as Well

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – When Kazan set up its own Academy of Sciences in 1991, most observers saw that as little more than a component of Tatarstan’s efforts to achieve independence; but today, 35 years later, the real contribution of that act was to prevent the mass emigration of scholars to other countries, Kazan officials and scholars say.

            In 1991, many even in Tatarstan opposed the idea, participants at an anniversary meeting said; but they lost out to those who said that the three Baltic republics, “whose total GDP is less than that of Tatarstan has its own Academy of Sciences and asked why can’t the Tatars have theirs?” (milliard.tatar/news/sozdanie-sobstvennoi-akademii-nauk-v-kazani-spaslo-ot-emigracii-vydayushhixsya-ucenyx-tatarstana-10524).

            Because the academy was established and continues to grow, scholars who might have left for Moscow or other foreign centers largely stopped. They have made contributions to the republic and to its ties with the Turkic and Islamic worlds, and they have helped other Turkic and Muslim peoples in the former Soviet space develop as well.

‘Ice Free Arctic’ Won’t Be Safer for Ships or Require Fewer Icebreakers, Western Experts Say at Oslo Meeting

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – Most discussions, Russian and otherwise, about the future of the Northern Sea Route begin with assertions that the Arctic will be ice free by 2050, making the use of that sea lane easier and safer, allowing for the expansion of trade and reducing the need for icebreakers.

            But speakers at a conference on Arctic security held in Oslo last month say that all such assertions are at a minimum problematic and may lead those concerned about Arctic transit to reach the wrong conclusions (arctictoday.com/an-ice-free-arctic-ocean-in-2050-doesnt-actually-mean-ice-free/).

            Tony Russell, executive director of the Center for Arctic Study and Policy at the US Coast Guard Academy, was among those insisting that there is a compelling need for a more nuanced understanding of what is going on in the Arctic and how those who hope to expand use of it must act.

            That “the Arctic will be ice-free in 2050 … is a great headline,” he said. “It’s truthful but it isn’t the full story.” First of all, there will still be nearly a million square km of sea ice, an enormous amount; and because it will be less thick and therefore more mobile, this remaining ice may make shipping ever more hazardous. Others echoed his words.

            Consequently, he and others said, how much use the Arctic sea lanes will allow will depend on the development of infrastructure, including more ice breakers not fewer to cope with the  mobile ice. Building them and other infrastructure for the route will be enormously expensive, especially since the prime season for transit won’t expand.

            And that in turn means that many governments and businesses will conclude that such investments are not cost effective and that they are better off to use alternative routes which do not require the same amount of money to maintain their current volumes or even support greater ones. 

Astrakhan ‘Port’ Now a Bottleneck as Far as Trade with Iran is Concerned, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Russia’s trade with Iran via the Caspian faces many obstacles including the silting up of the sea and the reduction in the size of ships and the weight of the cargo they carry that has led to, but none of these problems rivals the bottleneck that Astrakhan now represents, Moscow experts say.

            In newly published research, they argue that it is not appropriate to call Astrakhan a port as such. Instead, that term is used to describe wharves spread along more than 100 km of the Volga river and its delta, transshipment points that in many cases are not directly served by railroads (ng.ru/economics/2026-10-05/1_9596_port.html).

            That has multiplied the difficulties in intermodal transfers, a problem that has affected all Russian ports on the Caspian, including Astrakhan if one can call it that, Olya and Makachkala but has been obscured in recent months by increases in trade via all three as the result of the use of ever more workers to shift even bulk cargo, let alone finished goods.

            Moscow needs to develop a real port in Astrakhan, something that will be enormously expensive given that it will require not only the construction of new rail lines to the existing wharves but also concentrating wharves and building ships that have shallower drafts so that they can use them.

            Moscow’s ability to build such ships quickly is limited by problems with its yards and the absence of funds for such efforts and by the Russian government’s proclivity to build bigger ships at a time when the declining water levels in the lower Volga and the Caspian mean that smaller ships are the only ones that will be able to function.

            As a result, trade between Russia and Iran via the Caspian is likely to slow and then even stop in the relatively near future, and both countries, although saddled by Western sanctions have few choices, are likely to look again at rail transit through countries to the east and west of the sea if they are to achieve the trade volumes officials in both have been talking about.   

Relative Size of Different Rising Generations Varies Widely across Russian Federation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – Many discussions about the future of the Russian Federation focus on the impact of the rising generation which will replace older people whose lives and ways of thinking were formed in Soviet times and who often continue to act accordingly, but the rising generation varies in many ways.

            One of the most important involves variations among those groups identified as boomers, millennials, and zoomers in the West not only in the Russian Federation as a whole but in terms of the relationship of the size of these groups in various regions, another product of the demographic differences among them.

            The To Be Precise portal now provides data on these differences, variations that are likely to play a growing role in the way in which people living in them will behave and how leaders who seek to appeal to them will act (tochno.st/materials/karta-pokolenii-gde-v-rossii-bolse-bumerov-millenialov-i-zumerov).

              Millenials, those born between 1946 and 1964, now account for 21 percent of the Russian population overall and are the largest generation in 28 of Russia’s more than 80 federal subjects. They dominate in predominantly ethnic Russian regions where birthrates have been lower and outflow of migrants greater.

              Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980, form almost 21 percent of the population.  According to the portal, they are “the only generation that does not prevail in any region of Russia.” Instead, boomers, millennials or zoomers form larger shares of the rising generations there.

              Millenials, those born between 1981 and 1996, form 24 percent of the population, some 35 million people in all and the largest generation in Russia and also the one who experienced the radical changes during their personality forming years. It dominates areas around the two capitals and in oil and gas producing regions.

              Finally, the zoomers, born between 1997 and 2012, now account for 17 percent of the population of Russia. In four republics where birthrates have remained highest – Ingushetia, Chechnya, Tyva and the Altai Republic—they form a larger share, between 23 and 29 percent of the total population.

Astana and Moscow Agree to Joint Monitoring of Irtysh and Ural Rivers

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Despite any progress towards an agreement on the diversion of Siberian river water to Central Asia and Russian anger about Kazakhstan’s demand for a voice on the way in which Moscow handles the flow of the Volga into the Caspian, the two countries have agreed to joint monitoring of the Irtysh and Ural, two transborder rivers.

            In fact, the two countries have been negotiating on this possibility for some time, even as conflicts over the much larger issues have continued. (On earlier talks, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/07/moscow-and-astana-inch-toward.html; and on public clashes on such issues, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/08/russians-outraged-kazakhstan-wants.html.)

            The Kazakhstan Altyn-Orda portal says that at a recent meeting in Yekaterinburg, the two sides did agree to continue to monitor flows of the transborder rivers, study the impact of those on water resources, and work to prevent flooding (altyn-orda.kz/kazahstan-i-rossiya-dogovorilis-sovmestno-upravlyat-irtyshem-i-uralom/).

            Such meetings and the accords they often produce are a reminder that even when countries in the former Soviet space may very publicly disagree on headline issues, they often continue diplomatic contacts that may open the way for progress on bigger questions later.

‘Thousands of Russians Complicit’ in Kremlin’s Electoral Fraud, Sokolov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – As the Putin regime has tightened its control, not only have elections become ever more fraudulent but ever more Russians have become complicit in this fraud,  making it less likely that this fraud will be exposed and certain that it will cast a dark shadow on Russia even after Putin leaves the scene, Egor Sokolov says.

            In the first years of Putin’s rule, the regime did not have the control it does now. Journalists were freer to cover what was going on, and election observers were numerous and active, the Russian historian who just competed his studies at the University of Oxford. As a result, fraud was both easier to expose and less common (themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/05/the-kremlins-election-fraud-works-because-thousands-are-complicit-a93869).

            Now, however, Sokolov says, the press has been gelded; the observers have been blocked from doing their work; and genuine opposition parties like Yabloko have been prevented from running. And at the same time, the state has mobilized ever more people to work in election commissions which are tightly controlled.

            According to the Russian historian, this last move is especially disturbing in its consequences. Not only does it make electoral fraud “easier, it also corrupts tens if not hundreds of thousands of their members who either participate in the fraud or, at the very least, turn a blind eye to it.”

            The number of people involved is so large because “Russia has almost 50,000 election commissions, each of which consists of between three and 16 members.” Moreover, Sokolov continues, many of those now working on these commissions are teachers given that voting takes place most often in schools.

            That in turn means that the impact of fraud will spread to their pupils as well as having an impact on their future behavior, something that those concerned about creating an honest electoral system should be worried about given how difficult it will be to remove these twin nefarious influences from Russian life.