Paul Goble
Staunton, July 2 – Russian adult males in all age cohorts have seen their mortality rates rise, in some case dramatically over the last 40 years, a pattern that is especially disturbing one Moscow commentator says because deaths among young Russian men have the effect of pushing down life expectancy far more than deaths among older cohorts.
In a commentator on Left.ru, communist commentator Anna Lomako provides her explanation for figures that the Russian State Statistical Committee, Rosstat, released a little over a year ago, statistics that she suggests represent an indictment not only of Russia’s social and political system but also of other countries as well (www.left.ru/2010/6/lomako199.phtml).
According to Rosstat, mortality rates for Russian males increased between 1970 and 2007 by 19 percent for those aged 20 to 24, by 68 percent for those between 25 and 29, by 48 percent for those between 30 and 34, by 29 percent for those between 35 and 39, by 39 percent for those between 40 and 44, and by 40 percent for those between 45 and 49.
For older workers over the same period, mortality also increased: by 41 percent for those between 50 and 54, by 36 percent for those between 55 and 59, and by 25 percent for those between 60 and 64. Among older groups, the situation was somewhat better: mortality rates rose by 15 percent for those between 65 and 69, and they fell by four percent for those over 70 (www.gks.ru/free_doc/2008/demo/osn/04-26.htm).
Because they are in part responsible for this development, Lomako continues, the Russian powers that be either ignore or seek to minimize this trend, especially among younger adult males. But increased deaths among them are having a profound impact on the country and forcing Moscow to allow in more Gastarbeiters to fill the missing places.
Like many on the left, Lomako blames the rise of the capitalist system for most of these increases. In her view, “capitalism gives rise to a petty bourgeois psychology” where individuals care only about themselves rather than about the fate of larger groups, including their own country.
But she argues that blaming capitalism is insufficient. There are, she suggests, “subjective factors” behind this trend, factors that are both “intentional and unintentional, foreign and domestic.” And in order to prove her point, Lomako considers drug abuse which is “undoubtedly the chief cause of the dying off of young men in the Russian Federation.”
Lomako suggests that “the most important external factor is [what she calls] the narco-aggression as a geopolitical strategy of the Western imperial countries,” a strategy in which Afghanistan over the past 20 years has been converted into “a gigantic center” for the production and distribution of heroin into Russia and elsewhere.
But she argues, it is a mistake to blame the West and fail to recognize what Moscow has done in this area, not only reducing to almost nothing “ideological and organizational work with young people” to fight drugs but also adopting laws under pressure from rights activists and the drug lobby that have contributed to the rise in drug abuse.
By eliminating the requirement for prescriptions for many drugs and closing apothecaries where some control could be maintained, the Russian powers that be made them easier of access and led to abuse. And then when Moscow toughened the law again, it succeeded only in pushing people from prescription abuse to harder drugs and driving up the number of those incarcerated.
Correcting these policy mistakes, she suggests, will not be easy, but unless Moscow sharply reduces drug abuses of all kinds, death rates among younger adult males, who are the chief consumers of such drugs, will continue to rise, threatening the Russian Federation’s future by depriving it of the working population it will inevitably need.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Window on Eurasia: A Marie Antoinette Moment in Moscow?
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 2 – Echoing the advice Marie Antoinette infamously gave in the run-up to the French revolution that peasants without bread should eat cake, Moscow Governor Boris Gromov suggests that Russian drivers fed up with traffic jams should travel about in helicopters,” a mode of transport that means, he says, “you don’t need roads.”
“I use a helicopter,” he continued. “You too must buy a helicopter instead of a car,” he advised the residents of the Russian capital. There are “approximately 400 helicopters” in Moscow already, and there is far more room for them in the air than for cars on the city’s limited road stock (www.grani.ru/Politics/Russia/Regions/m.179470.html).
While many are likely to dismiss Gromov’s remarks as nothing more than the arrogance all too typical of many of Russia’s powers that be, his words, precisely because they touch on two aspects of the lives of ordinary Russians – bad roads and radical income differentiation -- are likely to enflame public opinion more than broader critiques usually do.
On the one hand, Gromov’s unfortunate turn of phrase may force the Kremlin to fire him, lest his words generate a response directed at the Russian leadership as well. And on the other, his outrageous remarks may save him because if the center got rid of him that might lead to demands that other officials including more senior ones be ousted as well.
Such implications were suggested by Moscow commentator Anton Razmakhnin, who drew and explicit comparison between Gromov and Marie Antoinette, suggested that the governor’s remarks “could be simply an attempt to joke or perhaps self-conscious cynicism” (www.svpressa.ru/society/article/27314/).
“One can joke either from weakness or from absolute certainty in oneself and in one’s position,” Razmakhnin continued, adding that “certain facts” of the case suggest that “the second variant” is the more likely, a conclusion that if true may save Gromov but perhaps not others in the political class of which he is a part.
That is all the more likely because of the other things he said. Gromov’s comment came as he insisted that the Moscow oblast government he heads is not responsible for the massive delays occasioned by reconstruction of the Leningrad Chausee to Sheremetyevo airport. Instead, he said, “all this belongs to the city of Moscow,” which is headed by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
The oblast head said that there had been discussions in 2008 about transferring responsibility for this highway from the city to the oblast, but nothing came of those talks. Now, he said, “by law, we [in the oblast] do not have the right to spend money on objects belonging to others.”
The situation on the highway to the airport has become so serious that many passengers have been unable to arrive in time for their flights. On Monday of this week, officials said, “the airport lost 700,000 Euros (1 million US dollars)” because of numerous no-shows and delays occasioned by traffic.
This traffic jam, like so many other things in Russia, has attracted attention not only because of its size but because it is in the capital and affects that part of the population that either owns a car and/or travels by air. But the problem with highways in other parts of the country are frequently much worse.
Last year, in particular, YouTube and other media outlets featured pictures of roads swallowing up not only cars but large trucks in parts of the Russian Far East. Moscow promised to address that problem but so far has done little. Now, those who were victims of that and other road problems probably view the Sheremetyevo traffic jams as a kind of revenge.
For more than two centuries, Russians have said that their country has two major problems: roads and fools [in Russian, “dorogi i duraki”]. The traffic jams in Moscow are the latest evidence of the former, and it seems likely that Gromov’s remarks will be taken by many Russians as evidence of the latter.
Staunton, July 2 – Echoing the advice Marie Antoinette infamously gave in the run-up to the French revolution that peasants without bread should eat cake, Moscow Governor Boris Gromov suggests that Russian drivers fed up with traffic jams should travel about in helicopters,” a mode of transport that means, he says, “you don’t need roads.”
“I use a helicopter,” he continued. “You too must buy a helicopter instead of a car,” he advised the residents of the Russian capital. There are “approximately 400 helicopters” in Moscow already, and there is far more room for them in the air than for cars on the city’s limited road stock (www.grani.ru/Politics/Russia/Regions/m.179470.html).
While many are likely to dismiss Gromov’s remarks as nothing more than the arrogance all too typical of many of Russia’s powers that be, his words, precisely because they touch on two aspects of the lives of ordinary Russians – bad roads and radical income differentiation -- are likely to enflame public opinion more than broader critiques usually do.
On the one hand, Gromov’s unfortunate turn of phrase may force the Kremlin to fire him, lest his words generate a response directed at the Russian leadership as well. And on the other, his outrageous remarks may save him because if the center got rid of him that might lead to demands that other officials including more senior ones be ousted as well.
Such implications were suggested by Moscow commentator Anton Razmakhnin, who drew and explicit comparison between Gromov and Marie Antoinette, suggested that the governor’s remarks “could be simply an attempt to joke or perhaps self-conscious cynicism” (www.svpressa.ru/society/article/27314/).
“One can joke either from weakness or from absolute certainty in oneself and in one’s position,” Razmakhnin continued, adding that “certain facts” of the case suggest that “the second variant” is the more likely, a conclusion that if true may save Gromov but perhaps not others in the political class of which he is a part.
That is all the more likely because of the other things he said. Gromov’s comment came as he insisted that the Moscow oblast government he heads is not responsible for the massive delays occasioned by reconstruction of the Leningrad Chausee to Sheremetyevo airport. Instead, he said, “all this belongs to the city of Moscow,” which is headed by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
The oblast head said that there had been discussions in 2008 about transferring responsibility for this highway from the city to the oblast, but nothing came of those talks. Now, he said, “by law, we [in the oblast] do not have the right to spend money on objects belonging to others.”
The situation on the highway to the airport has become so serious that many passengers have been unable to arrive in time for their flights. On Monday of this week, officials said, “the airport lost 700,000 Euros (1 million US dollars)” because of numerous no-shows and delays occasioned by traffic.
This traffic jam, like so many other things in Russia, has attracted attention not only because of its size but because it is in the capital and affects that part of the population that either owns a car and/or travels by air. But the problem with highways in other parts of the country are frequently much worse.
Last year, in particular, YouTube and other media outlets featured pictures of roads swallowing up not only cars but large trucks in parts of the Russian Far East. Moscow promised to address that problem but so far has done little. Now, those who were victims of that and other road problems probably view the Sheremetyevo traffic jams as a kind of revenge.
For more than two centuries, Russians have said that their country has two major problems: roads and fools [in Russian, “dorogi i duraki”]. The traffic jams in Moscow are the latest evidence of the former, and it seems likely that Gromov’s remarks will be taken by many Russians as evidence of the latter.
Window on Eurasia: Russian Cities ‘One by One’ Ending Mayoralty Elections
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 2 – On a day when the last freely elected governor in Russia’s Northwest was dismissed, a Moscow newspaper is reporting yet another step being taken in Russia’s retreat from democratic procedures: cities across the country are voting “one by one” to give up their right to have popularly elected mayors.
That pattern is worth noting for two reasons. On the one hand, it shows that Vladimir Putin’s attack on democratic arrangements is not slowing down but if anything accelerating. And on the other, it reflects Moscow’s increasing propensity to take such steps in ways that attract less attention and hence generate less comment and opposition
In an article in yesterday’s “Novyye izvestiya,” Vyacheslav Ryabykh reports that yesterday the deputies of the city council in Blagoveshchensk voted to eliminate direct election of a mayor – in the future, the deputies will decide on who will serve in that role -- and to introduce a city manager (www.newizv.ru/news/2010-07-01/129158/).
A day earlier, Ryabykh writes, deputies in Perm took a similar decision, as had their counterparts in Ufa, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, Ryazan “and many others” earlier, thus eliminating competitive elections in yet another part of the Russian political system and denying the opposition the chance to gain more victories at least at this level.
The vote in Blagoveshchensk showed that this initiative comes from the party of power, United Russia. The 21 deputies there from United Russia and Just Russia, arguing that such a change would save money, voted unanimously for this step, while the six deputies from LDPR and KPRF voted against.
“The first case of the real replacement of direct [mayoral] elections took place in Nizhny Novgorod in November 2009,” Ryabykh reports. (Earlier, he points out, it occurred in Ufa, but there the change had to do with the status of the city within Bashkortostan.) In Nizhny, the governor wanted the change, but even United Russia deputies resisted.
Oleg Shein, the deputy chairman of the Just Russia fraction, said that there is a consistent pattern in this approach to ending mayoral elections. “United Russia,” he notes, “ever more often is beginning to suffer defeats in regional voting,” falling below 50 percent most recently in Bryatsk and Irkutsk and losing control of the mayor’s office to Just Russia and the KPRF.
Given that almost everywhere United Russia has an “overwhelming” majority in city councils, he continues, the party of power can count on continuing to control city governments under superficially democratic conditions by allowing the councils to choose the city head, something that won’t get Russia in trouble with its European partners.
Another group interested in this change, Vyacheslav Glazychev, the head of the Social Chamber’s commission on regional development, says, includes the governors, who want to eliminate any independence that city heads have had up to now. With council-chosen city leaders or city managers, the governors will increase their control.
But Vladimir Ryzhkov, an opposition politician, insists that “the initiative [for doing away with mayoral elections] came not from the governor but directly from the federal center.” This is an “intentional” policy, he continued, and represents the latest attack on local self-administration and open politics.
Not surprisingly, United Russia officials reject that suggestion. They say that calls for doing away with elections have come from the regions, but the ruling party members says, they “do not see anything bad in this.” Sergey Neverov, secretary of United Russia’s general council, says that the new arrangements still allow citizens to express their views.
And he says that what Russian cities are doing now reflects international practice, including the way in which voters in the United States vote for electors for president rather than for the president directly. If these electors don’t perform as promised, Neverov continues, they can be voted out the next time around.
But Ryzhkov says this is an incorrect analogy. In Europe and the United States, “there are real multi-party systems and there is no monopoly by one party.” And he and others add that “a mayor who bears responsibility before deputies and not before electors will be much less effective.”
The real question now, Moscow experts say, is whether the party of power will be able to engineer this change throughout the country on a piecemeal basis. Some think it will, but others like Ryzhkov are certain of the opposite. He says that if United Russia continues its push in this direction, it will sooner or later encounter “massive street protests.”
Staunton, July 2 – On a day when the last freely elected governor in Russia’s Northwest was dismissed, a Moscow newspaper is reporting yet another step being taken in Russia’s retreat from democratic procedures: cities across the country are voting “one by one” to give up their right to have popularly elected mayors.
That pattern is worth noting for two reasons. On the one hand, it shows that Vladimir Putin’s attack on democratic arrangements is not slowing down but if anything accelerating. And on the other, it reflects Moscow’s increasing propensity to take such steps in ways that attract less attention and hence generate less comment and opposition
In an article in yesterday’s “Novyye izvestiya,” Vyacheslav Ryabykh reports that yesterday the deputies of the city council in Blagoveshchensk voted to eliminate direct election of a mayor – in the future, the deputies will decide on who will serve in that role -- and to introduce a city manager (www.newizv.ru/news/2010-07-01/129158/).
A day earlier, Ryabykh writes, deputies in Perm took a similar decision, as had their counterparts in Ufa, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, Ryazan “and many others” earlier, thus eliminating competitive elections in yet another part of the Russian political system and denying the opposition the chance to gain more victories at least at this level.
The vote in Blagoveshchensk showed that this initiative comes from the party of power, United Russia. The 21 deputies there from United Russia and Just Russia, arguing that such a change would save money, voted unanimously for this step, while the six deputies from LDPR and KPRF voted against.
“The first case of the real replacement of direct [mayoral] elections took place in Nizhny Novgorod in November 2009,” Ryabykh reports. (Earlier, he points out, it occurred in Ufa, but there the change had to do with the status of the city within Bashkortostan.) In Nizhny, the governor wanted the change, but even United Russia deputies resisted.
Oleg Shein, the deputy chairman of the Just Russia fraction, said that there is a consistent pattern in this approach to ending mayoral elections. “United Russia,” he notes, “ever more often is beginning to suffer defeats in regional voting,” falling below 50 percent most recently in Bryatsk and Irkutsk and losing control of the mayor’s office to Just Russia and the KPRF.
Given that almost everywhere United Russia has an “overwhelming” majority in city councils, he continues, the party of power can count on continuing to control city governments under superficially democratic conditions by allowing the councils to choose the city head, something that won’t get Russia in trouble with its European partners.
Another group interested in this change, Vyacheslav Glazychev, the head of the Social Chamber’s commission on regional development, says, includes the governors, who want to eliminate any independence that city heads have had up to now. With council-chosen city leaders or city managers, the governors will increase their control.
But Vladimir Ryzhkov, an opposition politician, insists that “the initiative [for doing away with mayoral elections] came not from the governor but directly from the federal center.” This is an “intentional” policy, he continued, and represents the latest attack on local self-administration and open politics.
Not surprisingly, United Russia officials reject that suggestion. They say that calls for doing away with elections have come from the regions, but the ruling party members says, they “do not see anything bad in this.” Sergey Neverov, secretary of United Russia’s general council, says that the new arrangements still allow citizens to express their views.
And he says that what Russian cities are doing now reflects international practice, including the way in which voters in the United States vote for electors for president rather than for the president directly. If these electors don’t perform as promised, Neverov continues, they can be voted out the next time around.
But Ryzhkov says this is an incorrect analogy. In Europe and the United States, “there are real multi-party systems and there is no monopoly by one party.” And he and others add that “a mayor who bears responsibility before deputies and not before electors will be much less effective.”
The real question now, Moscow experts say, is whether the party of power will be able to engineer this change throughout the country on a piecemeal basis. Some think it will, but others like Ryzhkov are certain of the opposite. He says that if United Russia continues its push in this direction, it will sooner or later encounter “massive street protests.”
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