Dying Russia

[Who knew? - Bozo]
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Josh Marshall
Wednesday, September 03, 2014, 10:14 pm
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In the seventeen years between 1992 and 2009, the Russian population declined by almost seven million people, or nearly 5 percent-a rate of loss unheard of in Europe since World War II. Moreover, much of this appears to be caused by rising mortality. By the mid-1990s, the average St. Petersburg man lived for seven fewer years than he did at the end of the Communist period; in Moscow, the dip was even greater, with death coming nearly eight years sooner.
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This is one paragraph from Masha Gessen's story in The New York Review of Books on 'The Dying Russians'. I knew that in the bleak years just after the collapse of the Soviet Union that Russian mortality rates had spiked dramatically - a mix of profound economic dislocation, hopelessness about the future, poor health both driving and being driven by these factors. What I did [not] realize is that this pattern has continued unabated ever since.
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