Re: [A-List] Eric Hobsbawm on the legacy of perestroika

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Chris Black writes:

Hobsbawm reveals his neo-liberal cards clearly with this piece. "A lasting
admiration for Gorbachev". Enough said. But he borders on the delusional
when he states that the world "might stil be living under the shadow of
nuclear war". Tell that to North Korea, Iran, Syria or any number of other
countries including Russia and China. What utter and juvenile nonsense.
And the "transition...proceeded without signicant bloodshed"? It seems the
murder of three thousand communist deputies and supporters in the Duma who
fought floor to floor against Yeltsin's counter-revolutionaries in 1993
and who died to the last man and woman mean nothing.

-----

Hobsbawm resides in the country whose present defence minister is on record
as opening up the possibility for the first-strike use of nuclear weapons:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1883258.stm

And then there's John Bolton, who has been busy ripping to shreds any
non-proliferation treaty that he can get his hands on:

http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2005-March/033346.html

Meanwhile, to Chris's list could be added the hundreds of thousands who
perished as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaos into
which Russia was plunged thanks to combined efforts of Yeltsin's team,
Western advisers, their state/capital backers, and thieving oligarchs:

1998 - World Health Organization: Health status of the Russian population

"There has been a dramatic rise in mortality, which is both unprecedented in
a twentieth century industrial nation and exceptionally costly in human
terms. Since 1990 Russian male life expectancy at birth has declined by
seven years and in 1994 was 57.3, on a par with Pakistan.
Female life expectancy has been less profoundly affected but across the
population as a whole 1 000 000 extra Russian deaths have occurred since the
creation of the Russian Federation, which would not have occurred had the
age and sex specific death rates for 1991 been maintained. While death rates
now appear to have stabilized, the gap with the West remains catastrophic
and a possible block to the reform process.
[...]
Children's nutritional status is more worrying with an increase in the
prevalence of stunting; an indicator of chronic malnutrition; among children
of two and under. This problem appears to have doubled between September
1992 and August 1993 and to remain high. At the outset of the survey 6.9% of
infants from 0-24 months were stunted compared to 12.8% in December 1994.
Children from 25 months to 6 years old showed less evidence of an increase
in stunting
although levels were higher at the outset with 9% falling into this category
in 1992 and 10.4% in 1994. Other child health indicators are as distressing
with up to 12% of the country's classified invalids being children.
[...]
Women's health, while it has been less affected in terms of mortality, is
also severely compromised, particularly in relation to reproductive health.
Maternal death rates are 51.6 per 100,000 live births (1993)14, five to ten
times international levels, with particularly high rural rates. A high
percentage of maternal deaths are due to abortion complications (29.4%),
haemorrhagia (13.8%) and toxaemia (12%) of which 60% are believed to be
avoidable. Access to birth control is still a major issue and abortion,
following clandestine traditions established during the pro-natalist policy
of the Stalinist era, remains the major form of contraception."

See http://www.ecoi.net/doc/en/RU/content/9/1260-1274