[PEN-L:2710] Russia

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

#5
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999
From: "T. S. White" <tswrace@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Observations on 3031-Pickett/Harvard Symposium

  With all due respect to Mr. Pickett, I am certain his work in Perm
is meaningful and substantive, he makes the same mistake committed
by many regional field workers.  I cannot criticize his critique
of the Harvard Symposium on Russia in the least.  To have the best
economic minds of our country rubbing elbows with the worst
economic plunderers of Russia is a moral degradation of American
self respect.  This is not, however, the mistake that I would
observe.  The mistake Mr. Pickett committed was the ease with
which he dismissed the impact of the Russian economic crisis on
the populations of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
  For those who have visited Moscow and St. Petersburg, without
leaving the proximities of Tverskaya Street or Nevsky Prospect,
his dismissal may seem justified.  Yet, it is ill considered to
bestow the opulent life style of the Russian new rich, and well
placed politicians, onto the general population of either city.
The facts are far different when one visits the decaying districts
of Moscow or St. Petersburg and then considers the weight of
numbers.
  One of the first facts that one must come to grips with is the
impact, in the big cities, of the Russian economic crisis on
children.  The population of homeless children, in these cities,
is the fastest growing segment of the poor in Russia.  Children
whose parents have abandoned them to the street in favor of
vodka.  Children that are not cared for by relatives of their
deceased parents because there is not enough food for the family.
Children that take to the streets for refuge to escape the abuse
of homes ravaged by poverty and alcohol.  These children beg and
steal to get their daily sustenance.  They huddle in alcoves and
air vents in the freezing Russian winter trying to survive the
night for another gruesome day.  In St. Petersburg the population
of homeless children is officially stated at 10,000, but
unofficial estimates double that number.
  Mr. Pickett refers to pensioners as the people with money in his
region. To be sure, when the pensioners actually do receive a
payment, they have a quantifiable amount of Rubles.  The fact is
that quantity is the equivalent of of forty U.S. Dollars.  St.
Petersburg has the largest concentration of pensioners in all of
Russia.  There are one million residents of St. Petersburg on
pensions.  Pensions that are pitifully inadequate to provide even
the most rudimentary of life's necessities.  How does an aged
W.W.II veteran of the Siege of St. Petersburg buy food for a month
on the Ruble equivalent of forty dollars?  The obvious answer is
they cannot.
  Mr. Pickett rightfully bemoans the affect of alcohol poisoning on
the residents near Perm.  Anyone that has visited Moscow is aware
of the ubiquitous presence of vodka at every turn.  Public
drunkenness and alcoholism exist at staggering levels.  The bodies
of the people that have succumbed to alcohol poisoning are quietly
hauled from the sidewalks and gutters every morning.  The body
count in one day exceeds the fifteen reported annual deaths that
Mr. Pickett cites.
  Without a doubt there is suffering and deprivation in the region
where Mr. Picket does his good work, and I do not wish to minimize
that fact. The fact is that when you multiply that suffering by
the density of urban populations in Moscow and St. Petersburg it
takes on staggering proportions.  In St. Petersburg, a city with
five million residents, there are more than two million people
living below the Russian poverty line.  These people are all
suffering the kind of hunger and cold Mr. Picket complains about.
So in the hard economic analysis of the Harvard crowd I guess it
is correct to assert that the suffering he has observed is
proportionately less severe.  Of course then I remember the
running joke in the graduate economics course I took so many years
ago, "If you lay every economist in the world end to end you still
will not reach a conclusion".
  Anyone interested in more information on the levels of poverty and
needs of the poor in all of Russia may visit:
http://www.russians.org