Re: Roy Medvedev interview (on Putin)

["Chris Doss" <nomorebounces@xxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect:



Actually, Herman said the following:

>There is also the attempt to blame the medical crisis on alcoholism, which one Russian doctor is quoted as saying, "is in first place," and there are "ingrained habits" so that mending this safety net will require "surgery on millions of dark Russian souls." But the articles cannot escape the fact that the drastic decline began with the ending of the Soviet Union and the installation of Yeltsin and reform, and the opening article does note that, "Asked when his life took its turn for the worse, he [Anatoly Iverianov] does not hesitate.<

Me: Well, the demographic decline actually started under Gorbachev, not Yeltsin, but point taken.
The medical crisis _is_ to a geat extent because of alcoholism, which is why it has hit men and not women. Which has greatly increased due to the economic collapse of 1989-1998 and the great restructuring of social relations that has taken place. There is a great deal of rural despair in Russia, and peasants tend to drink. A lot.
It is also the case that possession of a still was punishable by a prison term in the Soviet Union. This is not the case today. Alcohol was much harded to get in general. E.g., the average monthly income was about 150 rubles, and a bottle of vodka cost about 5 rubles. Today, you can get bombed in Russia for $3. Also, the state would put alcoholics in treatment programs, which no longer exist.
Pkease note that the article is a bit dated, from 1995 if I recollect properly.



>Two years ago one out of six people in Russia were infected with TB. That's sixteen million people.

I know _zero_ Russians who are or have ever been infected with TB (as far as I know). One in 6 is fanciful. Probably 1 in 20.


> If Russian healthcare is about the same as it was before the counter-revolution, then something else is going on. I think we all know what that is. We are dealing with economic collapse. Poverty and the lack of proper health-care in prison and in follow-up care is the main cause of the spread of TB in Russia.

As I said before, most of the TB is in the prison population. There are about a million prisoners in Russia (about 1 in every 145 people). And yes I would imagine healthcare in the prisons is close to non-existent.

Russia just eliminated prison sentences for drug possession for personal use, BTW. The Russian prison population has dropped by several hundred thousand people over the past several years, as the government has adopted alternative sentencing and decriminalized many activities.