Re: Russian health care

["Chris Doss" <nomorebounces@xxxxxxx>]

Part of the problem is that few NYT reporters in Moscow actually
speak Russian beyond a rudimentary level. And even the occasional one
who does doesn't feel comfy with the popular characters you mention -
the pro-Western liberals are just their kind of people.

Doug
---
I think that's a big part of it. Another is Sticking with the Paradigm and only reporting information that can Fit the Paradigm. Anglosphone reporting on post-Soviet Russia has gone through several distinct phases, all of them wrong:

1. The Hero Yeltsin vs. the Red-Brown Reactionary Tide. Will the Herculean Boris Nikolayevich be able to pull his untutored countrymen into the ranks of the Western Democracies, with the generous help of Western advisors and trusty English-speaking reformers? There may be bumps on the road, but Russia's future as a capitalist paradise is assured!

2. The Failed Yeltsin and the Doomed Russia. Those damn Russians didn't listen to our helpful advice, and so everything fell apart. Because Russia didn't become a Western-style democracy, it has now been cursed by God and is condemned to oblivion. (There being no third way between being a Western-style democracy and doom.)

(PS. there was a leftist version of this narrative that basically had Russia condemned to eternal hellfire for the sin of having adopted a market economy.)

3. Putin, the Evil, Cackling KGB Colonel and the Evil Empire Resurgent. Goddamnit, Russia neither became a Western-style democracy, nor fell apart. Instead, Russians decided that they don't want to be like Westerners after all and started pursuing their own interests. Therefore, Russia must be an evil KGB state whose neo-imperialist designs and anti-Western worldview must be opposed (for the good of the Russian people, of course).

It is quite rare for the Anglophone media to have strayed from the playbook.