Russia has one of the lowest rates of adult life expectancy in the world. Average life expectancy for a man in America is 74; in Russia, it is just 59. Birth rates and population levels have also plummeted. These excess levels of mortality affect all countries that formed the former Soviet bloc. Running into many millions, they raise obvious comparisons with the earlier period of forced transition under Stalin. / This book seeks to put the recent history of the transition into a longer term perspective by identifying, explaining and comparing the pattern of change in Russia in the last century. It offers a sharp challenge to the conventional wisdom and benign interpretations offered in the west of what has happened since 1991. Through a careful survey of the available primary and secondary sources, Mike Haynes and Rumy Husan have produced the first and most complete and accurate account of Russian demographic crisis from the revolution to the present.
Author(s): Michael Haynes, Rumy Husan
Edition: illustrated edition
Publisher: Pluto Press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 278
Contents......Page 4
1 Demography the Social Mirror? ?......Page 14
Lies, damned lies and statistics?......Page 17
Murder most foul?......Page 22
A century of population change in Russia......Page 26
The mirror of society?......Page 30
2 The Revolt Against Class Society 1890 1928......Page 39
Mortality in Tsarist Russia......Page 41
The class pattern of death......Page 47
War and repression......Page 53
Revolution and the vision of the future......Page 58
The waning dream......Page 70
The pressure of accumulation......Page 75
The total number......Page 76
Death and repression......Page 79
The determinants of the normal death rate......Page 86
Wars......Page 90
The end of the Stalin era......Page 97
4 Policy, Inequalities and Death in the USSR 1953 85......Page 103
Judicial death and repression......Page 104
Imperialism and war......Page 107
The pattern of normal death......Page 111
Explaining the patterns of death......Page 118
National variations within the USSR......Page 128
Perestroika and the collapse of the USSR 1985 91......Page 132
Shock therapy reforms of 1992......Page 138
The impact of reforms: low pay, poverty and inequality......Page 147
Mistaken assumptions underlying the reform programme......Page 152
6 Normal Deaths During the First Decade of Transition......Page 157
Unprecedented peacetime mortality......Page 158
Why so many deaths?......Page 163
Key factors of mortality decline......Page 169
Collective violence and intentional deaths......Page 189
Political crisis and civil unrest......Page 192
Death and disease in prisons......Page 194
Torture and state executions......Page 200
The war in Chechnya......Page 204
Class, inequality, and a quiet violence......Page 215
A century of state murder?......Page 219
Appendix: Basic Data on the Prison Camp System under Stalin......Page 227
Notes......Page 229
Bibliography......Page 253
B......Page 268
C......Page 269
E......Page 270
H......Page 271
L......Page 272
N......Page 273
P......Page 274
S......Page 275
T......Page 276
Y......Page 277
Z......Page 278
