[The E]

So this article turned up in my newsfeeds:

The deaths kept piling up. People—men and women—were falling, or perhaps jumping, off trains and out of windows; asphyxiating in country houses with faulty wood stoves or in apartments with jammed front-door locks; getting hit by cars that sped through quiet courtyards or plowed down groups of people on a sidewalk; drowning as a result of diving drunk into a lake or ignoring sea-storm warnings or for no apparent reason; poisoning themselves with too much alcohol, counterfeit alcohol, alcohol substitutes, or drugs; and, finally, dropping dead at absurdly early ages from heart attacks and strokes.

Back in the United States after a trip to Russia, I cried on a friend's shoulder. I was finding all this death not simply painful but impossible to process. "It's not like there is a war on," I said.

"But there is," said my friend, a somewhat older and much wiser reporter than I. "This is what civil war actually looks like. "It's not when everybody starts running around with guns. It's when everybody starts dying."

My friend's framing stood me in good stead for years. I realized the magazine stories I was writing then were the stories of destruction, casualties, survival, restoration, and the longing for peace. But useful as that way of thinking might be for a journalist, it cannot be employed by social scientists, who are still struggling to answer the question, Why are Russians dying in numbers, and at ages, and of causes never seen in any other country that is not, by any standard definition, at war?

The issue here is, in the decade between 1997 and 2007, Russia's population has shrunk by about 5%, average life expectancy has fallen dramatically, and the probability of a child living past the age of 15 is lower than in some of the countries on the UN's "least developed" list.

This is similar to a country that has a civil war in progress, or has come out of one; Yet Russia wasn't actually involved in big conflicts after WW2. So, what's happening here? And what's going to happen?

[EvidenceOfFault]

What, you mean the ethnic Russians in Ukraine won't be better protected by being in Russia, rather than Ukraine? Lies, from a politician who has run his country into the ground and now tries to shift the blame and attention to an outside influence? Well, I never.

[Luis Dias]

All things eventually die out. It is quite possible that Russia is just the frontrunner of the decline of the Western civilization.

[Aesaar]

What, you mean the ethnic Russians in Ukraine won't be better protected by being in Russia, rather than Ukraine? Lies, from a politician who has run his country into the ground and now tries to shift the blame and attention to an outside influence? Well, I never.

Yes, Putin definitely ran Russia into the ground.  The country was doing much better under Yeltsin.

Oh, wait.

[deathfun]

All things eventually die out. It is quite possible that Russia is just the frontrunner of the decline of the Western civilization.

They weren't exactly at it for very long

[Luis Dias]

It's the margins of civilization that die first.

[Grizzly]

Hmm. The article disagrees with you there, Luis (and me along with you). The dying out started long before the Russians even became part of the western civilization.

[Luis Dias]

lol you're implying Russia hasn't been part of Western civilization before 1990.

Might I disagree with you there? Russia has been part of European culture and civilization for centuries.

[Bobboau]

very much depends on how you define "western civilization"

[Luis Dias]

Doesn't it always. Loosely, you can imagine.

[Grizzly]

lol you're implying Russia hasn't been part of Western civilization before 1990.

It tried very-very hard not to be for the better part of the 20th century, and that is when the dying off started. I'd say that Russia is not a sign of the "Decline of the western civilization" but rather just them having awfull luck with leaders. Contrast the other fringes of "Western civilization" like all the eastern bloc countries which are not russia, which seem to be doing fine (except for them being harassed by russia).

[Aesaar]

Russia's been lagging behind the rest of Europe for much, much longer than the 20th century.  Seriously, they didn't abolish serfdom until 1861, whereas it had mostly been phased out of Western Europe a good 200 years earlier.

This "decline" isn't new.  On the contrary, I'd say Russia has historically been slower to "rise" than the rest of Europe socially and culturally, and the whole USSR thing hasn't helped matters at all.  The only way in which Russia could be considered truly modern is technologically, and even that tends to be very centralized.  Rural Russia is doing a lot worse than the cities in pretty much every way.

It's not even leaders.  Putin is a pretty good leader by Russian standards.  It's cultural inertia and a bit of an obsession with "the good old days".  I think depression is actually very apt.  They're still depressed about the USSR dying.

[Mr. Vega]

Hmmmmm....what happened in Russia between 1997 and 2007?

Oh, right, Neoliberalism happened.

I learned a while ago to tune out anyone who talks about a civilization's tendency to decline without explaining the mechanism by which it occurred. You guys need to stop thinking like Hegel.

[Luis Dias]

To explain away what happened in Russia by namedropping "neo-liberalism" is not enough, no matter how you feel a great deal of urge to do so. If anything it cannot possibly explain its demographic implosion for the past 30 years now.

e: I'd take Hegel over that Michael something every day now.

[Mr. Vega]

To explain away what happened in Russia by namedropping "neo-liberalism" is not enough, no matter how you feel a great deal of urge to do so. If anything it cannot possibly explain its demographic implosion for the past 30 years now.

e: I'd take Hegel over that Michael something every day now.

To be fair the Russian economy has been declining since the 1970s (for which Soviet economic policies can be blamed), but the decline became a collapse with Neoliberal "reforms" that gutted both Russian industry and the entire social safety network. Luis Dias, read the damn article. You don't have to agree with all of it, but there things in it you need to read about, such as Russian workers being forced to take on astronomical amounts of debt just to avoid being thrown out of their homes. The whole economy was gutted during this period. Russia's pattern follows Latin American countries who had similar policies forced on them.

I don't want to hear about vague self-destructive forces within a society. Explain to me what actually happened. The irony of you defending Hegel and me attacking him and demanding a more scientific analysis is pretty funny though.

[Dragon]

I don't think it was really "behind", it's just a very different place. I noticed that people in the West had a hard time understanding Russians. So do I, at times, but relative proximity (both cultural and geographic) helps here. Russians think differently than Europeans. That's actually a rather important point Putin makes, too (that the West tries to "assimilate" Russia into it's thinking). Even if they are fascinated by the West, adopt things from there, they do things differently. Putin is actually rather good, from the Russian point of view, though there were better than him. Both on personal and national level, there are major differences between Russia and, say, the US. I think it's a major part of Russian decline. They try to imitate the West (because it's rich) and don't quite understand (or are unable to replicate) the thinking behind it's achievements. They can't understand the Western way of thinking, which is the real key to success in the Western world. On the other hand, it's riches are very alluring, so they'd like to have a piece of that. However, it's not working out due to certain, crucial, cultural differences.

For example, classic Cold War rhetoric "Equality vs. Freedom". Russian communists (Lenin et al) were initially quite serious about equality. It's been ingrained into thinking to a certain degree, for long I couldn't understand racism in the US, for example. It seemed ridiculous and primitive to me. Same with misogyny. Communist media have plenty of strong women, while in the West, they didn't even think about allowing women to serve in combat until recently, Soviets had no qualms against not only forming all-female combat battalions, but throwing them into the grinder along with the male soldiers. On the other hand, personal freedoms are often seen as somewhat secondary. I heard individuality is in high demand in US, which is part of the reason I'd like to go there. In Poland, at least, it's not very welcome, especially if coupled with intelligence (it's likely similar with Russians). Also, when coming across an oppressive law, a westerner would appeal to change it, while an easterner would break it. There are numerous differences like that. Westerners often simply can't grasp how Russians think, and vice versa.

I think that depression isn't really "about" USSR dying, but definitely because of USSR falling apart. They're depressed about being flung into a difficult reality, without even upbeat propaganda to cheer them up. Russians are used to not being in control of things, life was miserable, but rather easy. Now they have a lot of possibilities, but would also need to work for them, since government doesn't provide as much as it used to. They see so much things they can't afford, things they will never get. It simply doesn't occur to most that they could, in fact, afford those things if they worked for them. The default mindset is "those things require connections/special skills/something I don't have" and they don't even try. Many people in Poland fondly remember the communist regime for exactly the same reasons. I can see why Russians are depressed, in Poland, it's not that bad due to this mentality being artificially imposed on us for about 50 years, and a helping of German influences. We can cope with the changing world, though often in unorthodox ways (which actually is a big plus in the West). Russians have much more trouble, so they turn to their old, old way of deal with it, which is drinking lots of vodka.

[Mr. Vega]

Also, Russia teaches us a lesson we keep being taught time and time again. YOU CANNOT BECOME A WEALTHY NATION BY EXPORTING RAW MATERIALS. Raw materials are factor inputs- they NEED to be cheap compared to the finished products that they go into. Making finished products is how you become wealthy. Hell, the American Revolution happened because Britain tried to turn America into solely an exporter of raw materials for their factories, which we would then depend upon for manufactured goods. We either had to become independent or accept being made poor.

[Mr. Vega]

When a nation discovers it has a ton of oil, this is what it should be thinking: "Yes! Now we can use all that oil to pay for imported capital equipment so we can start building up an industrial sector!" and not "Yes! Now we'll just sit on that oil and rake in the dough!" Why do you think Saudi Arabia is still so poor?

[Flipside]

The secret is infra-structure, and the more infra there is to structure, the harder it is to maintain. It's been the history of Empires throughout history that they expand, fragment and collapse, largely due to the fact that the infrastructure could not be maintained over increasing distances.

Even the US is still a large agricultural producer, with production focused in certain areas (Silicon Valley for example), but America was smart and invested heavily in Infrastructure, and had the advantage of being able to literally build their way across the continent with access to modern techniques and materials, rather than inherit something that had to be dealt with in a single piece.

[Nuke]

the depressing thing is i thought the op was talking about 'murica.