[FN 1] Source: Sub-programme Vehicular Roads of the Federal Expenditure Programme for the Modernisation of the Russian Transport System (2002-2010),

[FN 2] TN: Fund set up by Russian government supposedly to absorb and make good use of the oil price windfall.

Chapter 4

Russia is Dying Out

We are told that – as a result of “efforts” by the government – the birth rate is rising in Russia. In fact, Russia is continuing to die out under Putin: for example, about one and half million Russians were born in 2006 but 2,166,000 died. The Russian birth rate in 2006 was 10.4 per 1000 but the death rate was 15.2/1000! The population of Russia is falling nearly twice as fast as in the 1990s. Between 1992 and 2000, the total population fell by 2 million. Between 2000 and 2006 – by 3.5 million.

The key reason for this is a catastrophic mortality rate and Putin has not even tried to do anything about it.

The mortality rate in Russia began to rise in the 1970s and continued to do so up to the mid-1990s. Russia’s ranks 22nd in the world in mortality, ahead of Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, and Burkina Faso, and 157th in life expectancy. Average life expectancy in Russia is a smidgen over 65 years, on a level with the world’s least developed countries (average life expectancy in the developed Western countries is 78+ and 74-76 in Eastern Europe). Most striking is the average life expectancy for males: while Russian women can expect to live to the age of 72, men can expect less than 59 years of life! This is on a par with life expectancy in underdeveloped African countries.

Reasons for this high mortality include the high illness rates to be found in the population, brought about by alcohol abuse, smoking and unhealthy living. Meanwhile, under Putin people are drinking and smoking still more. In 2000, alcohol sales amounted to 8 litres of spirits equivalent per person per year. Now, at the end of his rule, the figure is nearly 10 litres. This is more than in the 1990s. According to Rospotrebnadzor [FN 1], the real figure is closer to 15 litres per year [FN1]. For the record, the World Health Organisation considers alcohol consumption of over 8 litres per person per year to be critical as mortality begins to increase sharply when that amount is exceeded. Over forty thousand people die of alcohol poisoning every year and Rospotrebnazor estimates the number of alcoholics in the country at 2.5 million.

Cigarette sales to the population have risen in both absolute terms (400 billion compared to 355 billion in 2000) and consumption terms (2700 per per person per year as against 2400 in 2000). This is considerably more than in the 1990s when average consumption was 1500 cigarettes per person per year (for a total of over 200 billion). Smoking is Russia’s most common harmful habit: according to Rospotrebnadzor 65% of men and 30% of women smoke; of these 80% and 50% correspondingly began smoking in their teens. Smoking is the cause of 27% of male deaths from cardiovascular diseases, 90% of deaths from lung cancer, 75% of deaths from respiratory diseases, and 25% of deaths from heart disease. About 25% of smokers die prematurely: smoking reduces life span by 10-15 years[FN1].

The most frequent cause of death in Russia – in nearly 60% of cases – is circulatory disease. About 1,3 million people die of circulatory disease every year – 200 thousand more per year than in the 1990s.

What has Putin done to reverse this trend or to engage in a real fight and smoking and alcoholism? Nothing. Russians continue to die from unhealthy lifestyles.

The mad attempts to combat alcoholism by prohibition under Gorbachev or in Tsarist Russia are not a method and all failed. This is because alcohol consumption is, on the one hand, a social thing, and on the other a way of life. Research has shown that there exists a U-shaped dependency between quantity of alcohol consumed and income: both the poor drink more (drowning sorrows) and the wealthy (living the high life). Moderate use of alcohol and a healthy lifestyle in general is the way of the middle class. We therefore believe that, besides spreading the word about the need for a healthy lifestyle, we should also stimulate and support the middle class. This means changing the nature of the country’s economic policies (see Chapter 10 – Deepening Inequality Chapter 11 – The Economic Bubble). Regarding smoking and combating it, there’s no need for originality: we simply need to borrow from the many years of experience of the USA and Western Europe.

Another important reason for our high mortality is the low quality of health services (already mentioned in the chapter on national projects) and the high number of people who die of illnesses. Circulatory problems are not all that Russians suffer from: under Putin mortality has not gone down for infectious diseases and cancer (330,000 deaths per year) and there has been a sharp rise in deaths from disease of the digestive tract (up from 65 thousand to 100 thousand deaths p.a.). The only drop in the death rate has been for respiratory problems – from over 100 thousand in 2000 to just over 80 thousand in 2006. This is a direct result of the move to natural gas for electric heat and power generation since this results in a reduction of harmful emissions (although the authorities, at Gazprom’s urging, are looking at reversing this positive move and force the energy generation industry to go back to ecologically dirty coal).

It is not just of diseases that people die in Russia. We hold one of the leading places worldwide for deaths by external causes. Over 300 thousand people die annually from external causes, a rate of 200 per 100 thousand of population. This is twice as high as in China or Brazil and 4-5 times higher than in Western countries. Russia is far from being a physically safe place in which to reside. We are among the world’s leaders in murders at 20 per 100 thousand population per year. This has moved us since the 1980s into the top 10 of the world for murder, joining a list that includes Columbia, Jamaica, Honduras, South Africa, and Brazil. In developed democratic countries, the murder rate is in the range of 2 to 4 per hundred thousand population per year.

Crime rates in general, which had been going down in the second half of the 1990s, are on the rise again. There are about 30 thousand murders every year, as many as in the the worst years (1994-95) of the decade. The murder rate went down in 1996-98. We have already mentioned the sharp rise in spending on security and law enforcement under Putin. This has risen from $4 billion in 2000 to a planned $39 billion in 2008. This, however, has had the opposite to the intended effect since serious crime numbers have constantly risen under Putin. The rise in crimes against the person has been especially striking: in 2006, according to Rosstat, these rose by 170% from a year 2000 base, with cases of GBH up by 50%, and robbery by 30%. Not a very pretty picture for the ‘happy 2000s’.

Many people die in road accidents: 285 thousand people were injured or killed in traffic accidents in 2006 (a 60% rise against 2000). On average, 33 thousand people were killed each year on the roads in the year 2000-2006. Recently, Putin’s “successor” Dmitri Medvedev said of the scale of the death and trauma rates on the roads that it bore comparison to military attrition. Something could have been done to combat this but the atrocious quality of the roads as a result of the embezzlement of funds for their maintenance, the flourishing corruption in road policing, poor and slow emergency services, and low standards of maintenance of vehicles are all leading only to a worsening of the situation.

The problem is not just one of high mortality but also of low replacement rates. The modest rise in the birth rate in recent years is mostly to do with the post-war demographic curve and it is evident that steps taken by the authorities will not actually influence the birth rate to any great extent: this is a problem of traditions, customs, and the effects of urbanisation. Television drives to encourage people to have more children are just a con: on average, the birth rate under Putin has remained the same as in the 1990s at about 1.4 million live births per year. The authorities boast of “measures” taken in this field although they are of doubtful use. Who is going to be encouraged to have a child because of a “maternal grant” of 250 thousand rubles? Obviously, only the very poor, “lumpenised” members of society. How far does such a sum – about $10 thousand – go? That is the price of 2.5 square metres of housing in Moscow, five in the provinces.

Russia does not need to increase the numbers of its lumpen-proletarians. It needs to stimulate births in the active sections of society, in the middle class, and it needs to do this by somewhat cleverer means – for example, by writing down mortgage debt at government expense when children are born: 15% for a 1st child, 30% for a second. 50% for a third. This would simultaneously help resolve housing problems for those wishing to have children and stimulate the birth rate mainly amongst the well-to-do, since they, unlike lumpen-proletarians, are the ones who are able to get mortgages in the first place.

People are physically undefended in Russia and this lack of protection has only got worse under President Putin. We lack protection from illness, we are seriously at risk during and after road accidents, we are victims of crime. Hand-outs from the authorities stimulate births among the lumpen-proletariat while no one is doing anything to increase the birth rate in the country as a whole. So Russia goes on dying out.