Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram — Early Death in Russia

Sociological effects of economic change. Economic contraction results in social dysfunction that manifests negatively in individual lives.

The transition to market economy and democracy in the Russian Federation in the early 1990s dramatically increased mortality and shortened life expectancy. The steep upsurge in mortality and the decline in life expectancy in Russia are the largest ever recorded anywhere in peacetime in the absence of catastrophes such as war, plague or famine.

During 1987-1994, the Russian mortality rate increased by 60%, from 1.0% to 1.6%, while life expectancy went down from 70 to 64 years. Although life expectancy declined from 1987, when Mikhail Gorbachev was still in charge, its fall was sharpest during 1991-1994, i.e., during Boris Yeltsin’s early years.

In fact, mortality increased to levels never observed during the 1950s to the 1980s, i.e., for at least four decades. Even in the last years of Stalin’s rule (1950-1953), mortality rates were nearly half what they were in the first half of the 1990s.
Economic output fell by 45% during 1989-1998, while negative social indicators, such as the crime rate, murder rate, suicide rate and income inequalities, rose sharply as well, but even these alone cannot adequately explain the unprecedented mortality spike.

Yet, the Yeltsin period is represented as the "golden years" of Russia in the US, and the US elite is doing its best to return "the good old days" to Russia when "cowboy capitalism" ruled under the tutelage of the Harvard boyz, whose guiding principle was, "Let the market sort it out."

Vladimir Putin reversed the precipitous slide into system collapse and now the US elite thinks that his astronomical approval rating is the result of his control of Russian media, which he is running as a propaganda machine like Pravada was for the UUSR elite.

Meanwhile, the same syndrome begins to grip the US.

TripleCrisis
Early Death in Russia
Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram