In Soviet Russia, life expectancy at age 40 did not improve for a century (1897 to 1989). Two possible factors. The communists' priority was nation-building; they prioritized the health of children and expectant mothers, but saw pensioners as not contributing 1/2https://twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1043752581275770881 …
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Those are fake life expectancy numbers produced by the US during the Cold War. A part of the same propaganda offensive as the “30 million killed by Stalin” story. Actual life expectancy fell in every post-Soviet republic when anti-Communists came to power in the 1990s.
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Life expectancy is low now, but it’s because it’s recovering from the decline of the 1990s. Same with the TFR.
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This is the author of the commonly-cited late-Soviet life expectancy numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Feshbach …
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They did not originate in the Soviet Union itself.
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This is quite misleading. The origins and basis of the original Feshbach-Davis investigation are explained online here (by Davis) https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/6/1400/660128 … 1/2
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Most importantly, Feshbach and Davis were right. The trends they identified in the Cold War are confirmed in the historical statistics of the Soviet period produced by Russian demographers since Soviet secrecy came to an end 2/2
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Lol. Would you say that the “30 million killed by Stalin” story is also true? Would you say that it was confirmed by modern demographers as well?
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No. What figure do you prefer?
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I was just thinking about that. The Soviets may not have valued the old but WWI, the Revolution, the Civil War, the Purges, WWII and alcoholism are almost obscenely obvious factors.
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I understand. But bear in mind the distinction between expected and realized longevity. Realized longevity: Soviet history had many episodes of famine, mass killing, and war which (as you correctly point out) shortened the realized lives of tens of millions of people 1/3
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But expected longevity is a prediction at a point in time. If measured in years when famine, mass killings, and war were not under way, Soviet life expectancy followed an underlying trend that was largely unaffected by them 2/3
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Since there was never a year when it wasn’t a problem, alcoholism was an important factor in the underlying EL trend. My original issue: when the Soviet rulers were ready to actively manage so many other problems, why were they relatively passive in face of mass alcoholism? 3/3
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1. It brought in a lot of revenue; 2. When it did become a huge problem, some attempts to counter it *were* made under Andropov and esp. Gorbachev. Just not very effective or sustainable ones. Anyhow,
@VodkaPolitics is the person to talk to about this. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HF9DEXE/ -
That's the thing, though. US prohibition did in fact massively reduce the alcohol consumption of Americans. Are the Russians just too chaotic to make it work? Did the propaganda convince them that the inevitable black market meant it wasn't working and they shouldn't even try?
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It did work during the late 1980s. LE went from ~66 years to 70 years, even though the policies were ham-fisted and stupid, like most Soviet things (e.g. destroying old Crimean vineyards). And things went back to square one as soon as those policies were abandoned in early 1990s.
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Soviet life was horrible. Health care, dental care stayed at a 1940s level. Only party elite could get medicine from France. No fruit, not many vegetables, no meat. Toxic chemicals dumped in lakes. Unfiltered chimneys. City air too bad to even use for welding, not enough oxygen.
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In the 1990s, students visited Russia; The fish in the lakes was so drugged by chemicals they bumped right into their legs when they went swimming. If you swallowed any lake water you had to get stomach pumped. "Barbecue" was grilling potatoes, to eat with oily, disgusting vodka.
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The Smirnoff vodka was only for export. What people drank with every meal was horrible. This in a country where soldiers got daily vodka rations as part of their payment.
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The forests were barren. Mile after mile of dead trees. Communism was the world's biggest environmental disaster. Even dumped radioactive waste by the North Pole and in lakes; if you stood on the shore for 30 min you got a lethal dose.
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Of course, people wouldn't go far into the dead forests since you needed permission to leave your city or enter one. Your domestic passport, comrade. Why no documentaries or movies about this? Hollywood needs another WWII story instead?
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Police stopped cars along the highway to demand bribes. Especially on the way to the airport. If they saw there were Westerners in the car their demands would skyrocket.
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A girl I knew visited relatives in a Baltic state in the 1990s. When they stood in line for a disco her cousins told her to look more sullen, not cheerful. Or they'd know she was a foreigner and demand more money. Later a gangster came to openly pick up money from the disco.
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