Russia, the sick man of Europe

Public Interest, Wntr, 2005 by Nicholas Eberstadt

Russia's devastating cardiovascular epidemic and its carnage from violent death might not be immediately controlled or completely prevented, but their cost could be at least somewhat contained through carefully tailored public policies. Yet government policy makers have shown no interest in pursuing such options.

Crisis in democracy

Moscow's feckless approach to its ongoing national health emergency would be regarded as a scandal in most foreign quarters. But to Western eyes it also constitutes something of a mystery: How is it possible that such a manifestly inadequate health regimen is tolerated in a still somewhat open and pluralistic political system? The proximate explanation for this puzzle is that, until now, no great political pressure has been brought to bear for correction or adjustment of the government's course--and the absence of such articulated pressures reflects in turn a lack of perceived political concern by the public at large. Russia may have already lost the equivalent of its casualties in two, or more, World War I's through premature mortality since 1992. But as yet there has been almost no public outcry about this peacetime outrage, and none of the dozens of competitive parties in Russia's new electoral environment have seen fit to champion the promotion of the nation's health as its own political cause. This is more than a health crisis. It constitutes nothing less than a fundamental test for Russia's troubled fledgling democracy.

This essay is based on the author's "The Russian Federation at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century," NBR Analysis 15, no. 2 and is published with permission of the National Bureau of Asian Research.