That Alekseyev article is gold I tell you. GOLD!

I’m kind of bummed about this. The problem I ran into with the RD was that I would check in from time to time, but rarely did I feel like I had anything particularly relevant to say… not that that stops anyone on Facebook or Twitter, of course.

Now you’ll be obsessing about your citation counts on Google Scholar. I found a couple more to add to the pile…
http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/TimisoaraW/EMT/EMT2-06.pdf
http://theamericanconservative.com/pdf/darwinism-china.pdf
http://www.oralhistoryforum.ca/index.php/ohf/article/view/51/77
Plus (as you know) I cite you a couple of times in my book… when it comes out. (I’d link to the book listing, but the publisher’s description is embarrassingly hyperbolic. It needs to be fixed before I’d feel comfortable posting anything about it.)

Good idea. I’ll check it out!

Polity IV is far better than Freedom House, but still have to be taken with a grain of salt. (Plus a 21-point scale from +10 to -10 is just as bizarre–and even more unwieldy for computation than Freedom House’s 7-point scale.) Grr. Ok. Rant over.

Well put.

Okay, thanks Anatoly and RusFed-o. I was in a bit of a crunch and wasn’t able to sit down with the data, so I thought it’d be easier to just ask those who probably did have it more easily at hand.

Also, migrating from a discussion about the reliability of statistics over on Adomanis’ blog–if you think that if all Russian stats are tainted by a sycophantic bureaucracy or somehow dictated from Putin on high, it’d seem that this would discredit that sort of conspiracy. Being so close to such a major (symbolic) milestone, they certainly could have fudged the numbers just a bit and everyone gets to bask in the glory of officially ending the “cross.” The 11-month indicators were suggestive of this outcome, and it was only this December aberration that seems to have derailed it, or at least postponed it in terms of the yearly stats. But they didn’t: it looks as though they dutifully reported the results despite whatever political pressures (real or imagined) to make the numbers even just a little bit more rosy.

Anyway, those folks remind me of those asinine US conspiracy theorists who were in full throat when the unemployment rate dipped below the 8% threshold shortly before the election.

Thanks again, guys.

Anatoly:
Have you read the recent piece in the Moscow Times?
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/population-declines-for-20th-straight-year/475152.html
For one, it is dreck–I don’t even know where to begin tearing apart the “analysis” here. (Perhaps with the “overall natural population decline of 2,573 people last year, or 51 times fewer than in 2011.”) Grrr. *Facepalm*
Anyway, getting past the mess of reporting here, have you seen these year-ending reports? As you know (and the reporter even points out), even into December there were reports of natural population growth (either 790 or 4600 depending on where you look in the article) that’d indeed draw to a close the era of the “Russian Cross,” but somehow Russia ends the year at MINUS 2573?
WTF? What happened to cause such a major discrepancy?

From somewhere in that bizarro-land between “constructive” and “critical” comes the following observation: I find it a little strange that you have real-time updates as to how many words you’ve written on your book manuscript. Maybe it is a generational thing–I don’t know–but it is weird. It seems to give the false impression that you are now [x]% away from completion of a finished product. I don’t know: maybe it is what you need to feel like you’re making progress and to keep on track, but it seems a little short-sighted in terms of the actual process of writing a book manuscript, which goes through many, many, MANY revisions from first draft to completion. Ok, stupid comment over–I’ll shut up now. Thanks. (And good luck to you!)

Whoops! I just left a comment similar to the above advice on your previous thread. Write and adapt. If someone asks, tell them it “corrects media misperceptions about Russia”–you can get the point across in five words or less and still give people the general gist of the project. If you go around calling it “Dark Lord of the Kremlin,” it’ll take even longer to explain 1) what it is that you’re working on, and then 2) how that relates to the title itself, since (as you and others have noted) it is not entirely clear to someone who may not already know you, or read your blog, or have any idea about Russia in general, what your predispositions are and how they figure into your choice of book title. Anyway, there’s two more cents to throw into the collection plate.

Hi, Anatoly:

Might I suggest a different approach? Don’t worry about the title–just get to writing the manuscript. I’ve got two books under my belt, and am now starting on a third. My experience is that any title you come-up with at the beginning you’ll end-up revising a half-dozen times as your project evolves. Perhaps you pick-up on some new thread or insight that ties your chapters together, and that gives you the idea for some wordplay or witty pun or something better that just “fits.” Plus, depending upon where your manuscript lands (academic publisher or commercial publisher vs. self-published), your editor–if s/he is worth his/her salt–will probably have some constructive contributions to make as well. For my first book, the words in the title itself were the absolute last ones written, and looking back now at the dozen or so ideas I had for the title back when I started, they all turned-out to be absolute crap by comparison.

Best of luck to you on your endeavor!

There are a lot of reasons to be suspicious of fishy online book reviews. Here’s another: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?_r=3&src=me&ref=general
Perhaps fortunately, my own books haven’t garnered enough attention for something like this to be an issue! =)

“Anything goes,” eh? Okay, here’s an admittedly-asinine question for everyone: how is the Medvedev-back-to-Putin transition being addressed by Russia’s makers of political matryoshki? Are they doing Putin on the outside, then Medvedev, then Putin again and then Yeltsin, Gorbachev etc.; or are they being untrue to history by doing Putin-Medvedev-Yeltsin-Gorbachev…, or are they just cutting to the chase and omitting Medvedev all together? Personally, I can’t believe how they’ve managed to screw-up one of Russia’s premier products in the international-tchotchke industry! 😉

A: Three months. Plus/minus 20 years.

Really? Hyperbole much?

This is great, Anatoly–we agree on so many things! And thanks for the link to the Zhuravlev piece–I hadn’t seen that before.

So, inferring from your comments here and elsewhere: do you see alcohol as the primary driver of the increases in mortality during the post-communist transition? I certainly do: not just the quantity, but the type of alcohol (distilled vs. fermented) and the manner in which it is consumed… binging, as you mention. To my mind, this accounts for a great deal of the variation in the demographics of transition. Charting the decline in (say) life expectancy for each of these countries reveals some interesting patterns: the most dramatic drops were not necessarily in the most economically-ravaged (and even war-torn) post-communist countries, but those that drink the most in distilled spirits like vodka: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics, etc. The primarily beer-and-wine-swilling countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, etc. all charted a modest drop in life expectancy for (usually) 1-2 consecutive years before continuing their upward rise. I know you’re no big fan of the wine-drinking Georgians, but even while their economy went in the toilet during the 1990s, their life-expectancy figures never went down. (Ironically, this is also true of the US throughout the Great Depression.)

I think your point about modern Germany probably best exemplifies what slight differences we have on some of these issues: I think it is most appropriate to consider the lost potential population in instances where the loss resulted from some sort of involuntary, external trauma (war, famine, etc.), rather than the more-or-less “natural” development of the population–which I hear echoes of in your comment about Russian “middle-aged men consciously deciding to binge more on vodka.” That’s what makes this topic so fascinating to me is that Russia’s (and many transitioning countries’) patterns have all the hallmarks of some externally-produced social trauma, while much of it appears more self-inflicted. So, back to Germany: I think if you’re considering the “true” costs of, say, WWII on Germany, it’d be appropriate to consider not just the 6-7mil of Germans who perished in the war, but also what that population would have been had there been no war. I don’t think it is quite the same when considering the more “natural” reduction in the birth rates that is more akin to the ol’ standard Demographic Transition Model, which doesn’t consider the impacts of external traumas.

Anyway… keep up the good work, and I do like the new blog background, by the way.

Another interesting post, Anatoly, and thanks for it. I’m a sucker for a good historical/comparative demographic analysis! I certainly agree that things are getting better in terms of demographics, but I don’t feel that the evidence and analysis actually support the question you pose: “how ultimately ‘bad’ were Russia’s two lost decades?” (To my mind, pretty bad: comparable to losing a major war, or enduring some sort of Spanish Flu pandemic.) But the analysis here essentially says: “other countries can claim to be worse, at least on a percentage basis.” That’s fine–I don’t dispute the numbers, but they don’t quite get the leverage on the question as posed… especially when using only percentages. Percentages are helpful in establishing a common baseline between populous and smaller countries, but they mask the magnitude of the loss when not accompanied by absolute figures, which (granted) are higher for Russia due to the much larger population, but are still pretty staggering. As you know, you’re talking about the loss of millions of people. Heck, they even tried impeaching Yeltsin on charges of genocide. (Part of the political theater to be sure, but still pretty bad.)

But what’s even more interesting is to go back and look at population projections for the RSFSR before the collapse of communism. If you assume the rate of population growth, both Soviet and Western experts projected Russia to be in the 168-182mil range by 2050… which works-out to about 155-165mil in 2012. You’re assuming that the baseline scenario is zero population growth over time–but the baseline was actually a steadily-growing population. So saying that there are 5mil fewer Russians today than in 1992 is true–but also consider that there are some 12-22mil fewer Russian today than there SHOULD BE. So, I respectfully suggest that this is a valid consideration for the question being posed about the true impact of the “lost decades” actually are.

I’d “buy” the critique about using GDP/capita figures only if the author was trying to make an argument about the standard of living of the people–which doesn’t seem to be the case. Much of the individual-level considerations (things like literacy rates) aren’t simply used as some sort of reflection of the standard of living, but rather as structural impediments to the growth of the economy as a whole. So, for what Anatoly purports to do–position the overall Soviet economy in both historical and comparative context–I think that the GDP/capita figures are appropriate for what is a very interesting blog post. Thanks for it!

Nice work, as always, Anatoly. You’ll make me a believer yet!

You misread me, Anatoly: I’m trying to pay you a compliment! I did not suggest that YOU said such things, I was making a general comment about the polarizing nature of such debates on the blogosphere. Things can get pretty heated, and people make all sorts of reductionist fallacies. (See, for instance, the second reply here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2011/10/31/a-reply-to-nicholas-eberstadts-the-dying-bear-russias-demographics-are-not-exceptional/). I’m saying that I genuinely appreciate that you’ve broken out of the bounds of the computer screen, and had what appears to be a fruitful exchange of ideas with someone with whom you don’t see eye to eye. I apologize if it came across as anything other than a compliment–but perhaps even this is another manifestation of the same problem: without face-to-face contact, it is hard to parse-out what is sincere and what is sarcastic. We naturally gravitate to the latter, I fear. Take care.

*Clap clap clap* So, are you saying that he ISN’T a demonic AEI shill for a neo-imperial Republican Party that wants nothing more than the wholesale destruction of the Russian population? Didn’t think so. I think the blogosphere can be a pretty polarizing place, and just getting together to have meaningful discussions about mutual interests can be extraordinarily helpful. Maybe we should organize a conference or something.