Life Expectancy For Russian Men Drops To 59 - Philly Inquirer

[hatrack]

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - "A 90-pound chunk of masonry breaks off the facade of a high-rise building and crushes a man on the sidewalk below. Another man, stumbling home from a late-night party, falls in the street, passes out, and freezes to death. Two men break into a railroad yard and die after drinking several quarts of industrial solvent from a tanker car. There are so many odd and horrible ways to die in Russia that it's almost no surprise the average Russian man isn't expected to see his 59th birthday. Men in Bangladesh live longer.

"Normally only during wartime do we see the kind of decreases in men's longevity that we've seen recently in Russia," said Vladimir I. Simanenkov, head of the department of internal diseases at the St. Petersburg Medical Academy and a senior official of the city's Public Health Committee.

Government statistics show that the average Russian man lives 58.5 years, compared with 72 years for the average Russian woman. In 1990, life expectancy for men was 63.4 years.

The reasons sound simple: Russian men drink and smoke too much, live overstressed lives, and see the doctor rarely. The consequences are anything but simple, however. Russia one day could become incapable of patrolling its borders or policing vast expanses of rural emptiness, creating havens for terrorists and smugglers. Military leaders already complain most new draftees are so drug-addled, unfit or psychologically damaged that only about 10 percent are capable of surviving boot camp."

EDIT

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/10953599.htm?1c

[onehandle]

1. You see? Communism works!

Things were Much better under the U.S.S.R.

Right, Comrades?

;-)

[aneerkoinos]

3. Right

But USSR was not communist, it was centralized socialist/state capitalist authoritarian dictatorship.

Yes, for the majority, life was better then than as result of violent IMF privatization according to the neoliberal dogma.

Naturally, democratic socialism would be better than either.

[NNadir]

4. That's easy to say as there is no such thing as "Democratic Socialism."

You can claim whatever you wish for whatever doesn't exist.

It is the same everywhere, communist or otherwise, if you squander your resources on useless stuff like militarism, if you elevate dogma over science and technology, your country will fall.

If, on the other hand, you embrace peace and you invest in the future, you will thrive.

These factors had more to do with the collapse of the USSR, and the coming collapse of the USA, than Marxist twaddle about capitalism.

Between 1865 and 1940 the United States, always a capitalist country, was well on the path to becoming a utopia. We had many failings, but we were growing in wealth, in developing a sense of justice, and in providing ever higher standards of living broadly for our citizens. We were powerful and rich and we had a highly educated culture. Sometime later, partially in response to Marxist criminality but also because of messianic complexes on the part of some our citizens, we squandered everything.

George W. Bush is merely the fulfillment of this process our decline, a ladder day Breschnev, incompetant, inflexible and incoherent.

[aneerkoinos]

5. Mixed economies

New Deal was a form of socialism, at a time when US society was on the verge of socialist revolution. Mixed economies of Nordic countries used to be and partly still are relatively quite socialist. My main point was the same as in the article, that the neoliberal fundamentalist dogma forced on the former soviet block has for the great majority made life even worse than it was before, and to say that there are other possibilities besides stalinist and neoliberal slavery.

As for recent development of US, that is also according to the predictions of Marxist socioeconomical theory about capitalist societies developing towards increasing monopolism and inequality - and tyranny.

[Ellen Forradalom]

2. Among these awful consequences

might be that women's status begins to rise as they become more vital to the functioning of society? On second thought, probably won't happen--the whole world seems to be running away from women's equality as fast as it can. :-(