Paul Goble

Vienna, December 18 – Excessive consumption of alcohol over the New Year’s holiday will cost the life of 300,000 Russians, according to a Moscow psychiatrist, making the alcohol consumption threats to Russia’s demographic future than terrorist attacks and fires, even though those continue to garner far more media attention.
At a press conference this week, Aleksandr Nemtsov, a professor at the Scientific Research Institute of Psychiatry of the Russian Ministry of Health, said that “the new year alcohol marathon will take the lives of 300,000 Russians,” some directly and others through accidents, murders and psychoses (www.win.ru/topic/3053.phtml).
Because alcohol-related deaths have become so common, he continued, “the victims of alcoholism elicit much less information resonance than do terrorist acts and fires,” even though, for example, deaths from alcoholic binges kill “many more young people than at the ‘Lame Horse’ nightclub,” which held the attention of all Russians.
Another specialist on alcohol ...

Paul Goble

Vienna, December 17 – The 2010 Russian census will not ask any question about the religious affiliation of respondents, Rosstat officials say, but it will press for information on the equally “sensitive” question of ethnic identification, even though the Russian constitution specifies that citizens have the right to declare or not declare an ethnic identity.
On Tuesday, the State Statistical Committee (Rosstat) held a conference with the heads of the territorial organs of government statistics in the Southern Federal District to discuss various aspects of the census process and problems that the Moscow officials anticipate in the count (www.rusk.ru/news_rl/2009/12/17/kto_ne_hochet_znat_kakova_religioznost_nashego_naroda/).
Irina Zbarskaya, the head of Rosstat’s Administration of Statistics on the Population and Health, discussed with the group recent amendments to the census law intended to improve its coverage by allowing census takers to turn to government files in cases where individuals cannot be contacted or refuse to answer.
But she said that ...

Paul Goble

Vienna, December 17 – Putinism represents neither a revival of the Soviet system nor the establishment of a traditional authoritarian regime, according to one of Moscow’s leading sociologists. Instead, it represents a regime of a new type, one in which the force structures are now in a position to pursue their various, often competitive “clan” interests.
But because this regime is degrading the state and society by blocking “the institutional differentiation and separation of ‘society from the state’” launched in the 1990s, Levada Center director Lev Gudkov says, it is “unstable” and unlikely to be able either to maintain itself or arrange “a peaceful transfer of power” (www.levada.ru/press/2009121600.html).
Gudkov offered this definition of “Putinism” a week ago at a Moscow conference on “Russian Alternatives,” but his speech was posted on his research center’s website only yesterday. In it, he provides one of the most detailed discussions yet of how ...