As a direct corollary of the collapse of living standards, there was a sharp decline in health for the mass of the population. Newsweek described life expectancy as “the ultimate indicator of a nation’s overall economic health”. Even at the height of the crisis of the old regime in 1987, life expectancy for the USSR still averaged 65.1 years for men and 73.8 for women. In Britain, by comparison in 1996 male life expectancy was 74 years.
The Financial Times (14/2/94) carried a front-page article with the title ‘Russia faces population crisis as death rate soars’. The article explained that:
In the past year alone, the death rate has jumped 20 per cent, or 360,000 more deaths than in 1992. Researchers now believe that the average age for male mortality in Russia has sunk to 59 – far below the average in the industrialised world and the lowest in Russia since the early 1960s.
An article in the US magazine Time (27/6/94) commented:
For many East Europeans, the age of freedom is turning into the worst of times since the Second World War. Eastern Europe is going through a health crisis of dire proportions: demographers and health officials report rates of death and childlessness on a scale normally seen only in wartime. Ailments of both body and mind are near epidemic magnitude. In several countries, including Russia, the population is actually shrinking. “The drop is catastrophic,” says Regine Hildebrandt, a minister in the state government of Brandenburg, “it is like war.”
In Russia, Bulgaria, Estonia and Eastern Germany, deaths are outnumbering births, in some areas 2 to 1. Life expectancy in nearly every part of the East is dropping, especially among men, at a time when even the poorest third world countries are recording steady increases. In Hungary, the average is 65 for men and 74 for women, in contrast to 67.3 and 75 in 1975 and 73.4 and 81.8 for French men and women today.
Death rates in Russia soared 30 per cent after 1989, with men bearing the brunt, says demographer Murray Feshbach of Georgetown University. By his estimate, life expectancy for Russian men fell to 59, about the same as in Pakistan.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, commented: “In the past, such abrupt shocks were observed in industrial societies only during wartime.” These figures are all the more appalling when we bear in mind that the Soviet Union had attained levels of health care and life expectancy as good as many advanced capitalist countries.
Disease, suicide, murder, inadequate food and despair combined with the demolition of the health service to reduce Russia to ‘third world’ levels of health. According to Rabochaya Tribuna:
The majority of Russians are chronically undernourished. The deficit of high quality protein is 25 per cent and vitamins up to 50 per cent. The energy deficit is around 20 per cent.
The death rate for Russian males was related to suicide, murder, bad food and bad conditions and also to the general lack of perspectives and loss of hope for the future.
Under the old system, at least the workers had a free health service and relatively stable conditions. The attitude of workers was reported in the media through various sources. Julika Lukacs, a Hungarian pensioner, said: “Society was not divided under the Communists. There was no crime or poverty and we lived happily.” That may be an indulgent memory, but it was shared by many. A miner from Vorkuta said he was “voting for Zyuganov, because I felt safe under the Communists”. Another Russian person who was interviewed about democracy, revealing the psychology of millions, gave the following reply:
Freedom? Yes, we have it. But freedom for what? To die of appendicitis? To buy a Western anorak for 200 Deutsch Marks, when the average wages are 5 Deutsch Marks per week. Freedom to bribe teachers $1000 a year to teach our children or to pay $50 to see a decent doctor?
Since then, the situation has improved (it could hardly get any worse). But the negative consequences of capitalist restoration were recently confirmed by The Transition Report 2016-17, which informs us that those born in a ‘transition zone’ (post-communist countries in Europe) are one centimetre shorter than their parents as a result of stress and malnutrition. The index of happiness is also lower. It is comparable to those born in a war-zone. (See Reuters world news, 3 November 2016.)
The new Transition report quotes a survey of 51,000 households in 34 countries conducted in 2006, 2010 and 2016, asking respondents to rank from 1 to 5 their agreement with the statement ‘All things considered, I am satisfied with my life now.’ “Excessive concentration of wealth (among the very rich) … may negatively affect equality of opportunity and cause a backlash against key economic and political institutions underlying market economies,” the report warned, adding it could lead to weaker growth in the long run.
Naturally the individuals’ experiences of growth differed markedly depending on their position on the income ladder. Only those in the top 27 per cent of income distribution have experienced average or above-average income growth. Some 23 per cent are actually worse off now than in 1989, while 33 per cent have experienced income growth below the G7 average.