Tag Archives: russians

Russia’s Demographic Resilience III

It’s official. Russia’s population grew by 23,300 souls in 2009, for the first time since 1995. The rate of natural increase remained slightly negative for Russia as a whole, though the Siberian and Urals Federal Regions actually saw positive natural population growth for the first time in 19 years. However, this was more than compensated for by [...]
Posted in Da Russophile | Also tagged , , | 24 Comments

Surviving Collapse Part 2

Having looked at Argentina’s mini-collapse in the early 2000’s, we will now turn to the classic modern case study of post-Soviet Russia, as recounted by Dmitry Orlov with my own commentary. Needless to say, as an emigrant from 1994 onwards, this is an area of substantial personal interest; had the USSR struggled on into the [...]
Posted in Notes, Sublime Oblivion | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Voice of the People Part 3

This is a summary of opinion polls conducted by the Levada-Center, Russia’s Gallup, since February 2009, and continues from Part 1 and Part 2. Along with the original post Lovely Levada, this series constitutes a unique English-language reference for social trends under late Putinism as expressed by the Russian people themselves, rather than the limousine [...]
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Russia’s Sex Traditions

Sean recently suggested Russianists study the history of smell in Russia. I have an even better idea: a history of sex in Russia, or rather my translation (PDF) of the tabloid article Сексуальные традиции на Руси (Russian Sexual Traditions). It’s historically and culturally inaccurate in more than a few places, but will hopefully make for a [...]
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Interview @ Siberian Light

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10 Myths about Russia’s Demography

This post tries to debunk some popular, but misguided, views on demographic trends in today’s Russia. These consist of the perception that Russia is in a demographic “death spiral” that dooms it to national decline (Biden, Eberstadt, NIC, CIA, Stratfor, etc). Some extreme pessimists even predict that ethnic Russians – ravaged by AIDS, infertility and alcoholism [...]
Posted in Da Russophile | Also tagged , , , , | 23 Comments

Lessons from Byzantium

I finally watched the film Гибель Империи. Византийский урок (Death of an Empire: the Byzantine Lesson), narrated by Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, the father-confessor of Vladimir Putin. This film takes a stylized interpretation of the decline and fall of the Byzantine Empire – the root cause of which is attributed to mystical factors such as loss of faith [...]
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Russia’s Sisyphean Loop

Anatoly Karlin @ www.SublimeOblivion.com PDF version | DOC version Russia’s Sisyphean Loop The Eternal Return to the Future? In this article I attempt to explain Russia’s historical cycles of failed Westernization and to project its future socio-political trajectory. First, I note the nature of and linkages between Russia’s geography, cultural traditions and imperial cycles. Second, using a ‘Belief Matrix’ [...]
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