ABSTRACT
Russia’s health and demographic situation since the fall of the Soviet Union has been widely characterised, both within the country and in the West, as a “crisis” (Atun 2005; Parfitt 2005; Gerber and Mendelson 2005; Eberstadt 2010), a “disaster” (Shah and Eberstadt 2009), and a “catastrophe” (Rutkevich 2004). Yet recently, Russian government officials have been trumpeting what sounds like a symphony of improving health and demographic trend:
The Russian population rose rather than fell in 2009 for the first time in decades, prompting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to declare that its size has become “stable” at around 142 million.1 In September 2009, the Ministry of Health and Social Development reported that Russia recorded natural population growth for the first time in 15 years, with 1,000 more births than deaths in August.
