Red Storm Rising - Not!

This is a fascinating read on an extremely well-written blog. The overall population and general health trends in Russia are not good by any measure. It's hard to imagine that for so much of my lifetime worries over the "Russian Bear" were such a  preoccupation relative to National Security issues. It always fills me with a sense of irony when I hear people talk about our feeling "safe," again in a post 9/11 world. I don't know about you but I grew up with air raid drills and urban legends about not eating new fallen snow as a result of Russian nuclear seeding of clouds over the US. Safe is a relatively short-term concept, I suppose.

Read the entire entry - the Russian Bear is losing its claws, teeth and hair and, in some ways, dying on the vine.

At the beginning of 1992, Russia was home to 149 million people. Over the next 12 years, it added a net of 5? million immigrants. Today its population stands at 144 million, with 160 deaths for every 100 births. Writing in the Winter 2005 issue of The Public Interest [Warning: ephemeral link], Nicholas Eberstadt sees no likelihood of an uptick.

Comments

[Rhod]

Russia seems to be the most gruesome example of the penalties of totalitarian utopianism. I think it was Sakharov, or maybe Solzhenitsyn, who opined that Russia today is the end product of a kind of social Darwinism, in which the best and brightest and most energetic were eliminated for two generations, and those who remained at the end of the century, simply left for other countries.

The culture is tired, drained of vitality and criminalized because those who survived and have seized over and covert power, are the most amoral and ruthless of the bunch.

I still think Russia will eventually revive and dominate Europe, simply because hardship has made Russians more resilient and hungry than the populations to the west. Germany and France have other things to worry about beside unassimilated Muslims.

[uris]

I believe that Russia will survive these hardships and come back as the powerhouse that it once was. Russia has survived many hardships in the past and will overcome any in the future.