Tag Archives: homicides

The Decline Of Russian Skinheads

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It’s not just the gopniks who are withering away; so are racist skinheads. According to the SOVA Center – an NGO which is about as anti-Kremlin as it gets, so no point in speculating that it cooks the figures for PR purposes - racist attacks in Russia have plummeted from their peak levels in 2007-2008, back when newspapers carried headlines such as “Moscow foreign students told to stay in as racist attacks rise over Hitler’s birthday.” (h/t Maksim for pointing it out to me)

racist-attacks-russia-sova

This is, of course, unquestionably a good thing. Obviously so for for non-White foreigners or immigrants, and likewise so for Russia in general. Whatever one’s views on the cost-to-benefit ratio of mass immigration, it’s hopefully clear to all that arbitrary violence shouldn’t be part of the discussion.

Of course even 18 racially motivated murders is a lot, as the annual average for the US is about 2 in recent years (the US has twice the population but half the background homicide rate). But it’s a lot better than the peak of 109 reached in 2008.

Alexander Mercouris – The Guardian And Putin

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Two months ago I wrote an article in which I used data and statistics to show that Russian journalists today under Putin are, contrary to extravagant claims in the Western media, far safer than in several acknowledged democracies such as India or Brazil; far safer than ordinary Russians; and indeed, far safer than they were under Yeltsin. Why then does one get the exact opposite impression from reading the Western media on this subject? Mainly that is because they lean on rhetoric and hyperbole over fact; they deny the utility of comparative perspective; and in some cases, they outright lie or make things up. The Guardian is an example par excellence of all this. On reading a certain Guardian editorial, longtime DR commentator Alex Mercouris noticed that its figure of 200 journalist deaths under Putin clashed irrevocably with ALL estimates from reputed press freedoms watchdogs, most of which converged on a figure of 40 deaths or less. Did The Guardian just make up its own facts? Unable to rest without an answer to this question, Mercouris embarked on an investigation to find out the origins of this massively over-inflated figure… and why The Guardian left it up on their site unchanged for SIX MONTHS after having become aware of their mistake. I am happy to present:

The Guardian and Putin

Alexander Mercouris

As readers of the British newspaper the Guardian know, the Guardian has conducted for many years a fierce campaign against Vladimir Putin.  This began almost from the moment of Putin’s appointment by Boris Yeltsin as Prime Minister in 1999.  I still remember an editorial the Guardian published at the time which called on Yeltsin to sack Putin just a few weeks after he had appointed him.

On 18th December 2011 the Guardian published another in its long line of anti Putin editorials under the provocative title “Truth is being murdered in Putin’s bloody Russia.” The language used in this editorial was extreme even by the Guardian’s standards.  I was particularly shocked by the final sentence, which referred to the Russian state as “slack, slimy and savage”.  Such language seems to me completely inappropriate in an editorial in a serious newspaper with an international readership.

The editorial appeared in print form in the Guardian’s Sunday supplement the Observer and online in the Guardian’s website on “Comment is Free”.  The timing of the editorial on 18th December 2011 is important.  Parliamentary elections took place in Russia on 4th December 2011 over the course of which the pro Putin party United Russia suffered a substantial loss of support, triggering protests amidst allegations of vote rigging.  An unauthorised protest took place in central Moscow on 5th December 2011, which turned violent.  A much bigger peaceful protest took place in Moscow on Bolotnaya Square within sight of the Kremlin on 10th December 2011.  This was followed by a further big protest in Moscow on Sakharov Avenue on 24th December 2011.  The editorial therefore appeared at a tense time in Russia, when the protest movement in Moscow against Putin was at its height and when the Russian and international news media were buzzing with speculation that Putin might be on his way out with rumours circulating of troop movements in Moscow and of a violent crackdown being planned against the protest movement.

The editorial was supposedly written in connection with the murder in Russia’s southern republic of Dagestan in the northern Caucasus of a journalist called Khadzimurad Kamalov.  In emotional and angry language the editorial condemned Kamalov’s murder, which it linked to the murder of what it said were “around 200” other journalists who had supposedly been killed in Russia since Putin came to power.  Amongst the murdered journalists named in the editorial was the famous journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was killed outside her apartment in 2006.  The editorial accused Putin and his government of complicity in these murders as part of a “bloody” campaign to “murder the truth”.

In other words at a time when Putin was facing a challenge in Moscow from the protest movement and at a time when speculation of a violent crackdown on the protest movement in Moscow was rife the Guardian published an editorial that accused Putin and the Russian government of complicity in the murder of “around 200” journalists and which referred to Russia as a “slack, slimy and savage” state.

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Alex Mercouris On Russian Journalists

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His comment on my last article on the safety of Russian journalists was so good, involving detailed and seemingly original research, that I thought it would be good to highlight it in a separate post. Also like the lawyerly way he goes about making his argument. :)

I have spent the last few days working through the websites of the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) and of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). I have read through their case studies. I would just like to make the following points:

1. Both the CPJ and the IFJ come across to me as sober and honest organisations. Though they use different methodologies and therefore come up with different figures their articles on deaths of journalists in Russia and elsewhere impress me as well researched and well intentioned. I can see no agenda other than a desire to protect and increase the safety of journalists.

2. Though they use different methodologies and come up with different figures both the CPJ and the IFJ say about Russia essentially the same thing, which is that the situation there with respect to the safety of journalists is improving and that the Russian authorities are making a genuine effort to come to grips with the problem and that this effort is starting to achieve success.

3. @ K.F., in that connection, I have to point out that the link you have provided to the website of the CPJ not only bears out my last point and the point Anatoly made in his article, but makes the diametrically opposite point to the one you are trying to make. It reads:

“Russia and Mexico, two of the world’s most murderous countries for the press, are heading in different directions in combating deadly anti press violence. The Committee to Protect Journalists found improvement in Russia as journalist murders ebbed and prosecutors obtained two high profile convictions”.

By contrast the CJP reports that the situation in Mexico is going rapidly from bad to worse.

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Russian Journalists Are Far Safer Than Mexican Journalists, Ordinary Russians, And Their Own Counterparts Under Yeltsin

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One of the most common tropes against Russia is that critical (independent, democratic, etc) journalists there are dying like flies, presumably because of the “culture of impunity” created by Putin or even on his express orders. It is rarely mentioned that the statistical chances of a Russian journalist dying by homicide is an order of magnitude lower than in several countries widely recognized to be “democratic” such as Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, and the Philippines, or that – unlike Turkey or Israel (!) – Russia does not imprison any journalists on account of their professional work. To this end, I compiled a “Journalism Security Index” to get a more objective picture than the politicized rankings produced by outfits like Freedom House that put Russia on par with Zimbabwe.

As usual in these situations, a few graphs are worth thousands of words.

The graph above shows the numbers of journalists killed in Russia for every year since 1992 as compared with other “democratic” countries like Brazil, Mexico, India, and Colombia. As one can see, the situation has improved greatly in the past three years, with only one journalist (in Dagestan) getting killed in 2011; meanwhile, the situation in Mexico has deteriorated to levels unseen in Russia since the early 1990′s. Does this mean that Felipe Calderón is the next Stalin? Or is it that he is just faced with a drugs war that is rapidly spiraling out of control?

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Russia’s Demography Continues To Improve Rapidly In First 3 Months Of 2012

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In my previous demography post, I argued that for all intents and purposes, Russia’s “demographic crisis” can be reasonably argued to have ended. Population growth is now consistently positive since 2009, and as of last year, the country’s natural decrease was a mere 131,000. This is a massive improvement over the 500,000-1,000,000 annual natural decrease seen in 1993-2006.

The latest figures continue to beat all expectations (even my relatively optimistic ones) in the first three months of this year. The crude birth rate has risen by 6.5% over the same period last year, implying a c.8% rise in the total fertility rate (slightly higher since the ratio of women of childbearing age is now falling). Projecting it for the rest of the year – a risky assumption, granted, but this is back of the envelope stuff anyway – would give a TFR of about 1.73 for 2012 (from c.1.60 in 2011). This would make it broadly comparable to the Netherlands (1.79), Iran (1.70), Canada (1.67), and Estonia (1.62); below the US, France, the UK, and Scandinavia (1.8-2.0); and above Germany, the Med, Japan, South Korea, Poland, China, and the Christian ex-USSR (1.2-1.5). It is time to stop thinking of Russia as a low-fertility country; it is firmly in the middle of the pack among industrialized countries. It is particularly noteworthy that whereas Russia is frequently described as the sick man of the BRIC’s (in demographic terms), it is now probably closer to Brazil (1.86) than it is to China (c.1.4-1.5).

The numbers of deaths fell by 3.3%, and this is a trend that is likely to persist as excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco are raised at  a more rapid pace now that the elections are done with. As a result, the natural population loss in the first quarter this year is now only 35,000 relative to 79,000 last year. There is now a distinct chance that natural population growth will actually be positive this year – linearly extrapolating from this quarter (which is of course an unreliable method, but whatever) would give 1,793,828*1.065 births and 1,925,036*0.967 deaths = 1,920,426 – 1,861,509 = c.60k increase - although I’d still give it less than even odds. As graphs are worth many words…

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Russia’s Mortality From Vices On The Decline

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Sometimes a single picture is worth a thousand words. This is one.

Though Russia remains a highly dangerous country by developed country standards, it has improved immeasurably in the past decade. Fewer Russians today die from alcohol poisonings, homicides, suicides, and even – despite a near doubling of car ownership rates – transport accidents that they did in the 1990′s to early 2000′s. Indeed, most of these “non-natural deaths” indicators are back to the levels of the late 1980′s, coinciding with Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign.

The importance of this decline shouldn’t be understated. Though they only account for a small proportion of total deaths, they tend to happen at earlier ages and thus have a significant impact on the workforce and overall life expectancy. Furthermore, the fact that the pace of improvements actually speeded up during the crisis indicates that Russia is becoming a “normal country” in the sense that health improvement trends have decoupled from economic fluctuations.

Russia’s Demographic Resilience IV

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Russia’s demographic situation continued improving this year: according to the H1 2010 data released by Rosstat, relative to the same period last year, the number of births increased by 2.3% from 12.1‰ to 12.4‰ and deaths fell by 1.8% from 14.6‰ to 14.4‰. This means that once net migration is factored in, Russia is set to register its second consecutive year of positive population growth. This should come as no surprise to S/O readers, given that both my and Sergey Slobodyan‘s projections indicated this would be the case (but the same cannot be said of those who read Mark Steyn or Nicholas Eberstadt).

This means that Russia’s total fertility rate (TFR) is likely to rise to around 1.60 children per woman this year (2009 – 1.56, 2008 – 1.49), which is similar to Canada and Estonia. These trends can be compared with those in other E. European countries, e.g. Ukraine‘s 5% fall in births during Jan-May 2010, Belarus‘ stagnation in H1 2010 and Latvia‘s remarkable 21% decrease in births in H1 2010 relative to H1 2008 (the Baltic country’s TFR will now be around 1.15-1.20, the lowest in Europe). On the mortality side, Russia’s life expectancy will likely regain or slightly exceed its Soviet-era maximum of 70 years. Guest writer Sergey Slobodyan summarizes these developments in the light of his September 2009 forecasts and February 2010 updates.

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Crisis Demography in Eurasia

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In a recent post, Mark Adomanis pointed out that the Russian economy has done significantly better than many other East European nations during the recent crisis and is now mounting a strong recovery. He also speculated on the effects of the crisis on the demography of badly-affected countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltics, on the basis that ”Russia’s experience during the 1998 debt default amply demonstrates that cutting healthcare budgets and pensions in the midst of an economic catastrophe causes a lot of excess deaths among vulnerable sectors of the population”.

Now I’ve never really worried about the consequences on mortality of an economic recession, because I don’t buy into The Lancet‘s arguments that it was the reduction in Russian social spending in 1998 that contributed to the mortality wave of 1999-2002, since the increasing affordability of, and consumption of, alcohol was by far the more convincing factor. (Also, in industrialized states, recessions tend to correlate with falls in mortality rates). On the other hand, hard recessions – especially ones which result in reduced public spending on social welfare – usually are associated with substantial reductions in fertility. In this post I’m going to take a look at how valid these observations and theories are in light of the recent economic crisis in Eastern Europe.

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