Russia - The Country
Russia has gone from superpower to Third World in a mere six years. Or Red to dead without even gaining a toehold on optimism that drove the success of some of its former republics. Not the actual country but the government has descended from being all beneficent, all powerful and all knowing to being a cabal of old men stuffing their pockets with tattered rubles as fast as they can. The real money is being made by people who never see the inside of the Kremlin. Gangsters, businessmen, private citizens, killers and even rebels.
But if its people are any richer than they were under the hammer and sickle (they're not), they're certainly not living any longer. War, disease, drugs, unemployment, crime, poverty and all those other frills of freedom are taking their toll on the erstwhile resilient Russians with a vengeance.
Male life expectancy has fallen a staggering seven years, to 58, since the flag of freedom was hoisted over the Kremlin. Men in Russia today live 15-17 fewer years than their counterparts in the United States and Western Europe. Russian men were more likely to reach 60 a century ago than they are today. Russia is being ravaged by a disease. It is CIS-positive, malignant with the growing pains of liberty, which Russians are abusing like a chemically dependent pharmacist. Russian men are 20 times more likely to be murdered than Western European males. In 1996, Russian men committed suicide and boozed themselves to death twice as much as they did in 1990. The war in Chechnya took the lives of some 4,300 Russian soldiers. Tobacco causes nearly 300,000 deaths every year. Not surprising when you consider that 77 percent of Russian males smoke $3 billion worth of cigarettes a year. It kinda makes those nuclear reactor leaks, environmental hazards, heavy metal pollution and toxins, crime and civil war seem like mere entertainments in the vodka soaked existence of the typical Russian.
Suddenly communism doesn't look so bad anymore. Poverty was a lot easier when you could blame it on the U.S. imperialist aggressors. The only reason fewer people are feeling the pangs of indigence in Russia today is that there are fewer Russians around to feel anything. There have been a million more deaths than births each year in Russia since the days of the crowds at Lenin's tomb. If the population continues to fall by a million a year, in a half-century Russia won't be much more populous than the Los Angeles basin-but without the palm trees. A victory of sorts for Planned Parenthood, but a bad day for baby formula makers.
In December 1991, the Cold War ended when the Soviet Union collapsed. The high-flying Russian revolution had finally run out of gas and crashed. The jagged pieces totalled 12: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. And most of these states are going through a secondary breakup, as ethnic and religious factions fight for sovereignty, usually with the help or antagonism of "Mother Russia," Iran or gangsters. After their brief taste of independence (and financial insolvency), many of these independent states are thinking about realigning themselves with Moscow.
Russia is the largest country that emerged from the former USSR. In 1992, Russia introduced an array of economic reforms that not only freed the prices on most goods and services, but set the course for a downward economic spiral that continues today.
Although President Boris Yeltsin survived a national referendum on his ability to lead the country in 1993, he dissolved the legislative bodies still left dangling from the Soviet era and signed a peace treaty. On October 3, 1993, tensions between the executive and legislative branches of the government escalated into armed conflict. With the help of the military, Boris got to keep his whopping $21,000 a year salary and free Moscow apartment.
A December 1994 attempt to take Grozny in the rebel Republic of Chechnya revealed in a rebel rout of the Russian forces precisely how weak the Russian war machine had become, and subsequent events showed even greater disorganization. Yeltsin may think he is in charge, but it became apparent that when push comes to shove, the army will decide. Renegade commanders refused to follow orders or never received them. Russian soldiers captured by the insurgent Chechens revealed that they were without food and maps-essentially that they had no direction nor any idea of what the hell they were doing. Russian corpses littered Grozny like dead worms after a heavy rain. Although the vastly superior forces eventually took the Chechen capital in 1995 only to retreat in August 1996, they've faced a repeat of Afghanistan since.
However, crime may be Russia's biggest export in the next decade. The brutal control of a central government has been reborn in the form of Russian Mafias. In Russia, there are an average of 84 murders a day; many are contract killings, according to the Ministry of the Interior. In 1996, at least 200 Russian business executives were whacked by the Chechen Mafia in Moscow alone. Compare the rate of 16 murders per 100,000 in Russia to the U.S. rate of 9 per 100,000, and you can see why even trigger-happy Americans look like Buddhist monks next to the Russians. Someone is murdered in Russia every 18 minutes. Sixty percent of the murders are for material gain, and 20 percent are thought to be murders of gangsters by rival gangs. In fact, there are more gangsters than there are police in Russia. Less than half of all perpetrators are ever brought to justice.
There is more afoot than just thuggery in Russia. Tired of polishing their ICBMs and rotating their nuclear weapons, some army units have decided to strip them down into more economically attractive components and, by doing so, generate a little cash. In 1993, there were 6,430 reports of stolen weapons, ranging from assault rifles to tanks. To date, there have been more than 700 reports of nuclear material being sold to various buyers outside and inside Russia. On the black market, a kilo of chromium-50 can go for $25,000, cesium-137 for $1 million and lithium-6 for $10 million. Prospective customers for these goodies are Iran, North Korea, Libya and other nations looking for a big bang for their money.
