Premature Deaths: Russia's Radical Economic Transition in Soviet Perspective

Abstract

THE 'WASHINGTON CONSENSUS', which for nearly a decade put the best face it could on Russia's mis-transition, is showing signs of crumbling.1 It is now acknowledged that the Russian Federation's post-communist depression was deep and painful, causing immense physical hardship and psychological stress. After reporting unem- ployment in the low single digits during the first half of the 1990s, it turns out that more than 17 million are seeking work or have left the labour force after years of discouragement.2 The time therefore has come for a dry-eyed assessment of whether acute privation during the 1990s caused a significant number of premature deaths. To mitigate the problem of ex post assumption fitting, detailed population projections prepared by the American Census Bureau in 1993 have been selected as the foundation for the null hypothesis that the physical hardships, social disruption and psychological distress associated with a 44% decline in Russia's GNP caused millions of premature deaths, in addition to any adverse impact they may have had on fertility. The exercise reveals that there were 3.4 million Russian premature deaths in 1990-98 plausibly attributable to the travails of post-communism.3 What went wrong? Why were policy makers so misguided? There are many possible explanations including bad advice from the Washington Consensus, but no full fledged mea culpas.4 This article tries to cut through the finger pointing by attributing Russia's latest bout of premature deaths to the penchant of post-tsarist political leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev and El'tsin for rash measures rather than carefully prepared reforms supported by the 'rule of law'.5 There is no doubt that the Washington Consensus bears some responsibility for the victims of 'shock therapy'. Its nostrums influenced reformers in El'tsin's circle like Stanislav Shatalin, Grigorii Yavlinsky and Egor Gaidar, but key Western advisers like Anders Aslund and Jeffrey Sachs legitimately counter-claim that the Kremlin's reforms reflected the political agenda of the El'tsin administration, concerned more with destroying the vestiges of the Soviet state and building new institutions of cronyist power than establishing competitive free enterprise. It is in this sense that Russia's post-communist premature deaths are ascribed to the tradition of callous economic radicalism,6 rather than failed liberalisation. Russian leaders have repeatedly exhibited little self-restraint in eradicating their adversaries' economic institutions and must admit this vice if the cycle of premature deaths is to be broken.