komu na Rusi zhit' khorosho [to be more correct]...

Wed Oct 13 19:45:57 UTC 2004

>1) -ö----è -Å-¾-è-
-å -º-µ--¥-É *-¾--à-½-º* -í--à-½---Ç-æ--æ-º
>-½... Not all of America is like the hospital you went to. Come down one
>of these days to where I grew up in rural Southern Indiana Äì esp. the
>hospitals that serve rural retirees. Or, better yet, visit a downtown
>hospital in Washington DC or in Mobile, Alabama that services African
>Americans or veterans. YouÄôll see things that will curl your toes and
>make you wish for a room full of beds and a hotplate. Trust me.

Let's then compare the best with the best and the worst with the worst.
Also, one has to know what is the percentage of the best and of the worst.
Do you think your basic hospital in Texas or Iowa is much different from my
experience? Yet there is just a handful of decent hospitals in Russia.

>That said, of course healthcare here in the States is superior to Russia.
>I never suggested otherwise. But the picture painted by the article leaves
>the average American to think that Russia's medical services are
>Old-Testament bad. That's nonsense -- doctors are highly trained and
>dedicated in Russia (though the pay and infrastructure are awful).

But the conditions are intollerable. Trust me, my grandparents were
doctors. Whenever any of us needed medical care, all kinds of strings were
pulled and they did everything in their power to make sure that members of
their family (that is us) avoided Russian hospitals except in cases of
surgery (with the best surgeon, to be sure). And they both worked in
hospitals all of their lives. I know full well what I am talking about.

My father recently died in a hospital there, and spent time in various
hospitals before that. It's a disgrace even by Russian standards.

>My guess is that, so far as preventative medicine goes, even
>Skotoprigonevsk would hold its own with 90% of rural and inner-city
>America. What's more, there's a network of free clinical care that many
>Americans (not to mention Sudanese!) would envy.

No, they wouldn't, not the free one. In some hospitals there are epidemics
of typhoid because the sheets are not washed regularly, and all kinds of
other epidemics.

>Russia is bad -ø-æ -Å-¾-æ-µ-º-É.

Can't read.
>
>2) Have you been to Africa? I have. ItÄôs nothing like Russia. Any poor
>African would, in an instant, trade the living standards of the typical
>Russian in, say, Smolensk or Irkutsk. Education, healthcare, political
>stability, access to information, housing, etc. Everything is better in
>Russia for the average Ivan than it is in Russia for all but the richest
>Africans.

You are talking big cities. Try "glubinka". Try 30 km outside Moscow with
outhouses and no running water. Do you see any similarities? Yes, genocide
is not as common now in Russia as it was 50-70 years ago.

>3) Of course you're right -- things are pretty bad in Russia, mostly worse
>than 20 years ago, especially for those outside the western-central
>population centers.

Not everything is worse, some is just the same, except YOU had no
information about it, everything was rosy. When in 1984 I taught in a
little college (called Grinnell) in Iowa they practically barred me from
saying anything bad about the Soviet Union, claiming I was a dissident. A
year or two later SU's head Gorbachev was saying things much more radical
than I dared to say in that pink-eyed college.

> I never suggested for an instant that Russia's AIDS and depopulation
>crises were anything but crises.

BTW, depopulation is common to most European countries. France and Germany
faught it after WWII, and till now they cannot come to grips with the
influx of Turks and Maghrebins, then it was Sweden, and now Italy, Spain
and Russia. They just have to get used to the immigration, that's all.

>Nor did I suggest that the article was entirely wrong. I was very precise
>in my criticisms of inaccuracies in the article. Importantly, I think it
>very naØve to hold Russia up against norms and governmental functioning
>that exist here in the US.

Now, but the readers would compare with what they know, which Mount Sinai
Hospital and the like.

>American social science methodologies and statistics just don't work very
>well in Russia.

Statistics is just that, statistics. People who understand the issues
interpret them well, those who do not understand, interpret them badly. An
example: In 1987 (still the Soviet Union) a teacher from Russia came to
Middlebury. Despite perestroyka he still operated according to his old KGB
model, and I have no doubt that he had a KGB rank. So he has spread his
propaganda the soviet style over me: Hungary produces more meat than the US
[hence better system that the US]. Yes, I said, that may be, but the reason
is that a) many Americans are now either vegetarians or eat a reduced
ration of meat for health reasons; b) Americans by cheaper meat abroad.
Hungary produces more steel than the US. Yes, that may be, but that is
mainly because the US has been switching to plastic in tubes that are laid
in the ground. You get the point.

A recent statistic: the city that has the most billionaires (with a B) in
the world is ........ Moscow. What is the conclusion? You tell me first,
I'll tell you mine later.

>Chiefly, I think the article paints an unnecessarily dire portrait of
>Russia (moral of the story: Russia will implode) -- part of a long
>tradition in the American press that I would have thought the New Yorker
>above.

Well, it did so in not so distant past, you may recall that the Soviet
Union is no more and it happened with no help from the outside.

>For a much more balanced and nuanced view of Russia, let me suggest Fiona
>Hill's recent article "Russia's Newly Found Soft Power"
>(http://www.brook.edu/views/articles/hillf/20040826.htm). A really nuanced
>picture of Russia's developing economy and influence by someone who has
>spent a lot of time there.

Thanks.

__________________________
 Alina Israeli
 LFS, American University
 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
 Washington, DC 20016

 phone:    (202) 885-2387
 fax:      (202) 885-1076 

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