Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Predominantly Ethnic Russian Regions More Depressed and Suicidal than Non-Russian Ones



Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 6 – According to the results of a new Serbsky Institute survey, people in predominantly ethnic Russian regions in the Russian Federation are more likely to be depressed and to contemplate or commit suicide than are those in non-Russian regions (rg.ru/2017/12/05/reg-sibfo/sostavlen-rejting-regionov-rf-po-zabolevaemosti-depressiej.html).

            According to a Russian nationalist commentator, Archpriest Aleksandr Kuzin who is pastor of a church in Shubin, there are powerful reasons why this is so, rooted in unemployment or the risk of that and the sense many Russians now have that they aren’t needed by anyone (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2017/12/06/pochemu_stradaet_imenno_korennoe_naselenie_rossii/).

            Tragically, he says, the Russian authorities have promoted this sense. “Not long ago,” the mayor of Moscow suggested that there were “15 million superfluous people living in the provinces,” a statement that only reinforced the feelings of many in Russian regions that Moscow doesn’t care what happens to them.

            In non-Russian regions, however, the situation is different, Father Kuzin says. The level of depression was lowest n the North Caucasus, because there unlike in Russian regions, “the authorities do everything they can to avoid social dissatisfaction” that could lead to violence or revolt.

            That puts such non-Russian regions in sharp contrast to what is going on in Russian regions, he continues. In the latter, the authorities “do without such measures believing that the indigenous population will solve its own problems with work, employment and a sense of being needed by others and by the country as a whole.”

            “In my view,” the archpriest concludes, “such a policy is based on a dangerous misconception” that Russians don’t need the  help of others and the state and that it is somehow all right that “precisely the indigenous population of Russia is the one that suffers” more while the non-Russians don’t.

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