“The number of HIV-infected Russians will grow in the next few years, but helping them will become a lot more difficult…” was the introductory line in a front page article in Moskovskie Novosti on December 1, 2011 (World AIDS Day). According to the article, as of 2012, the Russian government will be the sole financier of HIV-prevention programs, which have …
Series: Twenty years after the Soviet Union
‘Population Prescriptions:’ Pronatalism and the Fear of Underpopulation in Post-Soviet Russia
“Russian Cross” – The Problem of Underpopulation
In May 2006, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly, then (and most likely soon to be again) President Vladimir Putin made a passionate statement about the dire demographic situation in Russia. He identified Russia’s decreasing population as a possible national security threat and as the most acute issue facing the country. …
The rise and fall of the extrasense
In 1989, a well-timed visitor to the Soviet Union could bear witness to a very peculiar mass phenomenon. Public spaces would suddenly empty out—adults rushed home from work without so much as checking out what was on offer in the neighborhood store, children abandoned their games in the street, and the elderly women that occupied the benches outside virtually every …
Mental Health Care in Ukraine: Twenty Years after the Soviet Union
In the summer of 2008 I had the pleasure of beginning my anthropological dissertation fieldwork in Ukraine. I was particularly interested in the mental health field. I had much experience with mental health issues in the U.S. through my Master’s thesis at the University of South Florida where I interned with the National Mental Health Association. I had also worked …
Health and medicine 20 years after the Soviet Union
Nearly two decades have now passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Over the next several months we will be running a series of articles which consider a specific issues related to health and medicine in the former Soviet Union. The articles comprising “20 Years After the Soviet Union” will highlight research by anthropologists and other social …