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Article: Drunken nation: Russia's depopulation bomb.(Report)
- Article from:
- World Affairs
- Article date:
- March 22, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A specter is haunting Russia today. It is not the specter of Communism--that ghost has been chained in the attic of the past--but rather of depopulation--a relentless, unremitting, and perhaps unstoppable depopulation. The mass deaths associated with the Communist era may be history, but another sort of mass death may have only just begun, as Russians practice what amounts to an ethnic self-cleansing.
Since 1992, Russia's human numbers have been progressively dwindling. This slow motion process now taking place in the country carries with it grim and potentially disastrous implications that threaten to recast the contours of life and society in Russia, to ...