<<< ... The "realities of modern capitalism" illustrated in the regions long subject to Western control have been brought to much of Eastern Europe as its economies have been "Latin-Americanized." The reasons are debated, but the essential facts of the social and economic collapse are not. The demographic consequences, while uncertain in scale, provide one index. The UN Development Program estimates ten million excess male deaths during the 1990s, approximately the toll of Stalin's purge sixty years earlier, if these figures are near accurate. "Russia appears to be the first country to experience such a sharp decrease in births versus deaths, for reasons other than war, famine or disease," David Powell writes. The demographic crisis is in part attributed to the crumbling of Russia's health care system under market reforms. The general collapse has been so severe that even the monstrous Stalin is remembered with some appreciation: more than half of Russians "believe Stalin's role in Russian history was positive, while only a third disagreed," polls indicated in early 2003.4 The plans of the US overseers of Iraq seem rather similar to those that were applied in Russia, and that have led to dismal outcomes elsewhere with fair consistency ... >>>
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