Premature deaths: Russia's radical economic transition in Soviet perspective

The 'Washington consensus', which for nearly a decade put the best face it could on Russia's mis-transition, is showing signs of crumbling.1 It is now acknowledged that the Russian Federation's post-communist depression was deep and painful, causing immense physical hardship and psychological stress. After reporting unemployment in the low single digits during the first half of the 1990s, it turns out that more than 17 million are seeking work or have left the labour force after years of discouragement. The time therefore has come for a dry-eyed assessment of whether acute privation during the 1990s caused a significant number of premature deaths. To mitigate the problem of ex post assumption fitting, detailed population projections prepared by the American Census Bureau in 1993 have been selected as the foundation for the null hypothesis that the physical hardships, social disruption and psychological distress associated with a 44% decline in Russia's GNP caused millions of premature deaths, in addition to any adverse impact they may have had on fertility. The exercise reveals that there were 3.4 million Russian premature deaths in 1990-98 plausibly attributable to the travails of post-communism.