The Harlot of Communism
This time his replies were succinct as usual. But one statement, made without a hint of dramatization, had puzzled me and made me think.
– You know, – he said – I took to swearing recently. Alyona is mad at me, but I can do nothing about it: we are so deep in shit here that there is no other way to express oneself.
The sad part of the story is that while the suggested concise description of the current situation in Russia could instigate protest among some hyper-patriotic Russians, the use of a substandard vocabulary would hardly bother anyone. As a matter of fact, both – the situation in Russia and the vocabulary – are the objective result of the evolution of Russian society, or more precisely, of the selection work conducted by the Soviet regime.
Having analysed the available demographic data for Russia, I came to an interesting albeit not comforting conclusion: Bolsheviks, who had called genetics a bad name, in reality added the Harlot of Capitalism to their arsenal and had conducted a humungous experiment, consequences of which, as it turns out, are irreversible.
Briefly, my reasoning is based on the following. During the 100 years of the twentieth century, the population of Russia has been impacted the most by the following events: three “dips” (World WAR I and Civil War, collectivization and hunger of 1932-1933, political repressions of 1937-1939 and World War II) causative to the 3 waves of emigration, plus the last wave of emigration, which has begun in the 90’s. Details – fact and figures – are taken from “www.demoscope.ru”.
I build my further reasoning on the 80/20 rule, the so-called Pareto principle, the validity of which in economic and social studies has not been contested thus far. In particular, in the case of applying this principle to any naturally formed society, it is possible to state with confidence that 80% of its human potential belong to 20% of its members. Perhaps these are the 20% Lev Gumilev referred to as “passionaries”, Pareto himself called these 20% “the vital few”, as opposed to majority – “the trivial many”. Nowadays, in different media one may encounter other notions, such as “drivers” and “passengers”, etc.
Without wrangling over the terminology, let us suppose that in 1900, Russia as a state was “normal” and the population inhabiting its territory was naturally balanced. Let us then assume that natural increase of the population (= birth rate – mortality), and the artificial impacts (hunger, social repressions, wars – i.e. negative increase) – have a constant value for each specific period, proportionally reflected in the number of both the “drivers” and the “passengers”. Finally, if statistics asserts that, for example, the second wave of emigration from the USSR in 1939-47 yr. constituted 8-10 mln, let’s assume conservatively – to simplify calculations – that negative increase of the Russian population due to emigration during the said period amounted to 0.5 million per year.
The key, however, is the assumption that in the case of an artificial impact on the population, its size – as well as its demographics – changes in accordance with the same Pareto rule: 80% of deaths happen within 20% of population, i.e., fall on its most active part.
Already I can hear the indignant screams of unbending advocates of the Soviet regime. Comrades! Do not rush to object! Think, who is the first to get the bullet in the war? probably not the soldiers of arriÃ?¨re-guard? And who were the principal targets of Stalin’s purges? And even the first to emigrate – we might as well confess now – were those whose speech was not dominated by substandard vocabulary.
Having taken as reference the year 1900 and the corresponding population size, I expected to see that under the Soviet regime the layer of “drivers” had been “thinned out” substantially, from the initial 20% down to something like 2 – 3%. Hence, as with the forest after fire, or with any organism after a serious disease, convalescence prospects would be moderate but nevertheless optimistic.
Much to my surprise, I discovered that from the initial 13,9 million “drivers” in 1900 no statistically significant track was left already by the end of 1930ies, and the repressions of 1938, in fact, were just dotting the “i’s” in the results of this genetic experiment. The graph descends to zero at approximately the year when comrade Lysenko declared an anathema on genetics. World War II consolidated the result. Repressions after the war, “the Doctors’ Plot” and the like, as well as the continued emigration from Russia, had no more than prophylactic nature thereafter.
In everyday life, the vocabulary of “bratki” (modern Russian euphemism for the Mob) gained a firm foothold, while social behaviour based on the “concepts” advocated by the Mob became a generally accepted standard. The population confides most in the weird crossbreed of two beloved heroes of the Soviet-time anecdotes: Stirliz (a fairy-tale Russian spy) and Vovochka (a retarded kid from an unprivileged family, diminutive for Vladimir).
And there is no chance left for a natural recovery.
