Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Surviving the Russian Transition

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The 1990s sociopolitical transition in Russia heralded an unparalleled drop in life expectancy, primarily among men. This mortality crisis is widely regarded as the most severe in modern history. Currently Russian life expectancy is the lowest among industrialized countries at 58.3 years for males and 71.8 years for females; the sex difference in men's and women's life expectancies, at 13.5 years, is the largest in the world. This research uses anthropological methods to go beyond existing mortality data and understand how older Russian men and women suffered and survived the life-threatening sociopolitical transition. This project brings an anthropological approach to a health crisis that has not been studied through on-the-ground ethnography. The central questions are: How do lived experiences of men and women during the transition differ? How do men and women relate their experiences of the transition to their current perceived health? How is perceived health related to life events, socioeconomic trajectories, and gender? How is the relationship between health, gender, and the transition constructed in the Russian media? In order to answer the above questions the project will use ethnography and social epidemiology, focusing on a cohort of Muscovites who were middle-aged in 1990 and bore the brunt of increased mortality in Russia during the crisis. The ethnographic approach will consist of participant observation, semi-structured in-depth interviews, life histories, and an analysis of media discourse. A social epidemiological approach will consist of a semi-standardized structured survey interview. Textual and statistical analyses will be done on the data collected. In addition, the analysis will draw on existing epidemiological data that deals with the Russian health crisis in order to position respondents' lives in broader society. This research will further an understanding of how political and social transformation in Russia is connected to perceptions of health. This, in turn, may increase our general understanding of the linkages between social change and health, and identify how people survive during times of social upheaval.