03-06 Russia

It was 1987 and the beginning of a two-week tour of the Soviet Union. The first thing we did after checking into our Moscow hotel was visit our embassy. And you learn more in an hour with your ambassador and trade commissioner than reading any number of travel brochures.
The first surprise was learning that the wife of the trade commissioner was expecting a baby, and that they were both planning to travel to Berlin to enjoy better medical facilities than were available in Moscow.
This launched me into a discussion of high Russian death rates compared to other Western nations and their second class health care system.
Moscow was wonderful and so much to see. Beautiful Red Square as in the photo. Plus, Metro stations that were like museums. But surprise, surprise. No one seemed to be smiling.
And seeing cars without hub caps. And seeing drivers leaving their cars and taking their windshield wipers was a bit of a shock. The impression was that population decline was more that deaths larger than births, but a society that seemed to be quasi-dysfunctional. And everywhere we went shopkeepers cheated us by giving us improper change.
No shortage of good looking Russian women. And children beautifully dressed. Lots of shows for tourists with gals wearing traditional costumes. But young women who were not getting married and not having families.
The population of Russia today is 143 million, and its expected to drop to 111 million by 2050.
One thing that is particular to Russia is the large number of Russians living outside the nation. They are all over the world. The number is something like 20-30 million. I met one personally at a world Congress in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1995. He was one of 60 Russian PhDs that had emigrated to Israel that year to escape rampant discrimination.
Russia is trying to bring these people home to help stem its shrinking population, but with little success. Russia just cannot offer them a better standard of living.
St. Petersburg is another delight and the photo shows their system of canals. But all this beauty in architecture is of their past.
Modern apartment buildings on the outskirts of the big cities are just big ugly blocks. We were warned to walk in the middle of the road in these districts because so-called cement between the bricks would drop on your head when walking on a sidewalk. And neighbourhood parks where the grass was three feet deep.
I found the whole experience depressing. Well educated people in a society where nothing works well. A nation in decline, but viable because it is a major exporter of LNG to the world.
Everything we saw for sale in their GUM department store in terms of consumer manufactured goods was pure junk. Nothing you would keep if it was given to you.
A nation that has the world on edge because it is a nuclear power, but a nation that will slide into oblivion because of its shrinking population.