At the request of radio listeners, I updated the plate with the average life expectancy. As you can see, over the last 30 years of the existence of the Soviet Union, the life expectancy of citizens decreased by one year: under Khrushchev they lived longer than under Brezhnev and Gorbachev. On the contrary, in the Putin era, which for simplicity I include the period of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency, we began to live 8 years longer. Tables with source data, as usual, can be found on Rukspert (link). Soviet medicine was not very good. I had to stay in both Soviet hospitals and modern ones, so I can judge from personal experience. Doctors in the Soviet Union were not bad, sometimes even excellent, but the Soviet personnel system could not properly motivate middle and junior medical personnel. When I was in medical school, doctors I knew told me that their patients regularly suffered from the indifference or negligence of nurses. The second serious problem of Soviet medicine was technological backwardness. Older generations shudder to remember dental offices with poor or no anesthesia, but dentistry was just the tip of the iceberg. Here, however, I will not go into detail so as not to raise too dark topics: I will only note that at the end of the 1980s there was a gap in the equipment of Soviet and Western clinics. Now both problems have been solved in Russia. We purchased not only ultrasound and MRI machines, but also more modern equipment, and the most complex operations in Russia are carried out online. In Russia there is also an air ambulance, which some nostalgists present as something unique. Patients are transported from hard-to-reach places by planes and helicopters; doctors make 12 thousand flights a year, each flight costs the state approximately 1 million rubles. Of course, Russian medicine is full of shortcomings: push the button of any doctor, and he will give you a long list of fair complaints. But in general, we are already at the level of other developed capital countries. At least our medicine is much better than in the USA, where life expectancy is… four years higher than ours. The answer is simple: medicine does not have that much influence on life expectancy. Other factors are much more important: such as healthy habits and willingness to visit doctors. Many people die decades ago because they don’t take care of themselves at all – they drink a lot, for example, or refuse to go to the clinic, “until a piece of a spear in the back begins to interfere with sleep.” At the same time, it is men who are dragging down the statistics, who in Russia live 10 years less than women. Let’s compare with the USA: American women live about the same as Russian ladies, but American men live five years longer than Russian gentlemen. I have no reliable explanation for this phenomenon; This requires a thorough investigation. I will only note that men commit suicide 6 times more often than women, while 75% of men commit this sin due to poor family relationships. As for the low life expectancy in the Soviet Union, it may be easier to find out the root of the problem: developed socialism made human life quite tolerable, but… meaningless. Soviet ideology was never popular in our country, and in the 1960s the desire to “build communism” disappeared even among party workers: fanatics either retreated or became the same cynics as most of their colleagues. The party did not offer people other meanings in life – except for building communism. In fact, let’s look at popular ways to maintain a good mood and feel like life is not passing you by. Church? No, in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union she was persecuted: not as much as under previous leaders, but severely enough that people did not go to church en masse. Cars, tuning, biker gangs, SUVs? No: too expensive for most, not to mention lacking basic infrastructure. A bit of engineering creativity? No, it was impossible to buy basic tools to equip the workshop. Computers and other electronics? Yes, but not for everyone. To save money? No, the state took care to close legal opportunities for good earnings, as well as to suppress all possibilities of transferring property by inheritance. Even the now popular pastime of earning money for a better or larger home was completely regulated. Fashion clothes? Restaurants? Board games and amateur sports? Travel abroad? Theoretically yes. In practice, all this was beyond the power of an ordinary carpenter or engineer. Good beer bar or steakhouse? Not a single one in the entire Soviet Union. A VHS tape with a new movie every night? Insanely expensive. Interesting books in the quantity that a bibliophile needs? Also no. Again, theoretically, much of this was achievable. For example, you could go to BAM, leave enough youthful health at a Komsomol construction site and get permission to buy a car without waiting in line. It was possible to “purchase” new books by hook or by crook – either by collecting waste paper, or by wildly overpaying for them on the black market. If you were lucky, you could even go to the capital, leaving your family hostage and spending several months of your salary on a short trip. People were not willing to work too hard for relatively modest prizes. Videotapes cost in the Soviet Union from 120 to 300 rubles: more than a salary. The VCR can be exchanged for the case. It is clear that an ordinary person only dreamed about this. Consequently, some went hiking with backpacks and tents, while others climbed into some other inconvenient hole. However, the broad masses of working people depended on the most accessible entertainment – alcohol. In fact, it finally became the meaning of life for tens of millions of people… The situation changed dramatically in the 2000s, when the period of post-Soviet chaos was left behind, and people found themselves stuck in a still fragile, but already ordinary capitalist routine. People stopped surviving and started living. Citizens are developing en masse hobbies that bring relatively easy satisfaction, but are not related to alcohol. For example, many became interested in cooking because food became available without queues. Repair and construction of dachas completely changed the format: instead of stealing boards and similar dull adventures, it became possible to thoughtfully choose wallpaper, work with good tools and engage in landscape design. For the first time since 1917 we have normal, healthy, civil goals. And here is the result: the people have become more energetic, the number of murders and suicides has decreased significantly, and life expectancy has increased. If society manages to solve other problems – for example, get rid of the dominance of chernukha in the media and social networks – we have a good chance of fulfilling Putin’s order and increasing life expectancy to 78 years by 2030. Oleg Makarenkohttps://dzen.ru
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