It seems like Russia hasn’t changed much since I was last there in 2000. According to Niall Ferguson in the Daily Telegraph:

Average male life expectancy at birth is below 60, roughly the same as in Bangladesh. A 20-year-old Russian man has a less than 50/50 chance of reaching the age of 65.

This has much to do with the round-the-clock consumption of fags and booze – the typical St Petersburg man walks around with a bottle of beer and a cigarette in one hand the way a Londoner carries his mobile phone – not to mention an attitude to road safety apparently inspired by the Mad Max films. It also reflects the long-term effects of the planned economy on the Russian environment and the near-collapse of the healthcare system.

Exacerbating the demographic effects of increased mortality has been a steep decline in the fertility rate, from 2.19 births per woman in the mid-1980s to a nadir of 1.17 in 1999. Because of these trends, the United Nations projects that Russia’s population will decline from 146 million in 2000 to 101 million in 2050. By that time the population of Egypt will be larger.

Thankfully he ends on a positive note—although I will believe it when I see it:

Any British visitor to Russia instantly recognises the symptoms of post-imperial trauma. The place has the feel of the 1970s, right down to the terrible clothes, teeth and hairdos. Yet those who wrote off Britain in the 1970s overstated our decline. The same mistake was made by a British journalist last week who compared Russia with Africa.

This is not, despite the old Cold War joke, “Upper Volta with missiles”. There may be no going back to the USSR. But it is much too early to consign Putin’s Russia to what Soviet propaganda used to call the dustbin of history.