cc  >> Kevin Check: Good afternoon  and welcome to today's Global  Hot Spots lecture.  My name is Kevin Check.  I'm the Senior Director of  School and College Relations at  the Wisconsin Alumni  Association.  And WAA is very pleased to be  partnering once again this  semester and this year with the  Division of Continuing Studies,  PLATO, and also the Division of  International Studies, to bring  you this great programming.  Today, we're excited to welcome  Professor Ted Gerber, from the  Department of Sociology, and  director of the Center for  Russia, East Europe and Central  Asia at UW-Madison.  Professor Gerber obtained  his PhD in Sociology  at UC Berkeley in 1995.  His research examines  socioeconomic stratification,  demographic processes, politics,  education, labor markets, public  opinion, institutional change,  HIV/AIDS, and science in  contemporary Russia and Ukraine.  He has authored or co-authored  40 published articles, which  have appeared in numerous  sociology and area studies  journals, and several edited  volumes.  He has received funding for his  research from the National  Science Foundation, the National  Academy of Education, and the  National Council for East  European and Eurasian Research.  He is a consultant for the  Center for Strategic and  International Studies, and  Lawrence Livermore National  Laboratories. 

 He has developed 17 large sample  surveys in Russia and Ukraine  since 1998, and has also  conducted numerous focus groups  and in depth interviews.  Please join me in welcoming  Professor Ted Gerber, as he  presents "Russia Update:  Issues and Challenges."  (applause)  >> Ted Gerber: I guess I need my  clicker, here.  Well, thank you very much.  It's a great pleasure to be  here.  I appreciate everybody coming  out on this gloomy day.  Of course, the gloomy day is  kind of appropriate for the  theme, I think.  Whenever anyone's talking about  Russia, a bit of gloom is  probably more appropriate than  you know, happy sunny weather.  So as Kevin mentioned,  I'm director for the Center  on Russia, East Europe  and Central Asia.  And I just want to reiterate  that our center runs a number  of programs, including a regular  lecture and event series.  So if you're more generally  interested in this part of the  world, I invite you to grab  our fall calendar at the back  of the room. 

 And we're also currently hosting  a photo exhibit at the Union,  which is a very nice photo  exhibit by a photographer named  Jonas Bendiksen.  Our topic today is Russia  Update: Issues and Challenges.  And this is a broad topic.  It gives what a lot of choice,  a lot of options, because there  are many issues and challenges  involving Russia.  So I want to go through a number  of them.  First, I want to review the main  challenges that Russia is facing  and the United States is facing  with respect to Russia because  I want to sort of give a broad  overview of what the main  challenges are.  And then I'll talk about the  specific ones that I'm going to  address today.  I'm not going to be able to talk  about all the challenges, but I  do want to sort of summarize  some of the main ones.  So perhaps the most pressing  issue in Russia today, as the  Russians perceive it that of the  economic crisis, and the global  economic crisis which we're all  familiar with right now, which  has affected our own country.  It is also affecting Russia  as well. 

 And some analysts, depending on  the various measures they use  to make such assessments have  actually suggested that the  economic crisis has hit Russia  just as bad or harder as any  other country, because Russia is  largely dependent on oil and  natural gas exports.  And one aspect of the crisis has  been a sharp decline in prices  of those commodities.  And Russia, interestingly  enough, we often think of  Russia, we got used to the 1990s  of thinking of Russia as being  an economic basket case and  having many economic problems.  But in fact, during most of the  period from 1999 onward, the  Russian economy has grown quite  robustly and was very strong.  So the recent economic crisis is  of particular concern precisely  because expectations of Russia's  population have risen as a  result of the relative  prosperity that Russia has  experienced in this interim  since about 1999.  So the 1990s, after the collapse  of Communism and the instability  and chaos that ensued following  the introduction of market  reforms, had become a bad memory  by 2007.  But once the new economic  troubles began, that memory  became all too vivid and all too  real.  And there were many fears on the  part of the population that they  would have a return to a long  period of economic deprivation.  Some have raised the question  of whether or not the Russian  government's ability to cope  with the current crisis poses  a real challenge to the  government, in the sense that  perhaps they suggested, as a  result of the economic woes that  Russia faces along with  everybody else in recent and the  last year or so.  This would lead to the  potential for political unrest. 

 I actually don't think that  that's much of a prospect.  I think that the Russian  population has been very  tolerant and very patient, and  has not shown many signs of a  political mobilization against  the government, or against the  elites.  And indeed, Prime Minister  Putin, he was a former  president, but I think most  Russians think of Putin as being  their main leader, not the  president.  But he still enjoys very high  approval ratings, despite the  fact that Russians' living  standards have taken a blow,  taken a beating, in the last  year.  So that's the economic crisis.  There's one major problem.  I don't want to go too much into  the details.  I could talk about it a little  bit in the question period, if  you wish.  A second major issue, which is  perhaps of more immediacy to us,  is continuing tensions in  US-Russia relations.  There are a number of sore  points that have really  bedeviled Russia-US relations  in the most recent period. 

 So, disagreements over missile  defense.  Now, the Bush administration  had planned to set up an  anti-missile defense system  in Eastern Europe.  This harkens back to the days of  Ronald Reagan, when President  Reagan was planning to establish  what they call Star Wars, or  missile defense system at the  time.  And many analysts think that the  threat of a missile defense  system played a major role in  the unraveling of the Soviet  Union.  And that Gorbachev and his  generals really feared this  possibility.  Well, that idea was rekindled by  the Bush administration, and was  a source of major tension, which  has recently been resolved by  the Obama administration's  announcement that it will not  actually proceed with those  plans.  US and Russia disagree over how  to handle the development of  nuclear capabilities in Iran.  Russia has been much more  reluctant to pose any  international sanctions, or to  participate in an international  effort to restrict Iran's  nuclear capacity.  When Russia invaded Georgia  about a year ago, you know, a  report just came out describing  this whole incident.  Of course the US and other  Europeans, the US and its allies  were very critical of Russia's  action in that conflict. 

 Russia has a lot of tensions  with Eastern Europe.  And the United States has sort  of aligned itself in recent  years with Eastern European  countries, with the fledgling  democracies of Eastern Europe,  and sought to protect them from  perceived Russian aggression.  Part of this has been a question  of NATO expansion, and the  Russians feel very threatened by  the incorporation of countries  such as the Baltic states of  Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania  into NATO.  And they're very concerned about  some efforts to incorporate the  Ukraine into NATO.  And there's continuing issues of  human rights, allegations of  human rights abuses that  American government officials  have criticized Russia for  violating the rights of its  citizens and you know,  misbehaving both domestically  and internationally.  And the Russians have countered  that the US has its own human  rights issues in recent years,  and President Putin has made  a lot out of the Bush  administration's  counter-terrorism policies and  Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.  So this is a source of  continuing tension.  And then of course, energy  politics.  Russia has not hesitated to use  its vast oil and natural gas  resources to throw its weight  around, so to speak, in its  relationships with the European,  in particular the Eastern  Europeans.  So, these are sore points,  recent hot spots. 

 There's a lot of discussion in  the paper about them.  Secretary of State Clinton was  in fact, is still currently in  Russia.  She had some meetings in Moscow.  So, if you're curious about  these issues, there's a lot of  discussion.  There is actually a sign of  hope.  So, for a while, analysts were  talking about a new cold war.  There was an escalation of  hostile rhetoric between the two  countries for a time.  And the Obama administration,  when they came in, their sort of  code word for their approach was  to try to hit the "reset"  button.  They wanted to reset Russian  American relations to set off on  a new footing, and try to  overcome some of these tensions.  And there is actually some  signs for optimism. 

 There's been some recent  progress, some agreements.  And in fact, right now, the sort  of theme of the day, the way  this recent visit is being spun  by the media at least, is if  there looks like the signs are  positive for a rapprochement of  American and Russian interests.  But that is another big issue  facing Russia.  A third issue, which I won't  talk about at great length today  is that of the dysfunctional  state institutions.  So, after Russia became an  independent country in 1992,  with the collapse of the Soviet  states, a lot of attention was  paid to the task of implementing  market reforms and getting rid  of the Soviet type of economy  and installing a market based  system.  There was less attention paid to  the task of building new state  institutions.  The very logic of market reforms  called for a withdrawal of the  state, a shrinking of the  government, because the Soviet  system was, of course,  characterized by massive  government control of all aspect  of social economic and political  life.  And the idea was to try to get  the state to be much more  smaller and play a smaller role.  So as a result, what we've had  take place in Russia is the  development of a set of  political institutions, which  are very problematic.  I'm behind in my slides. 

 Sorry.  So, Russia is one of the most  corrupt governments, your  officials at all levels take  bribes.  And they use their positions to  advance their personal  interests, rather than actually  perform their assigned duties.  There's also a well-developed  system of patronage that is  politics.  Now, everywhere there's  political patronage.  I'm not saying that our system  is free of it, by any means.  But I think it reaches a whole  different order of magnitude in  Russia where different clans and  connections and networks of  officials scratch each other's  backs rather than doing their  jobs.  And as a result, there are  issues of whether or not Russian  government institutions are  competent or able to perform  their assigned tasks.  This applies to virtually all  government institutions, the  police, the military, to the  education system, higher  education, universities, to the  postal service, to inspectors of  all sorts.  They have a real problem in  Russia right now with the poor  performance of these  institutions. 

 And as a result, people's lives  are made much more difficult.  So that's just some of the  issues facing Russia.  That's not what I want you to  focus on today, though.  So I've got three entirely  different issues which I'm going  to talk about in a little bit  more detail.  One is the issue of tensions in  the North Caucasus, a region of  Russia, and I'll show you where  that is.  I'll talk a little about the  history.  But perhaps, I imagine  many of you are familiar with  the Republic of Chechnya, which  is a province within Russia  where there's been a raging war  and violence for over a decade  now.  And then, secondly, an issue  that's a little bit, it's been  discussed somewhat, and that is  the continued issue of the  politicization of history, and  the struggles over conceptions  of history and understandings of  history.  And I'll say more about what I  mean.  And then, finally, a lingering  issue which got some press for a  while, but has sort of faded  from the headlines, but  continues to be a major problem  facing Russia, and that is  Russia's demographic crisis. 

 So those are the three issues  I'm going to talk about in a bit  more detail.  All right, here's a map of  Russia and it has some Russian  script on it.  The headline is...  (speaking Russian)  which means,  per capita income, essentially.  So this is a map of Russia's  various administrative  territories, the equivalent of  United States.  Russia has 89 such units.  And my pointer is not working  very well here.  I guess the battery is dead.  So, the lower left.  Where is the North Caucasus?  It's at the very lower left of  this map. 

 It's that southern area.  And gosh, it just doesn't really  show up in this color here.  So, if you follow my pointer and  just keep going, there we go.  So this area here is the North  Caucasus region.  It's named North Caucasus  because the Caucasus mountain  range is found there.  To put it in a bit different  perspective, you see here, this  is the southern border of  Russia, and there's this  mountain range here.  And just south of Russia, you  see Georgia.  Okay, that's where Russia sent  its troops.  And then other North Caucasus  republics which are found  between the Black Sea and the  Caspian Sea.  It's a mountainous region with a  very distinctive type of social  structure. 

 Historically, because it's so  mountainous, it's been  characterized by different clans  and small groups of people with  different languages, who don't  necessarily get along very well.  And Russia had a very difficult  time in sort of bringing this  region under its control.  So here, a bit more clarity  again, here is the actual states  or the Russians call them --,  that constitute the area of the  North Caucasus.  So you can see, here's Georgia  down there.  And that little enclave of  Georgia, that's South Ossetia,  which caused a lot of the  problems that led to the war  last year.  You see Chechnya is here to the  right.  Dagestan is a big multi-ethnic  republic, with many different  ethnic groups, which is in a  state of tension.  Then, Ingushetia is right there  next to Chechnya.  And those other republics are  also part of the North Caucasus.  So, the North Caucasus is  economically very backward. 

 It's been this source of much  tension and conflict.  And also the peoples of this  region tend to be Islamic.  So some observers, for example,  there's a quotation there.  I don't know if you can read it,  but I'll read it for you in case  you can't.  This is from a book by someone  named Gordon Hahn, called  Russia's Islamic Threat.  And Hahn writes, "Russia is  experiencing the beginning of  an Islamist jihad.  Russia's emerging jihadist  movement is not limited to  Chechnya.  A network of terrorists  is expanding throughout  North Caucasus,  in particular, to five other  titular Muslim republics..."  He lists them there.  "...and could soon spread to  Tartarstan and Bashkorrostan  and beyond."  So one source of concern for  many observers is that this area  within Russia, the North  Caucasus, has become a hotbed,  a cauldron, of Islamic terrorist  activity.  And there were indeed some  jihadists who went from Saudi  Arabia, Yemin, and other  countries, to Chechnya to fight  against the Russian forces when  they had a military conflict  going on there. 

 But actually, we don't really  know that much about this  region.  So what do we know?  And Gordon Hahn is concerned  about this.  And he bases his statement  largely on reports of Russian  military authorities, who  themselves have an interest in  claiming that the tension and  violence in this region stemmed  from Islamic terrorists.  So, we do know that this region  has been a source of a great  amount of violence.  So, there have been two sets of  wars fought in the Republic of  Chechnya itself, where the  Russians tried to militarily  suppress a secessionist  movement.  That war, the actual military  conflict aspect of that war has  really died down in recent  years.  And yet, Chechnya has been a  source of other types of  terrorist attacks and  activities.  So, Chechnya terrorists seized a  theater in Moscow at a  production of a play in October  2002.  And about a hundred people died  in this attack.  There have been raids on police  in the neighboring Ingushetia by  Chechnyan terrorists, perhaps  most infamously, a band of  terrorists from Chechnya and  Ingushetia, primarily, actually,  seized a school in Beslan at the  start of the school season in  September, 2004. 

 Hundreds of people were killed  in the ensuing battle that took  place, including large numbers  of children.  There have been other  explosions, other terrorist  attacks.  And a lot of this is related to  the ongoing conflict between  secessionist groups and various  outfits in Chechnya with the  Russian authorities.  So this is indeed a problem.  But that doesn't necessarily  mean that there's a lot of  support for Islamic  fundamentalism, or political  Islam, so to speak, and the  population in these Republics.  So, my colleague and I, we  decided to go in and do a  survey.  As Kevin mentioned, I sort of  have a hobby of doing surveys in  Russia.  Although, we hadn't done a  survey in these particular  regions before, because it's  hard to reach them.  But we do have some data.  We did a survey of young males  who would be especially prone,  in principle, to be involved in  this type of terrorist or  jihadist activity. 

 And we asked them a range of  questions.  I'm just going to give you, very  briefly, some of the main  results that we found.  Here is, I think, a quite  indicative sort of figure.  One of the questions we asked is  whether or not Islam should play  a greater role, a lesser role,  or the same role as it currently  does in politics.  And of the Muslim respondents,  now, not everybody is Muslim in  these areas.  But in one, it's about 85%.  In another, it's about 60%.  Smaller where Beslan is located.  Among the Muslim respondents,  you can see that in no case does  the majority really advocate  Islam playing a stronger role.  And you would think that if  you're an Islamic  fundamentalist, that you would  answer yes, Islam should play a  greater role in the politics of  the region. 

 So, by this measure, and I think  it's pretty indicative, only  about 23% of the Muslims in  Dagastan would be classified as,  you know, radical Islamists.  And this is a very liberal  definition.  One could say, yes, I want Islam  to play a larger role, but not  really fall into the category of  a fundamentalist or a radical.  So, it's a minority position in  all three Republics.  And based on this and other  data we have, we conclude that  really, it's not the case that  Muslims in these regions have  responded to, Osama Bin Laden  himself has referred to Chechnya  as a part of the jihadist cause,  and has released statements on  his Web site indicating that  Muslims should come and fight  jihad in Chechnya.  But this does not really seem to  have much appeal, at least no  more than do Russians living  elsewhere.  So, one of the things we did is  we compared our data from these  Republics and from Dagastan in  particular, to similar data in  other surveys we've done in  Russia.  We saw that the responses aren't  that different.  Sure, there are some radicals.  Sure, there are some  anti-Americans. 

 Sure, there are extremists.  But no more so here than in  other parts of Russia.  And in fact, only ten out of the  1200 or so young males  that we surveyed said that they  support the withdrawal of Russia  from Chechnya, and also defined  jihad using this political  terminology as a struggle  against non-Muslims, and then  also want a greater political  role for Islam.  So that's a very tiny minority,  actually, according to the  survey, anyway, who support this  kind of Islamic jihad.  And we think that these claims  about Russia's Islamic threat  are exaggerated.  Our data suggests that Islamic  radicalism as such, the support  for that is quite low in this  region.  So, what are we concerned about?  Well, actually, the concerns in  these regions are simply around  economic issues, government  corruption, police abuse.  The same type of issues that  confront Russians throughout  Russia, and that there's little  desire for Islamization.  So, we think it's important not  to be too hysterical, and not  to, on the basis of Russian  government officials'  pronouncements, assume that the  violence in the region is driven  by Islamic terrorism.  That is not to deny, okay, that  there is a lot of violence in  the region. 

 So I apologize for the color  here.  I guess it doesn't come through.  Here, the light blue bars show  the number of violent attacks in  the summer of 2009 in each of  these five republics of the  North Caucasus, compared to  2008, the dark blue bars.  So you can see, especially in  Ingushetia, Chechnya and in  Dagestan, these are the three  real hotbed areas, there has  indeed been a spurt of violence,  a new wave.  These could be explosions.  They could be shootings.  They could be other kinds of  murders, assaults.  And these numbers have been  documented by my colleague, who  works at the Center for  Strategic and International  Studies in Washington.  It clearly shows that there is  an increase in violence.  But it's important, again, not  to assume that all these acts of  violence result from politically  motivated terrorist acts. 

 There's a lot of organized crime  activity in these regions.  There's a lot of resentment and  hostility, old grudges that go  back to the military conflicts  and to inter-ethnic tensions.  And there's also a sort of an  ethos of violent revenge, blood  feuds, and this kind of thing.  So, a lot of these attacks could  reflect straightforward economic  crime.  They could reflect inter-ethnic,  inter-clan violence.  It is not nearly the same sort  of phenomenon as Islamic  terrorism.  We also, here are some examples  of, and I apologize for the  color.  They're having some attacks on  targeting government officials.  They've received a lot of press.  Again, this could reflect  revenge for government officials  being perceived as hurting the  families of some of the  individuals involved. 

 But I also want to point out  that a lot of the violence is  targeted against human rights  activists and journalists, that  Russia has a big problem in this  score.  And just to give you a few  examples, in this area, you have  a sort of strong-man type  rulers, who have been put in  place by Moscow, and supported  with the military might of  Moscow.  And in Chechnya, the current  governor of that Republic, he  and his supporters have become  known as the Kadyrovtsy, or the  Kadyrovites.  And they rule the Republic of  Chechnya as if it's their own,  private, personal backyard.  They rule it like medieval  lords.  They don't hesitate to violently  intimidate, to kidnap and  torture, and murder anyone  perceived to be their opponents,  or anyone who won't tow their  line.  Some journalists who have  bravely sought to report on  these types of activities on the  part of the Kadyrov regime, have  recently found themselves dead,  quite literally.  One of the more famous voices  was that of Anna Politkovskaia,  who had a long record of  reporting on the wars in  Chechnya and some of the  brutality that both the Russian  army and also the partisans and  the Chechnyan rebels were  visiting on one another and on  the civilian population.  She was brutally murdered.  She was shot in an elevator,  coming home to her apartment in  Moscow in October 2006. 

 This year, there has been a new  group of murders, a human rights  lawyer, who defended many of the  claimants who have taken their  cases to actually the world  court or to Russian courts  trying to get some kind of  compensation from the Russian  government for violations of  their rights, or for the murder  and disappearance of their  relatives.  Well, this lawyer, he was gunned  downed on the streets of Moscow,  along with another reporter.  Then, most recently, just after  the Summit which took place in  Moscow in July, a very  well-known and much admired  human rights reporter named  Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped  and murdered, and then dumped by  the side of the road.  So, no one has ever been  convicted or even really  effectively identified and  prosecuted for any of these  crimes.  There was a trial for  Politkovskaia's alleged murder,  but they were actually let off  the hook, and recently, and  perhaps you've read.  So, some human rights activists  in Russia actually blamed  Estemirova's death on Kadyrov,  but he filed a libel suit  against them.  And although there was some  string of discussions, or string  of evidence suggesting that he  had at least created an  atmosphere of impunity, where  people feel they can get away  with murdering in cold blood,  journalists and human rights   activists, he actually won the  case.  So, although, and I don't think  that in my own personal view,  looking at the situation, I  don't think it's correct to say  that this is a potential hotbed  of Islamic terrorism.  That doesn't mean things are all  well in the region.  It's instead a hotbed of  violence and depravity, which  local strong-men are visiting  upon the civilian populations  and one another. 

 And it really calls into  question the ability of the  Russian-- This is happening  within Russia.  This is not, you know, some  foreign country.  This is part of Russia.  Chechnya is part of Russia.  Igushetia is part of Russia.  Dagastan is part of Russia.  And it seems like the federal  government has really lost  control over these regions.  It poses a continuing policy  problem for them, how can they  reign in some of these guys who  are just let loose.  All right, that is the North  Caucasus.  My next topic, I'm going to  start off with a face that I  hope is familiar with all of  you. 

 He's not necessarily familiar to  my undergraduates in my classes  today, but I'm sure you all  recognize Joseph Stalin.  And I said I would talk about  the politicization of history.  Well, what do I mean by that?  Stalin is sort of emblematic of  this topic in many ways.  So, by politicization of  history, I'm referring to the  fact that the way that a society  like Russia today understands  its own history is very  contested, and it has political  ramifications.  So, in Russia, although there  was a brief period of time in  the 1990s, and even starting in  the late 1980s, when there was a  lot of criticism of the Soviet  period, there was never anything  along the lines of a thorough  accounting of what actually took  place in the Soviet Union.  And apart from a few  intellectuals who wrote books  and were involved in debates in  kitchens, and some of them maybe  even appeared on TV from time to  time, there wasn't really a  systematic attempt to come to  terms with what actually took  place, particularly during the  Stalin period.  So, many Russians have just  never really become aware of the  extent of the Gulag, the extent  to which Stalin induced famines  and murdered, or was responsible  for the murder by the state of  millions of people.  And moreover, although in the  1990s, there was an attempt to  sort of, by many intellectuals,  to criticize the Soviet period,  once Putin became president,  which took place in the start of  2000, officially, but he was  Prime Minister in 1999.  He began a slow and steady  campaign to reverse the negative  depictions of Soviet history in  official discourse, in  textbooks, and in the way that  the whole Soviet period is  portrayed publicly and  culturally in Russia today.  And the reason for this, I  believe, is that Putin  understood that the Russians  really, they felt that, they  wanted to have some source of  national pride. 

 They wanted to believe that the  Soviet Union was a very  successful type of country,  because they were sort of the  first among equals in the Soviet  Union.  And after all they had been  through in the 1990s, they were  yearning, psychologically, for a  restoration of their positive  image of themselves.  And that meant, for many of  them, restoring a belief that  the Soviet Union was a great  power, it freed Europe from the  Nazis.  So, one aspect of this is that  World War II, and the Soviet  victory over the Nazis, played a  very, and continues to play a  very important role in Russia's  self understanding.  So, it was very important for  Putin to restore a sort of  belief that the Soviet Union was  a glorious time.  Of course, other people and  other countries have a different  view of the Soviet Union.  They see the Soviet Union as  having been an oppressive,  authoritarian, dictatorial and  murderous empire, if you will.  And that's perhaps most  pronounced in eastern Europe,  where they felt that they had  been occupied by force, by  Soviet troops after World War  II.  And so, there's a lot of  disagreement over how best to  understand the Soviet legacy.  And for example, the Ukraine, in  2006, passed a law which  criminalizes anybody who denies  publicly the existence of the  Holodomor, which is the famine  which killed millions of  Ukrainians in the 1930s, for  which Stalin is often held to be  directly responsible through his  policy. 

 He explicitly wanted to starve  the Ukrainian peasantry, and he  did so.  Russia, itself, has countered  this.  And Russia thinks that this is  an anti-Russian measure.  So, the Russian government now  has recently passed a series of  measures, which also literally  criminalized taking positions  that can be interpreted as  challenging or contradicting the  official Russian position about  World War II.  Now, this is couched in terms of  criminalizing any effort to  glorify Nazism, or to  rehablitate Nazism.  But if you think about it,  that's a kind of slippery  definition.  And the fear on the part of any  professional historians, both in  Russia and abroad, is that this  is an attempt by the Russian  government to assert its right  to decide what sort of history  is going to be permissible, and  what is not.  Now, history is always a  contested subject.  And people argue about history  of our country.  They argue about the history of  France, about any country. 

 There are those who think things  were great and those who think  things were terrible.  And you know, those types of  debates should take place.  Of course, governments have a  stake in these debates.  But it takes these to another  level when the government  actually passes laws which  criminalize taking a certain  intellectual position about what  took place in history.  Moreover, the Russian law in  fact says that Russia was going  to view this as criminal  activity, regardless of where  this falsification took place.  So, you know, if I, here in  Madison, Wisconsin, stand up and  say, well I think actually, the  Soviets were just as guilty of  atrocities as the Nazis in World  War II, you know, that may be  wrong, it may be controversial.  It shouldn't be something that  should be criminalized, making a  statement like that.  That is indeed the intent of the  Russian policy.  So, the Europeans have struck  back, so the Organization for  Security and Cooperation of  Europe, it actually says, you  know, in your face, Russia,  we're going to declare that  actually Nazism and Stalinism  were both totalitarian regimes.  And you know, with the exception  of the Holocaust against the  Jews and others, they really  were equivalent in moral terms. 

 And so, this battle continues  today.  And there's a lot of concern,  particularly among the  historical profession.  What does this matter?  Who cares about the debates over  history?  Well, I will argue that in fact,  it does have consequences.  It has consequences for how  young people in Russia today  view their history, and their  understanding of their past.  And particularly, it's reflected  in how they view the Soviet  Union and how they view Stalin,  himself.  So, here is some more survey  data.  President Putin, in a 2006  speech, said that the collapse  of the Soviet Union was the  greatest geo-political  catastrophe of the 20th century.  And there were a few pretty  major geo-political catastrophes  in that century.  So we asked our young survey  respondents, who were 18-29  year-olds, what they think about  this statement.  And 63%, about two-thirds,  actually agreed with that  statement, either strongly or  somewhat strongly. 

 So, although there was a lot of  hope in the early days, the  younger people, they would  reject the communist views.  They would reject the Soviet  experience.  They would want to embrace  market economy.  They would want to embrace  democracy and liberal ideas.  They would want Russia to become  part of Europe.  Questions like this suggest that  there's still a big gap, that  even among the young generation,  many of whom didn't really  experience the Soviet period  directly, but still have a  strong nostalgia for the Soviet  ways, which is connected and  linked up with these debates  over history.  Another example.  So, I put up a picture of  Stalin.  We have a bunch of questions  about Stalin.  How do young people view Stalin  in Russia today?  Well, I mean, I think if you  were to ask young people in  Germany today how they view  Hitler, you would see the vast,  vast majority view Hitler with  nothing but appropriate  criticism, and see him as a  cruel, evil tyrant. 

 And that's probably a good  thing.  It's probably a good thing for  German society that they do  reject, overwhelmingly, a figure  such as Hitler.  Well, I don't want to get into a  debate today over whether Stalin  and Hitler were truly  equivalent, but clearly, in many  respects, Stalin's level of  cruelty and depravity, and the  number of deaths that he caused  are at least on a similar scale  to those of Hitler.  What do the young Russians think  about Stalin?  Well, over 50%, those blue bars,  tell you how much agree with  these statements.  So over 50% agree that Stalin  was a wise leader.  Surveys in both 2005 and 2007.  Most of them disagree.  So, Stalin is given credit for  winning the second World War on  behalf of Russia, or the Soviet  Union.  But many historians would argue  that Stalin actually made a  tremendous number of mistakes.  He was badly prepared for the  war. 

 He entered into secret  agreements with Hitler.  He executed thousands of  Generals on the eve of the end  of the war for purely political  reasons.  And he killed in the war in a  very brutal manner, which caused  unnecessary deaths.  But the young Russians today  reject that.  They think he does deserve  credit for the war.  There are, fewer than half would  even agree that he was a cruel  tyrant.  This is, I think, the single  most telling indicator.  Over half say, he may have made  some mistakes, but he did more  good than bad.  And nonetheless, they will allow  that he was responsible for the  imprisonment, torture and  execution of millions.  So, they think, they're split on  whether people exaggerate his  role in Russia. 

 So, the punch line is that  there's still a lot of support  today for Stalin.  And I think that translates into  a whole set of ideas, part of  which is the perception that  Russia is surrounded by enemies.  So here's a question that's  related to this.  What is the relationship of each  of these countries to Russia?  Would you describe this country  as an enemy, a rival, a neutral  country, a partner, an ally?  And the US comes out as Russia's  enemy number one, here.  So if you add together those who  characterize the US as an enemy  or a rival, 64% view the US in  that manner.  And look who's number two.  Georgia.  This is before that war was  fought.  This was in 2007, but it was at  the end of a long period of  anti-Georgian propaganda on the  part of the Russian government.  You know, Georgia is a tiny  little country that Russia could  just flick off the face of the  earth if it wanted to. 

 So the fact that so many people  perceive Georgia as an enemy  testifies to the power of  official rhetoric in demonizing  foreign countries.  Well, what about Iran?  What about China?  They're countries which arguably  do pose more of a threat to  Russia.  You can see that fewer young  people in Russia can see those  countries as a threat.  All right, so that's the second  major problem of the history  debate, the role of continuing  issues over political ideology  and the use of official, the  power of the state to promote a  certain conception of history.  Now, finally, I'll just go  through this in five minutes.  I want to talk about the  population crisis.  Now, how do all these crises tie  together?  I talked about population.  I talked about North Caucasus.  I talked about history.  There have to be aspects that I  have studied myself more  extensively than others. 

 So we go with what we know.  There are a few major components  of Russia's population crisis.  First, it's increasing  mortality.  The life expectancy declined  quite dramatically in Russia  after the Soviet collapse.  And what's interesting is that  it stayed low and continued to  decline, even as the economy  improved.  And there's a lot of debates, a  lot of discussion over what's  behind that.  We don't really know.  We do know that the rates of bad  health and illness and  disability have also grown.  And we do know that there's been  a breakdown, really, in the  Russian healthcare system  associated with the collapse.  Perhaps more importantly, in  terms of population size, now,  demographers will tell you that  mortality gets a lot of  attention. 

 And that when people start  dying, obviously, it's not good.  But in the long run, what's more  important for population size is  the rate of fertility, the rate  at which women have children.  That has also declined, starting  in the late 1980s.  The decline in fertility is  connected with an associated  phenomenon, and that is  marriage.  And marriage rates have also  declined.  So with all these declines,  Russia's population has actually  begun shrinking quite  dramatically.  It's had a negative natural  increase, that is, that more  people are dying than are being  born.  And this has been partly offset  by in-migration to Russia.  After the Soviet collapse, many  people came, moved back to  Russia from other republics.  That offset the collapse to some  extent. 

 There are some regional  variations, but this poses a lot  of problems.  Now, I don't have time to go  through too many of these  detailed slides.  Here is life expectancy at  birth, for men and women.  And the bottom is women.  You can see that after a period  in the '80s, where it was  increasing, that little hump  there in the '80s, it fell  sharply starting in the late  1980s, particularly for men.  Then in the middle of the '90s,  it sort of peaked up again.  But then, precisely when, as I  mentioned earlier, the economy  is growing, the 2000s, it  declined again.  So it's not directly linked to  economic performance, which is  kind of an interesting surprise.  You know, just to give you some  examples of some of the health  issues that Russia is facing  today, infectious diseases, such  as tuberculosis, hepatitis, even  diphtheria and cholera, which we  associate with not so much with  developed countries as with  developing countries generally.  But they have taken off again,  and they've had a resurgence in  Russia. 

 HIV/AIDS came late to Russia,  actually, but has become a  growing problem of major  concern.  And then, problems such as  diabetes, accidents, suicide,  homicide, drug addiction, these  have all gone through the roof  in recent years.  The healthcare system is  breaking down for a number of  reasons.  But I won't go into that.  All right, finally, I'll just  say a little bit about  fertility.  Then I'll probably have to wrap  it up.  So, Russian women began having  fewer children in the late  1980s.  This followed a period of  relative growth in fertility.  And although again the economy  has improved, fertility rates  have not gone back to their  pre-transition levels.  So, this is a total fertility  rate, which is a measure  demographers use to see, you  know, what is the level of  fertility in a particular year. 

 It adjusts for population size.  You can see that fertility  really peaked right about 1987.  Since then, it's gone down.  And again, despite the fact that  the economy has recovered,  fertility has remained at the  lower levels.  All right, there's a lot of  discussion of what's behind  this.  So, marriage decline plays a big  role.  Demographers argue about whether  it's driven by economics, or by  a longer cultural change, other  explanations.  I won't go into those right now.  Here is the impact on  population growth.  So, this give the change in  population from one year to the  next, in terms of millions of  people. 

 So, Russia's population was  growing quite robustly in the  '60s and '70s.  The growth started to slow down,  but it was still growing.  The growth really started to  slow down in the '90s.  And starting after 1992,  Russia's population annually has  been shrinking in terms of its  natural increase.  And it's got to the point where  it didn't ever quite reach  shrinking by a million people,  but it came awfully close in the  early 2000s.  And it is picking up a little  bit now, at least it's shrinking  at a less rapid rate, because  there has been a little uptick  in fertility, but not enough to  offset the continuing high  mortality.  So, it's still shrinking quite  dramatically every year.  One of the implications,  long-term implications for  Russia and Putin, is it  characterized population crisis  as Russia's most acute problem  in 2006.  And the Russian government has  implemented various measures.  There are clear economic  concerns with the population  structure, with long periods of  low fertility, the workforce  will not be replenished, so in  not too long a time, you're  going to have a very imbalanced  population, where there are many  elderly retirees who are  dependent on ever smaller  cohorts of workers to actually  generate surplus for them to  receive their pensions. 

 There will be labor shortages.  There are security concerns,  Russia won't be able to staff  its army.  It has military aspirations  still today.  And with fewer and fewer young  men being available to be  drafted, they're going to have  issues there.  They're worried about the  Chinese, which has the opposite  population problem, there are  too many people.  And so, if you just use basic  logic, their neighbor to the  south has more and more people,  and many of them are moving to  Russia.  So there's a fear the Chinese  will take over.  And it raises issues about  nationalism, and again,  identity.  Russians feel that they are a  dying people.  They don't really understand  what's going on, but it raises  concerns about the future of the  Russian ethnicity, whatever that  is. 

 The government has adopted some  policies.  Some of them have actually  gotten some press.  So the government is giving  people days off to go home and  have babies, kind of thing.  Procreation day.  They hold summer camps for their  official youth organizations,  where they put them into coed  dorms, and they ban  contraception.  They do all kinds of things to  kind of encourage fertility.  It sounds like a dream for  college students, perhaps.  Maybe not the no contraception  part.  And they've increased the  benefits that women are to  receive after giving birth to  children.  These policies actually, you  know, the consensus is that  these policies really are not  very effective. 

 Various governments have tried  many ways to increase fertility.  But it's very hard to actually  do that, particularly when  changing norms and changing  culture, changing understanding  of marriage and family issues  are what's going on.  And there are long standing  traditions like binge drinking  which contribute to the health  crisis.  And it's hard to reverse those  just through education.  There needs to be more  education, more investment in  preventative care, and more  programs to make children  affordable, to help women  combine work and family, and  most of all, I think there needs  to be programs to get Russian  men to take more responsibility.  Another problem is the rise of  single parenthood, and men who  abandon their children, abandon  their families.  That also is an issue.  All right.  Where we stand, and this is my  last slide.  We can talk about this. 

 I'll just put it up, because I  do want to leave some time for  you to ask questions.  So where does this leave the US  and Russia and the reset button?  Well, there are continuing  dilemmas for the US.  I think the Obama administration  faces an issue of to what extent  do they want to just be purely  pragmatic, and try to cooperate  with Russia, and ignore some of  the philosophical issues that  divide the two countries.  There's the issue of Eastern  Europe, to the extent that there  has been a rapprochement  between the US and Russia.  And the Eastern Europeans have  gotten very concerned, saying,  hey, don't forget about us, you  know, we've been on the team all  along.  We supported you in Iraq.  You have troops in Afghanistan.  We're your allies.  We voted with you.  We supported you. 

 And now, you know, just because  Russia has all this oil, you  can't abandon us in the name of  real politique.  And the US really has limited  leverage to influence Russia.  So, one way to think about this,  I think, is the US strategy, and  this is an expression actually  coined by my colleague, who I  mentioned before.  Her name is Sarah Mendelson.  She's at the Center for  Strategic and International  Studies in Washington.  She said that policy should  involve a shift from one of  assistance, where the US just  gives money to Russia, to trying  to help Russia's economy, trying  to do charitable work, trying to  build democracy, to one of  engagement, where US civil  society organizations and  organizations such as  universities, and youth groups,  and environmental groups, and  media groups, work together with  their counterparts in Russia to  try to forge a better  understanding and a series of  partnerships at the society  level, to sort of bypass the  political tensions and the  political structures, and the  top-down types of approaches,  and instead have the Russian  people work directly with the  American people on issues of  joint concern and joint  interests.  And as a first step in this  direction, Sarah and some of her  colleagues at the EurAsian  Foundation and a Russian  organization organized what they  called a Civil Society Summit,  which took place concurrently  with the Summit in Russia in  July, and brought together  representatives of Civil Society  groups from the two countries to  meet in Moscow.  And at the end of the Civil  Society Summit, the two  presidents were supposed to come  and hear the recommendations of  the participants, as to how the  two countries could work better  together at the level of social  organizations.  Now, in the end the president of  Russia declined to come.  But President Obama did actually  show up and listened to the  joint recommendations of the  Russian and American working  groups. 

 And I know he showed up, because  I was actually there.  I was a participant in this  summit.  It was a great honor and a very  exciting moment to see the  president of our country, in  Moscow of all places, not in the  United States.  But I think there's going to be  a follow-up to this initiative  some place in the United States.  Who knows, it may even take  place at the University of  Wisconsin, with any luck.  But we'll see.  Don't quote me on that, please.  But it's something that my  colleague, Mark Johnson, who's  in the School of Ed here, a  great new hire by our fine  university, another Russia  specialist, is working on, and  we're supporting him on this  endeavor.  So, who knows.  That's all I have to say. 

 I'm sorry I've only left ten  minutes for questions.  But I'd be happy to address any  questions or comments.