As any scientist will tell you, even the most widely accepted theories and laws are still subject to some level of doubt and cynicism. However, that does not mean that we should not act on those theories and laws as if they were true – because chances are, they are true. The study discussed in “The Dying Russians” is interesting because it proposes an explanation for a phenomenon that while plausible, can not possibly be proven. Eberstadt draws his conclusions based on the evidence made available to him, and in some ways it is deductive. For example, his first hypothesis was that “Russians are dying due to infectious diseases.” He then refuted this hypothesis upon looking at the statistics and finding that the death rate due to infectious diseases is relatively as would be expected. He then proceeded to the next possible explanation, and searched for evidence that either refuted or supported the next hypothesis. The problem with this method is that once you have found a hypothesis that you like, it is easy to pick and choose evidence that supports your hypothesis while underplaying or ignoring the evidence that does not. The conclusion that Russians are dying of a “broken heart” is supported by evidence, but Eberstadt was actively looking for that evidence, and might not have been looking quite as hard for evidence that countered his theory.

However, there is something that feels right about this conclusion. It just makes sense. And I think that at a certain point you have to put trust in the academic integrity of political scientists in order to glean any value from their work. No conclusion will ever be completely bulletproof, but if something is most likely true, I think that it is okay to act on that belief as if it were true. This is the only way to learn and build on previous knowledge and experiences.

Masha Gessen’s essay “The Dying Foxes” is a textbook example of two varying theories and methods of social science both attempting to solve the same solve the same problem; in this case the trying to identify a cause for the alarmingly high death rates and low life expectancies in Russia, as well as the unusually low birth rate in the country. Gessen summarizes the work and theories of Michelle Parsons and Nicholas Eberstadt as they navigate this conundrum. The methods used by Parsons and Eberstadt perfectly align with the two categories of writers outlined in Isaiah Berlin’s essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” Parsons, an anthropologist who lived in Russia during the height of the population decline, is a quintessential hedgehog. Parsons focuses solely on “what she calls ‘the cultural context of the Russian mortality crisis.'” She interviews survivors of the crisis in an attempt to get inside the mind of a Russian citizen at the time. She also examines the upbringings of her subjects, as well as economic shifts in the country brought on by the rise and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union. However, while Parsons examines many different aspects of the lives of Russians during the time of the crisis, her research focuses solely on the psychological condition of those Russians. She views the crisis only through that lens, and doesn’t necessarily entertain the notion that there could be other factors involved in the crisis. Eberstadt and his methods, on the other hand, align perfectly with Berlin’s definition of a fox. As Gessen notes, “Eberstadt is interested in the larger phenomenon of depopulation, including falling birth rates as well as rising death rates.” Also, Eberstadt focuses on “Russia’s half-century-long period of demographic regress rather than simply the mortality crisis of the 1990s,” as Parsons does. Another difference between the two is that Eberstadt is not necessarily theorizing on potential reasons, as Parsons does at times. Rather, he takes somewhat more of a scientific approach, in that he tries to find “hard data” that clearly identifies a specific reason or reasons as to the cause of the mortality crisis. While Eberstadt admits that he can’t pinpoint a culprit, he examines a long list of potential cause of the demographic regression, and he “is thorough in examining each of them.” So while Eberstadt is unable to solve the problem of Russian demographic regression, his methods are much more effective and examine a much wider range of potential causes than Parsons does.

Most people are unable to fathom that as a species we are not always capable of determining the cause of a phenomenon in science; they therefore assume that every social problem has an explanation that they already understand. This form of arrogance is absurd. Humans discover more and more about how the brain affects social behavior every year, rendering any assumption that an answer must lie within our current range of knowledge ridiculous. As described in Masha Gessen’s “The Dying Russians”, Eberstadt understands that with current information it might be impossible to officially determine the cause of the high mortality rate in Russia. While Eberstadt is more interested in the general phenomenon of depopulation, he employs an extremely structured method to try and determine the cause of high mortality and “systematically goes down the list of the usual suspects” (Gressen). He does, however, conclude that he cannot offer an explanation for the deaths. Eberstadt uses historical instruments of explanation such as previous trends in Russian history (population decline in 1917-1923) to analyze the cause of high mortality in Russia.

In political science, most theories are formed based on the past. While it is significantly easier to form a correct theory with hindsight and illustrate correlation, it is extremely difficult to prove causation. Whereas Eberstadt took a historical approach of sorts, Parsons explores “the cultural context of the Russian mortality crisis”, and uses cultural instruments of explanation to attempt to understand the phenomenon”. As Gressen points out, the obvious flaw in Parsons investigation is that the interviews were carried out over a decade after the phenomenon, and were conducted with survivors. While it may be easy to determine a correlation between the sense of worthlessness that Russians feel and high mortality rates, causation is extremely difficult to prove after the fact. One could argue that the answer for the large number of deaths in Russia is a simpler form of a “truth” that lies beyond science. I consider that “truth” to simply represent the knowledge we do not yet have, and striving for the unreachable is what allows that knowledge to be acquired.

Masha Gessen’s “The Dying Russians” presents the approaches of two different people–Michelle Parsons and Nicholas Eberstadt–to the study of the Russian mortality crisis. In doing so, she shows much of the difference between Parson’s possibly hedgehog-esque approach versus Eberstadt’s seemingly more fox-like approach. Parsons analyzes the Russian mortality crisis in the 1990s through a cultural lens (which makes sense given that she is an anthropologist); it seems that she wants to delve into the idea that the diminishment of Russians’ self-worth has caused–or at least contributed to–the strikingly high mortality rate in Russia. She conducts her research through a series of “unstructured interviews with average Muscovites.” My first concern when reading this is that these interviews are described as unstructured; as someone who prefers more methodological approaches to study, the fact that her interview questions are apparently not standardized in any way seems troubling. I am also curious as to what Parsons defines as an “average Muscovite,” and I am skeptical–like Gessen–of Parson’s decision to interview “the survivors, not the victims, of the [Russian] mortality crisis.” Furthermore, to touch upon a point made in class this week, Parson’s use of interviews as her method of study is tricky/potentially problematic because we never know whether or not people are telling the whole truth.

As Gessen points out, Parson’s approach is problematic because it attempts “to identify a single turning point,” and potentially ignores other factors that contribute to Russia’s mortality crisis, factors which Eberstadt attempts to observe. I find less issue with Eberstadt’s method–and tend to identify it as more fox-like–because he approaches his study more systematically, and, at least from what Gessen writes in her article, he seems to do so without major preexisting notions/theories; he studies various “culprits”: infectious diseases, cardiovascular disease, injuries and poisonings, and when he finds that the rates at which some of these culprits kill Russians is much higher than in other countries, he “thoroughly examines” why this is the case.

The intersection of political science, history, and journalism in Masha Gessen’s study of the decades long rise in Russian mortality demonstrates how vital it is to be on the right side of the Isaiah Berlin Hedgehog/Fox paradigm. On one level, the interdisciplinary approach to the question ensures that each individual finding can be aggregated into a picture of the truth clearer than each approach would approach alone. On another, the importance of recognizing the intersections of culture, institutions, and history in affecting something as broad as mortality is that each approach can reveal ways in which the others are incomplete. The cultural malaise that can keep birth rates low and contribute to a whole host of behaviors that in themselves don’t explain historically high death rates but together fit tellingly into a larger canvas cannot be understood without understanding the Soviet and post-Soviet institutions that shape (and are shaped by) that culture, which in turn cannot be understood without knowledge of the history of the post-Stalinist USSR and the factors that contributed to its disintegration and the state formation/recalibration of the Russian Federation. Even when all of these things are put together, there is no certain answer as to why Russians keep dying younger than much of the world, but an approach that is secure in the fact that it is more important to get closer to an uncertain truth than to project confidence behind a grand theory that doesn’t correspond to reality is an approach that will produce valuable analysis.