Masha Gessen’s article The Dying Russians seeks to answer a lofty question of why the mortality rate of young people in Russia has been so exponentially high following the fall of the Soviet Union. Gessen attempts to use historical data of other Russian eras with high mortality rates, using them as examples to rule out their causes as the cause for this particular era. Gessen’s argument fails in that by trying to provide so many different types of analysis (cultural, historical and empirical) she loses the one shining moment of her argument that could have been fully fleshed out into a more satisfying answer than “dying of broken hearts (7).” Bringing in Michelle Parson’s book “Dying Unneeded” seems to be the shining moment of this argument, the place where she could make a somewhat valid conclusion is Gessen were to analyze and contextualize this phenomenon further. By generalizing her argument, Gessen loses this close focus on what could actually provide an answer to her question.
However, there are still noticeable flaws in Parsons’ analysis as well. As Gessen’s audience we are not given any validity of Parson’s book nor the people she interviewed, and therefore it reduces the validity of Gessen’s overall argument, if she were to make one based off Parsons, claims. Moreover as pointed out in a previous post, Parsons seems to be looking at the middle-age range of Russians where Gessen is looking at younger Russians. Overall this argument is muddled and overlapping, providing historical and cultural analysis that draw the reader away from the initial question at hand and providing a catchy yet unrealistic answer to a very real Russian problem.
I agree that incorporating the perspective of another author or study has the potential to help Gessen’s argument; however, I do not think that more of Parson’s study would have helped. In fact, I found Parsons’ findings one of the weakest points of the entire Gessen piece. Gessen cites the interviews that Parsons conducted as though anecdotal evidence is enough to form a scientific conclusion. Furthermore, Gessen even recognizes that Parsons’ study misses the mark, and does much more investigating on her own (though not necessarily better). I think that incorporating additional perspectives or studies only would have helped Gessen had she brought in empirical evidence and statistics, rather than sociological observations.