I found Gessen’s article extremely compelling, and I think it teaches us that the sciences cannot tell us the entire story. Statistics and data can state that there is a mortality problem in Russia and that people are dying sooner than in similar post-Communist countries (e.g. Hungary, Ukraine, and Czech Republic). But it is much more difficult to explain why this is happening. Gessen proves this point, explaining that the usual suspects of smoking, alcoholism, and health care are bigger problems in countries with higher life expectancies. Instead we have to look at the cultural and historical factors that contributed to the fluctuation of birth and death rates. And I think Gessen explores these potential problems effectively.

In many ways, Russia’s history is perfect for exploring this type of problem. Its political history is rich with change and turmoil, leading to a multitude of factors that could cause a low birth and high death rate. These historical changes are all explained well, and the cultural repercussions seem especially convincing. But I think Gessen missed a key potential problem in her work. Is it not possible that the combination of all the factors she listed led and currently leads to the “Russian mortality crisis?” Perhaps substance abuse, a volatile political climate, and a sharp economic divide all contribute equally to the problem. Similar post-Soviet countries may not have this same cornucopia of issues, dodging them of a “mortality crisis.” This would explain why Russia is such an exception. Ultimately, I think that the conclusion that Russians are dying of a “broken heart” is merely a blanket term for the many issues that plague the country.

Masha Gessen comes to the conclusion that Russians are “dying of a broken heart” only by eliminating what she sees as previously considered explanations for the high rate of premature death caused by cardiovascular disease, poisoning, and accidental injury. She first explains the shortcomings of Parsons’ and Eberstadt’s conclusions then moves on to comparing Russians’ activities and historical experiences to other regions. One by one she rules out infectious disease, caloric and alcoholic intake, mental illness, low birth rate, and poverty as the causes of cardiovascular disease and poisoning, primarily using Western Europe as the control.  She finds that none of these factors can explain the massive discrepancy in rates of cardiovascular disease and thus she concludes the rapidly decreasing life expectancy in Russia is due to hopelessness.

I am not convinced by this argument.  If Gessen wanted to come to a conclusion by eliminating all possible, obvious explanations, she should have considered multiple other factors. She does not, for example, consider lack of or incorrect education that might endanger young adults when it comes to accidental injury treatment or poisonous substance ingestion. She also does not consider genetic abnormalities that might be plaguing the relatively homogenous Russian population. She does not consider the quality of Russians’ diets, only the caloric and fat value.  Most surprisingly to me, she does not address the possibility of politically-motivated killings.  If there is no obvious biological reason that so many should be dying of cardiovascular disease, poisoning, or injury, perhaps it is the death certificates that are falsified.

I would argue that if one is attempting to do science by elimination, it would be nearly impossible to be sure that one has considered and discarded all potential explanations. I believe that Gessen’s methodology is seriously flawed and that without actual evidence to support the idea that hopelessness is killing Russians her argument fails.

The claim that a group of people are “dying of broken hearts” is a challenge to fathom, let alone empirically prove. However, Masha Gessen tries to do so for the reader by using the language of scientific and cultural reasoning, though her conclusion becomes more like sensationalist journalism. She begins her piece on what appears to be a strong, ethnographic footing as she briefly describes her research, presents anecdotal evidence, and goes on to cite Michelle Parson’s anthropological work Dying Unneeded to discuss the merits and the limitations of it. These are two promising steps in her search for the “answer” to her opening quandary about high Russian mortality rates, since both focus on a kind of thick description, and particularly in the case of Parson’s work, a Geertzian method of deeply embedding oneself in the culture in question.

In my opinion, Gessen starts to stray when she switches to a strong reliance on statistical evidence which she uses to rule out causes like drinking, smoking, environmental issues, and economic upheavals as the cause of death. However, she lacks any empirical data supporting her “broken heart” theory. She concludes her piece by abandon the cultural and rational methods of study she attempted to employ earlier and delves head first into sensationalist journalism when she presents this unsubstantiated, broad-base claim that the reason that all Russians are dying so young and so frequently is attributable solely to “broken hearts.”

This piece lacks the plethora of evidence needed to convince any reader that the root cause is broken hearts. For a claim such as this, a cultural approach with support from rational-choice methodology, as Gessen started to present, seems best to study the problem at hand. However, unlike Gessen’s, the work should richer, more nuanced, and focus in on the people, similar to how Gressen describes Parson’s work.

This is the second time I’ve read “The Dying Russians” for a class at Williams. The first time was last semester in a course on Russian politics. While I didn’t think it was perfect, I was overall convinced by her argument. However, on this reading, I cannot say the same. When examining her methodology, it becomes difficult to defend any of her conclusions. She attempts to use a historical approach to strengthen her cultural explanation for the crisis. While this would normally be a sound strategy, she takes a lot of liberalities in her analysis of the historical evidence. For example, she writes, “Yes, Russians have lived through severe economic upheaval, but there are is no indication that economic shock in a modern society leads quickly, or at all, to increased mortality – the Great Depression, for example, did not.” This quote seems to completely discount the utter chaos Russia underwent after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Earlier in the article, she does mention the horrors of shock therapy. However, she downplays the fact that many Russians completely lost their health care benefits as their country transitioned from communism to capitalism. In addition, the Russian state suffered a complete breakdown as citizens were forced to rely on organized crime syndicates for protection, rather than the police. This led to a massive increase in the murder rate. I think Gessen is onto something with her cultural explanation for Russian birthrates but her article is weakened by her selective reading of Russian history. Scientific studies must present all evidence.

In “The Dying Russians” Masha Gessen takes into consideration a puzzle that started out as an obvious source of confusion for her. She explains her personal relationships to those who died somewhat under the radar (of her knowledge): “her friend,” a “newspaper reporter [she’d] seen a week earlier,” (2). She goes on to revealing how she “cried on a friend’s shoulder” (3), and the difficulty of processing these deaths. While this emotionality doesn’t necessarily have to affect her research, it may well have lead her to remain so wedded to the question of deaths over the course of her study. What her question (why Russians are dying in numbers) becomes, however, is beyond any scope of a successful research endeavor. From the post-war period to present day, Gessen’s time frame yields only in size to the vastness of her country in study. Perhaps in an attempt to do justice to this broad scope, Gessen endeavors to analyze an extensive data set, from Parsons’s more anthropological approach with her “months-long conversation” (2), to Eberstadt’s historical-trend based research. Between these two examinations, contradictory conclusions arise, like whether a younger or more middle-aged population represents the dying population. While I do respect and appreciate her comprehensive collection of evidence, I simply find it as a result of her inability to narrow down the scope of her research question. Indeed, such a broad question certainly can lead an investigator down several avenues of more specific research, and she might have been better off following one rather than sticking to her more general puzzle, for which she demonstrates a difficulty to explain with specific answers, as one would expect.

Masha Gessen’s “The Dying Russians” is an example of the potential for truth and explanation that inheres in the encounter between “good journalism” and social science. It is also an fine illustration of how the pursuit of a puzzle—in this case “Why are Russians dying at such high rates, and so young, since 1991?”—can give way to a new and unexpected (if not more harrowing) question, “Why have Russians been dying at such high rates for decades?” The conclusion that the piece reaches is almost lyrical, and possibly not even science. Russians are, it would seem, dying of broken hearts.

Assess the piece from the perspective of this week’s discussion of the nature of science and methodology. How are cultural, institutional, or historical instruments of explanation brought to bear on the analysis, and are they effectively used? Is there a “truth” that lies beyond the grasp of social science, or even medical science. If so should we stop striving for the unreachable? You might want to keep in the back of your mind Ian Shapiro’s entreaty that we adhere to “problem-oriented research” rather than “method-driven” political science. (“…if one’s only tool is a hammer, everything in sight starts to look like a nail.”

Photo:  “Dynamo” factory workers listening about the death of Joseph Stalin, 1953 by Dmitry Baltermants