In Masha Gessen’s “The Dying Russians,” she effectively synthesizes several researchers and statisticians’ claims about the situation, however she seems far too interested in identifying one overarching truth or theory that can apply to all Russian depopulation over the course of several decades. She starts with a reasonable question of why people were dying in 1993 in Russia, but as her essay continues, she expands the scope of her theorizing to several periods of Russian depopulation, even abruptly comparing Russia to other post-Soviet states in her last paragraph.

While there may be a “truth” that lies beyond the grasp of social science, as we have learned, it is unrealistic to try and discover this truth right away. While I think we should ultimately strive to understand these truths, to even get close, it takes a lot more research than Gessen references before we can even try to make a guess at a reason behind all the deaths in Russia. While essays we have read so far—Havel, Wedeen, Crick, etc.—have built off of each other, referencing others’ work and creating a conversation through their writing, the researchers Geffen references seem to exist entirely independently of each other. Perhaps this is because this is such a recent and contemporary issue, but it does not seem that Parsons, Eberstadt, and others are building off of each other’s work. I believe social science works best and is most effective when we can examining a problem from multiple perspectives, using interviews, statistics, and whatever information we may have to look a problem, while limiting the scope of our theorizing, as suggested by Ziblatt. By doing this, we can potentially figure out why Russians are dying or have died during a certain period of time, and then try to apply our discovers to other periods of time, rather than making silly generalizations that Russia is dying of a “broken heart.”