{"id":215,"date":"2018-02-25T23:07:25","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T04:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/?p=215"},"modified":"2018-02-25T23:07:25","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T04:07:25","slug":"marsha-gressen-commentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/uncategorized\/marsha-gressen-commentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Marsha Gressen Commentary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Masha Gressen\u2019s article \u201cThe Dying Russians\u201d, the Russian-American journalist <em>hopes <\/em>to find the cause for the high mortality rate of Russians post-downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Truth be told, I am no expert on Russian history nor the the government\u2019s transition to capitalism, but even without this context, it is easy to see the pitfalls of Gressen\u2019s conclusion. Gressen begins with a prolific description of her experience in Russia in 1993 and her aghast shock over people\u2019s complacency over the growing death rates of their country. Transitioning from this narrative, she goes onto negate countless attempts by specialists like Michelle Parsons and Nicholas Eberstadt who have worked to answer the questions by looking at poverty rates, lack of health care, economic turmoil, diseases, diets, drinking and more. Half of her essay deals with discrediting empirical evidence of strife in the country, but only two paragraphs of her article is dedicated to \u201cproving\u201d her eventual, oversimplified conclusion: Russians are dying because they just lack hope! Who would have known? She doesn\u2019t give enough historical background when she focuses in on the Gorbachev period and the Khrushcev era so her arguments about how \u201cintensive housing construction\u201d correlated to people being inspired to \u201chave babies as well\u201d seemed contrived and rushed. Moreover, she concludes that this depression has become so imbedded in Russian society that there is a possibility that Russians are now intrinsically born with hopelessness. Following this she states, \u201cIs it also possible that other post-Soviet states, by breaking off from Moscow, have reclaimed some of their ability to hope, and this is why even Russia\u2019s closest cultural and geographic cousins, such as Belarus and Ukraine, aren\u2019t dying off as fast?\u201d Strategically dramatic or not, her last few sentences work more against her than for her. Ultimately, Gressen\u2019s rushed articles proves the importance of establishing a thesis that is driven by tenacious research than solely basing itself on paring down other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Masha Gressen\u2019s article \u201cThe Dying Russians\u201d, the Russian-American journalist hopes to find the cause for the high mortality rate of Russians post-downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Truth be told, I am no expert on Russian history nor &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/uncategorized\/marsha-gressen-commentary\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/18s-psci204\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}