Why Russia Doesn't Want to Liberalize

The ending of this piece disappointed me. Context and national-narratives are important, but near the end there were a lot of unsupported jumps. In particular, the narrative of geopolitical "humiliation" and "despair" suddenly get assumed to be real and proven, and then other questionable stats are brought to claim that the never-well-defined problem is going away.

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> the Russian homicide rate—an excellent measure of demoralization, disorder, and lack of economic opportunity—has plunged 75% nationwide.

Probably not in truth, since there's a weird pattern where reduced "homicides" correspond with an increase in dead bodies that are instead written-off as unidentifiable bodies with no cause of death. [0]

I highly doubt that marauding bears are savagely mutilating Russian citizens out out of a sense of civic duty to keep the missing-persons rate at at a constant level.

> There has also been an increase in the fertility rate—another important indicator of the will to live.

What the heck does that claim even mean? Is it some kind of weird "always be pregnant" religious thing? Surely childless couples aren't just suicidal.

> Arguably the important metric is, of course, the increase in life expectancy over the course of Putin’s career as head of state, which increased from roughly 65 to 73 by 2019

How can anyone write this without comparing it to other countries? FFS, why should we believe a Russian "I am humiliated by losing my empire" narrative be driving life-expectancy changes across the border in independent Ukraine? [1] (Well, barring the whole "Russian sneak attack and murder civilians" stuff.)

> Empirically, the individual sense of humiliation has ended for modern Russians.

No, it doesn't! Where's the groundwork of "empirically" establishing a measure for this word "humiliation" in the first place? Where are the polls? Why is there any reason to believe that individuals living further into old-age is/isn't the same as geopolitically "humiliated"?

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[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276963892_What_is_R...

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...