Nothing new and does not really show how bad things are. Places like he visited are among relatively polished ones. And well, using a wood stove an not having indoor plumbing is simply the traditional way of life, most of those people are subsistence farmers and that obviously doesn't give good quality of life. Problem is that in many regions, there is nothing reasonable people could except subsistence farming + receiving relative's pensions and drinking them away, because there are no jobs and no economy per se. That in turn, happens because the regions are populated sparsely enough due to cities sucking out population, and smart and initiative people who could start a business find that they have so few customers that they are better off just getting a full time job in Moscow, so they leave. And this filtration goes on and on, and we get the population that is rotten itself.
That is a natural process, and will result in rural Russia being completely abandoned (probably with no permanent population at all) in couple generations. In the region where i am from, rural population (settelements under 100,000 population) declined by a factor of 5 in 80 years (while total population declined by just 25%). There is not much left and what's left cannot sustain itself, too few people to even maintain infrastructure, which in turn pushes remaining people out.
Soviets somewhat contained this trend with restrictions on movement (propiska), which were a gross violation of human rights and Soviet constitution itself, and these limitations were lifted immediately after Soviet Union collapse. That only accelerated in the process.
Probably in countries where there are no real reasons for people to live (except resource-rich regions), some kind of non-democratic control is needed to simply make them survive.
When leaving becomes very easy, it is true even in not-so-bad countries. Why so many people left Baltic states and they turned from most prosperous Soviet republic to the holes they are now? Answer is simple: because they CAN leave. Nobody is going to live in Vilnius if we can just catch a train, find a job and stay in Berlin with no paperwork at all. And it doesn't even require Vilnius to be very terrible. You just can't make it like Berlin, no way.
I know i will be downvoted for this, and of course i'd hate to be in the shoes of those poor chaps locked up in their countries/regions, but it's extremely sad to see places decline, depopulate, and turn into forests for no real reason at all except that the people who lived there initially did so because they've been forced to, and now they are no longer.
In 2012 Estonia's population was 1 294 236 (census), which is 5,5% smaller than in 2000, which is still smaller than before the collapse of Soviet Union.
And that number is predicted to be exaggerated because census was carried over the internet, promises of penalties for those skipping it - the real number of residents might be even smaller.
That is a natural process, and will result in rural Russia being completely abandoned (probably with no permanent population at all) in couple generations. In the region where i am from, rural population (settelements under 100,000 population) declined by a factor of 5 in 80 years (while total population declined by just 25%). There is not much left and what's left cannot sustain itself, too few people to even maintain infrastructure, which in turn pushes remaining people out.
Soviets somewhat contained this trend with restrictions on movement (propiska), which were a gross violation of human rights and Soviet constitution itself, and these limitations were lifted immediately after Soviet Union collapse. That only accelerated in the process.
Probably in countries where there are no real reasons for people to live (except resource-rich regions), some kind of non-democratic control is needed to simply make them survive.
When leaving becomes very easy, it is true even in not-so-bad countries. Why so many people left Baltic states and they turned from most prosperous Soviet republic to the holes they are now? Answer is simple: because they CAN leave. Nobody is going to live in Vilnius if we can just catch a train, find a job and stay in Berlin with no paperwork at all. And it doesn't even require Vilnius to be very terrible. You just can't make it like Berlin, no way.
I know i will be downvoted for this, and of course i'd hate to be in the shoes of those poor chaps locked up in their countries/regions, but it's extremely sad to see places decline, depopulate, and turn into forests for no real reason at all except that the people who lived there initially did so because they've been forced to, and now they are no longer.