The 20th Century - The Economist

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Sep 14 10:02:27 PDT 1999


Tony Evans wrote:


>Nosing around the Economist online I see their survey of the 20th
>Century includes a "league of evil" (governments). The Soviet Union
>heads the table (surprise) with 62 million civilians killed between
>1917-91. Next comes Red China with 35 millions killed.

I was just nosing around some of the social stats for Russia & its neighbors. Extrapolating from WHO estimates, Nicholas Eberstadt, writing in the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review (of all places) <http://www.policyreview.com/jun99/eberstadt.html> estimates there have been 5 million "excess deaths" - deaths that wouldn't have occurred had old demographic patterns continued to prevail - in Russia in the 1990s. The UNDP estimates that in the ten years since "transition" began, there have been almost 10 million excess deaths in the Former Soviet Union & Eastern Europe (FSU/EE in development jargon) <http://www.undp.org/rbec/pubs/hdr99/pr.htm>.

Doug



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