Mironov highlights the secularization of social consciousness, which comfortably exceeds what we observe in the West: the Russian value-system became fully secular and temporal. A demographic revolution occurred that liberated women from the heavy burden of giving birth to children who were condemned to die young. The social structure acquired a modern aspect: social mobility attained high levels and social classes became open. Society as a whole became more receptive to the influence of Western values and behavioural norms. A nuclear family model emerged, with children receiving greater attention and women achieving legal equality with men and higher social status. Urbanization progressed: the country became basically urban and its inhabitants reoriented themselves to urban patterns of consumption. They automatically switched from rural-communitarian forms of social organization to different, more complex ones, including in the countryside itself.
Thus, by the end of the Soviet era modernization had progressed quite far towards Western models. A robust social welfare system had been created (pensions, health care, benefits for pregnant women, family allowances), and the list can be rounded off by noting the remarkable development of education and intellectual culture as a whole. In addition, the empire became a de jure confederation and the non-Slav nations experienced genuine development. Only in the Soviet period did a ‘disciplined’ society (Mironov uses Foucault’s term) emerge in Russia, which made it possible to avoid any revolutionary explosion during the transition to a post-Soviet regime. In broad terms, the distance between Russia and the West had thus been reduced, and the country was no longer part of the developing world. Mironov is, of course, aware of the means used at the outset to effect this modernization. But he is right to stress that the outcome was remarkable. I would add some more features: personal physical security, libraries, a broad reading public, interest in the arts in general and poetry in particular, the importance of science. For reasons unknown to me, Mironov does not register the fact that since 1991 all these developmental indicators have regressed appreciably, when such knowledge is indispensable for a better understanding of the Soviet phenomenon and its legacy.
Mironov then turns to a method borrowed from Western researchers: the use of anthropometric criteria – e.g. the height of conscripts during their compulsory military service – which, he believes, offer a good indicator of the country’s fluctuating socio-economic state. Thus, we find that the average height of men began to fall from the 1850s (on account of the Crimean War) and went on dropping after the emancipation of the serfs. The crisis lasted thirty years and its main victims were peasants, on the verge of exhaustion as they bore the brunt of warfare and taxation. In the 1880s, the biological condition of the population improved somewhat. Various data (which are not altogether reliable) suggest that nutrition worsened between 1850 and 1890, but improved thereafter up to 1910. Mortality was high and unstable between 1850 and 1890, but declined from 1890 onwards thanks to medical progress. After Alexander II’s reforms there was much talk of the degeneration of the Russian people, based precisely on the physical condition of young recruits. Such complaints continued until the end of the century, although improvements began in the 1880s. P. R. Gregory’s estimates for national income for the years 1885–1913, quoted by Mironov, indicate a growth in per capita consumption from the mid-1880s onwards.
In 1927, as we know from reliable data published subsequently, the population had recovered from the ravages of the First World War and the Civil War. In the towns, the average height of recruits was 1.676 m; in the countryside, 1.675 m. Their average weight was 61.6 and 61.9 kg, respectively. Hence the body mass index (the weight-size ratio) was 22 in the former case and 22.54 in the latter, indicating what Mironov calls a ‘good bio–status’. Thus, contrary to what might be expected, the height of the newborn continued to grow between the end of the Civil War (1920) and the late 1960s (and even between 1985 and 1991) – meaning that the 1930s and the Second World War did not have an impact in this respect. Beginning with the 1936–40 generation, the increase in average height was as rapid in towns as in the countryside. In the space of a quarter-century, it rose on average (according to different categories) between 47 and 61 mm – an unprecedented rate of growth. This means that during the Soviet era the ‘biological status’ of town dwellers, and probably that of rural inhabitants as well, went on improving.
How was this possible when we know that the state was constantly depressing living standards?, asks Mironov. His hypothesis is that in the 1930s—1950s per capita family income rose thanks to internal resources, and in part to external resources, in four ways. Birth rates decreased sharply, and with them the cost of rearing children. Medical expenses likewise declined, for the population in general and children in particular. Many women who had not previously worked were now able to do so, because they had fewer children, there was a huge demand for labour, and the state supplied crèches and kindergartens. Finally, a better distribution of wealth also conduced to this improvement in ‘biological status’. We might add that this is a fascinating but under-explored topic.
All this has to be seen in the framework of the demographic revolution that occurred in Russia between 1920 and 1961 (later than in the West, where it had already been achieved by the beginning of the century). It was marked by a sharp reduction in birth rates (in accordance with parents’ own wishes), by greater success in the fight against infectious diseases, and by a reduction in infant mortality – in sum, a more modern, rational and economic pattern of population reproduction.
Some reduction in birth rates had already been observed following the 1861 reforms. A further reduction was attributable to the ravages of two world wars and a civil war. By the mid-1920s, prewar birth rates had been restored. The second half of the 1920s exhibited a downward trend that continued into the 1930s. In 1941, the rate was 25 per cent down on the 1925 figure. The Second World War further aggravated the decline. Peace did not, however, restore prewar rates. After some increase in 1949, a sharp, irreversible reduction set in. Two figures illustrate the scope of the phenomenon: Russia went from a birth rate of 206 per thousand in the 1920s to 29 per thousand in the 1960s. The main cause was the desire of Russians to limit the number of children they had, in particular by abortion (the highest rate in the world). Some importance must also be ascribed to the tendency to postpone marriage, the divorce rate, and the increase in the number of unmarried women.
This downward trend in birth rates was counterbalanced by an extraordinary decline in general mortality (39.8 per thousand in the 1880s, 30.2 in 1900, 22.9 in the 1920s, 7.4 in the 1960s), with a corresponding increase in life expectancy (28.3 years in 1838–50, 32.34 in 1896–7, 44.35 in 1926–7, 68.59 in 1958–9) and a commensurate growth in the number of pensioners. In 1926, for every 100 able-bodied persons we find 92 not belonging to the active population (including 71 children and 16 pensioners); in 1959, the figure for the non-active population was 74 per 100 (53 children and 21 pensioners). In the years 1926–59, the average figure fell by 20 per cent per family. And since most non-able-bodied people received pensions, the family was aided correspondingly. All in all, society and families thus benefited from the decline in mortality and the increased length of working life. Mironov concludes that everyone gained from the demographic revolution, which he calls a ‘rationalization of the process of reproduction’.