A couple of posts about statistics have caught my eye recently. One set of statistics show Russia in a relatively positive light, the other in a more gloomy light.
First up, the negatives. Apparently, more journalists have been killed in Russia over the past 10 years than anywhere else in the world bar Iraq:
The Top 21 bloodiest countries over the past 10 years have been Iraq (138), Russia (88), Colombia (72), Philippines (55), Iran ** (54), India (45), Algeria (32), the former republic of Yugoslavia (32), Mexico (31), Pakistan (29), Brazil (27), USA (21), Bangladesh (19), Ukraine (17), Nigeria, Peru, Sierra Leone & Sri Lanka (16), Afghanistan, Indonesia & Thailand (13)
And now the positives. If you’re not a journalist, you’re safer in Moscow than you are in Washington DC:
Moscow’s rate of homicide is 9.13 per 100,000 inhabitants, whereas Washington D.C.’s comes in at a whopping 35.42 per 100,000 inhabitants.
I suppose I should come out with a cliche here about dammed lies, or something.
{ 5 comments }
La Russophobe 03.09.07 at 12:20 pm
ANDY:
I guess this is what you mean by implying that statistics sometimes being worse than damn lies (when, for instance, they’re in the hands of damn liars):
The source material your source links to states that Moscow had twice as many murders as New York City and five times as many as London, two cities with comparable popoulations to Moscow. Yet, your source ignores this fact. It also shows that Moscow’s murder rate increased by a shockiing 20% from the prior year. Yet, your source ignores that fact too.
Washington DC is a tiny city with a population under 600,000. It had 195 murders in 2005, but the Washington Metro area, with a population of 5 million half Moscow’s size, had a murder rate of just 8.3 per 100,000, significantly lower than Moscow’s.
In fact, Washington DC is comprable to the highest crime REGION of Moscow (just as it’s the highest crime region in DC metro area), not the whole city. The source material your source links to only gives the crime rates for the metro areas, not the regions within them. Yet, your source doesn’t make this fair comparison because it’s interested in skewing the data for a biased purpose.
For that same reason, your source doesn’t mention that Russia as a country has the #5 murder rate in the whole world, while America is #24, five times safer. Given the fact that Americans enjoy almost limitless personal freedom while Russians live in a draconian dictatorship presided over by a proud KGB spy, one might think the results would be opposite, that Russians would buy safe streets with the loss of personal freedom, but it’s not the case, clear proof of the utter failure of the Putin regime at the most basic level. At least in the Soviet dicatorship, there were safe streets.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita
Don’t you feel any obligation to make note of these discrepancies for the benefit of your readers? Is a general warning about damn lies really enough? I don’t think so. We bloggers have an obligation to do our readers’ work for them, that’s what we’re here for.
La Russophobe 03.09.07 at 4:47 pm
I thought I might cross-post a comment I’ve made on Sean’s blog, which you link to, in response to the other part of your post, about the killing of journalists in Russia. Here it is (again, these comments are direct to Sean, not Andy, but are relevant here on the important point about statistics that Andy has raised — they require careful analysis, which they clearly haven’t got in either case linked to by Andy):
I’m not sure about the purpose of your claim that “Russia is not the only country that has a deplorable record when it comes to journalists.” It seems possible you intend this observation to dillute the intensity of Russia’s blameworthiness. If so, it’s a failed effort for four reasons.
First, Russia’s numbers clearly place it in a differnt league from any other nation at peace. It has nearly 20% more killings than it’s nearest competitor.
Second, look at the company Russia is keeping. The other nations with more than 25 journalists killed in the last ten years are Iraq, Columbia, Phillippines, Iran, India, Algeria, Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Mexico and Brazil. Are these really the nations Russia sees as its peers, as opposed to France, Germany and Spain?
Third, Russia is a police state with a proud KGB spy as president. If Russians don’t get safe streets in exchange for losing all their civil liberties, then Russia is a total washout as a nation. With such freedom and availability of weapons, one would expect America to have a much higher murder rate for journalists than Russia, but it’s actually four times lower.
Finally, I thought you were a historian! What about Russia’s history? None of the other nations on the list have anything like the dark past of Gulag and mass murder that Russia has. Therefore, the return so such behavior in Russia is a matter of much greater concern. It also affects far more of the earth’s landmass and a much larger population.
Even if there were sound basis for minimizing Russia’s blame or distracting attention from it, I’m not sure I can see why that would be a good idea. If your kid is flunking history or doing drugs, do you point out to him that lots of other kids are also failing and dropping acid? Not normally. One might say that such observations help Russians to avoid recognizing their problem and reforming, and this is an area where they hardly need any help.
Maybe you’re ambitious enough to want to deal with the worldwide problem of danger to journalists. I’d suggest being more modest. After all, this is a Russia blog.
Rubashov 03.09.07 at 5:08 pm
Leaving LR’s concerns aside and taking the statistics presented at face value (not that I’m advocating that, but just for the sake of discussion) one very clear conclusion seems evident, especially in light of recent violence against other critics of the regime:
If you are a critic of the regime and have enough power (whether money, influence, readership, or information) to make the regime feel threatened, you are not safe here.
If you are a normal citizen, you are more or less safe.
Thus, it matters less that one is a critic of the regime. What really matters is whether that criticism is backed by the power to influence the political process. Any influence of the political process originating outside the Kremlin is viewed as a threat to the regime, resulting in these well-known tragic events.
This suggests to me that there are two strata of free speech in Russia. Among ordinary people, they’re free to criticize the regime as much as they like. After all, this isn’t 1930s Moscow where the only safe conversation took place under the covers in the dead of the night. True, there are limits to this, as demonstrated by the recent rally in St. Petersburg. But I would argue that such an event aggregates and multiplies the influence of individuals, creating a collective that does possess the power to make the regime feel threatened (actually threatening the regime is another matter altogether).
The upper stratum, consisting of those with money, influence, and power, has a much reduced sphere of free speech, for their actions not only make the regime feel threatened, but also have the potential to constitute a real threat to the regime.
Those familiar with Dahl’s work on polyarchic (democratic) regimes will note that this is the complete inverse of the traditional liberal democratic model as it developed in Western Europe: it was elites that were granted liberal rights while the masses only gradually were included in the liberal sphere over the course of centuries.
What exactly this means for Russia, I’m not sure. But in the very least it seems like another case of Russia being upside-down.
La Russophobe 03.10.07 at 12:04 am
RUBASHOV: That is fascinating analysis, well worthy of being a post on my blog. I’d like to invite you to expand it a bit, perhaps add some links, and email it to me, I’d be delighted to publish it prominently.
Tim Newman 03.10.07 at 1:08 am
Rubashov makes an excellent point regarding the two strata of freedom of speech in Russia.
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