We examine the influence of harmful alcohol use on mental health using a flexible two-step instrumental variables approach and household survey data from nine countries of the former Soviet Union. Using alcohol advertisements to instrument for alcohol, we show that problem drinking has a large detrimental effect on psychological distress, with problem drinkers exhibiting a 42% increase in the n...

Failure to achieve high levels of immunity among children contributed to the epidemic of diphtheria that occurred in the Russian Federation during the 1990s. A major factor in this failure was the extensive list of contraindications to vaccination that was in use throughout the countries of the former Soviet Union. In 1980, the Ministry of Health (MOH) of the Soviet Union adopted an extensive l...

This article examines what has changed in Russian law since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Among the accomplishments are the emergence of constitutional jurisprudence, the development of commercial law, and an increase in the basic transparency of the law. However, Russia is still not a rule-of-law country because the state is not subordinated to its own laws. T distinct stages of legal refo...

Background: The Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union (fSU) Russia, Belarus and Ukraine retain one of the highest ischemic heart disease (IHD) mortality rates in the world, despite a gradual decline over the past decade Aims: The present study aims to analyze whether population drinking is able to explain the dramatic fluctuations in IHD mortality rates in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine from...

This past September, a series of preliminary geophysical experiments took place near Los Angeles, California using a portable MHD (magnetohydrodynarnic) generator. This sys­ tem delivers a short pulse of electromagnetic energy which can potentially be used to map the geological structures of the Earth, find bodies of ore, and help in predicting earth­ quakes. MHD technology applied to electroma...

Background: The Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union (fSU) Russia, Belarus and Ukraine retain one of the highest suicide rates in the world, despite a gradual decline over the past decade. Aims: The present study aims to analyze whether population drinking is able to explain the dramatic fluctuations in suicide mortality in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine from the late Soviet to post-Soviet ...

BACKGROUND Research suggests that since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a sharp growth in the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in some former Soviet countries. However, as yet, comparatively little is known about the use of CAM in the countries throughout this region. Against this background, the aim of the current study was to determine the prevalence of usin...

INTRODUCTION The Russian Revolution of October 1917 resulted in a transfer of power from the autocratic Tsar Nicholas II to the Bolshevik Party and the subsequent establishment of the world's first socialist state. The victorious revolutionaries inherited from the Tsarist regime a politically, culturally, and linguistically complex situation, with over 100 million citizens speaking no less than...

Lysenkoism gained favour in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, replacing mendelian genetics. Opponents of Lysenko were dismissed from their jobs, imprisoned and, not infrequently, died. After World War II in some of the East European Soviet satellite states, Lysenkoism became the official genetics supported by the communist authorities, and thus, genetics and biology were set back man...