Croft Visiting Speaker: Putin's Health Programs in Historical Perspective

Dr. Tricia Starks, Associate Professor of History, University of Arkansas

Tuesday, April 10 - 7 p.m. - Joseph C. Bancroft Conference Room (Croft 107)

On March 1, 2018, President Vladimir Putin of Russia shook the world with a thundering announcement of new, aggressive nuclear capabilities and visuals highlighting intended targets in the United States. Overshadowed in this show of chest-beating bravado was an extended discussion in his speech of the status of health and welfare in the country. Noting that in 2000 the average life expectancy for all had been just 65 and for men it had fallen below 60, Putin highlighted that in the last several years it had been pushed up to 73 years and he expected that by the end of the decade it would rise to over 80. Achievements came through aggressive programs in recent years to reduce the two main killers of Russian males in the prime of life — alcohol and tobacco. 

These concerns over premature deaths, their origins, and programs to address them did not emerge just with Putin. This talk will investigate the history of Russian demographic problems but also the course of political, social, and cultural interaction with concerns over increasingly poor health outcomes to show the long-history of anxiety over Russian male health. Beginning with demographic concerns outlined in the 1960s, this talk traces the roots of Russian anxiety over male health and the implications of this for society, politics, and diplomacy in the coming years.

Tricia Starks is associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas and author of The Body Soviet: Propaganda, Hygiene, and the Revolutionary State and the forthcoming Smoking under the Stars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia. She has coedited, with Matthew P. Romaniello two volumes — one on tobacco history and the other on sensory studies — and is currently completing a history of tobacco and public health in the Soviet Union.