Posts by XQsThaiPoes

60

Alcoholism is an endemic problem throughout Russia. Perhaps nowhere is it felt as strongly as among the indigenous populations of Siberia, including the Evenk Autonomous Okrug. In the third and final part of a series on Evenkia, RFE/RL's Jolyon Naegele looks at the impact alcohol is having there at a time when the large oil company Yukos is launching a massive investment project in one of Russia's poorest and least-developed regions.

Prague, 8 February 2002 (RFE/RL) -- A shocked Moscow-based oil industry executive remarked after a recent visit to Evenkia that "even the dogs drink up there." Hard alcohol is ever present in this poverty-stricken region of taiga that stretches over an area bigger even than Ukraine but with a population smaller than tiny Liechtenstein.

Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, is currently considering a bill that seeks to limit alcohol sales to the indigenous peoples of Russia's northern regions, including the Evenks, Yakuts, Koryaks, and Nentsi. It would bar alcohol sales altogether during the hunting and fishing seasons and during reindeer calving, roundups, and migration.

Some lawmakers and newspapers allege the bill violates the clause in Russia's Constitution on the equality of all Russian citizens. The Moscow daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda" recently asked whether Siberian bars in the future will have to post signs like "Vodka only for Russians" or "No entry for Yakuts and Evenks." Some local authorities are concerned the bill could lead to a resurgence in household production of "samogon," or moonshine.

Russia's Academy of Medical Sciences has issued a study saying the death rate due to alcoholism is 16 times higher among northern indigenous peoples than the Russian average. It warned that if the current situation continues for the next 15 years, the native population will shrink by two-thirds as a result of alcohol-related deaths.

Pavlina Brzakova is a Czech anthropologist who has made seven expeditions to Evenkia over the past decade to study the region's last shamans and nomads. She also has witnessed the region's socioeconomic collapse, due in part to alcohol.

"As far as alcohol is concerned, there have been attempts [in Evenkia such as] a so-called 'dry law' according to which vodka was rationed when people returned from the hunt at the end of the hunting season or when they returned from the taiga, they were allowed to buy one bottle. Of course, that's not enough," Brzakova says. "So in every village there is a sort of middleman from whom it's possible to get not only vodka but also 95 percent alcohol, which is in the greatest demand because one can buy a small amount and dilute it with water as needed, and one's mood is quickly affected. They tend to get in the 'mood' quickly and maintain that state for several months."

As a result, Russia's second-largest oil company, Yukos, which is building a pipeline to pump oil from under the Evenk tundra, says it is bringing in workers and managers from western Russia rather than rely on the local population.

Brzakova says she believes the bill before the Federation Council would merely lead to an illicit trade in alcohol and force native peoples to resort to drinking cleaning fluids, perfume, and gasoline. She predicts that if the bill becomes law and does discriminate against native peoples, it will inevitably strengthen existing nationalist, anti-Russian feelings.

Brzakova says alcoholism in Evenkia has made her ability to work as an anthropologist difficult: "For me as an ethnographer, it's very difficult. If I want to get out to some nomads and have the luck to catch a ride on a helicopter, relatives of those out in the taiga send the best they can, since the helicopters don't fly out there all that often. So they send along some food supplies and a crate of vodka. Then for the next two weeks I have to deal with their being drunk and forgetting who I am. Then we have to get acquainted all over again."

Brzakova says a positive aspect of the economic decline that surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union is that people can't afford to drink as much as they used to.

"As the economic situation has worsened, there is less vodka to go around. So if I decline [their invitation to drink with them], they are only too happy. Back in 1991, and even in 1993, when vodka was a lot more available, I had to face perhaps worse problems than I do now," Brzakova says. "But recently, it has been difficult for me to record anything [as an anthropologist], as there are days when there is no one [who is sober] at all to speak with. I have to avoid them to keep from getting involved in bigger problems."

Brzakova says many native women and children also drink heavily. She notes that special boarding schools have been built for mentally handicapped children who are primarily the children of alcoholics. Their parents are unable to care for them.

Brzakova says drinking in Evenkia is a ritual, like almost anywhere else, but that it can often get out of hand: "They always proceed in the same way. They start to get drunk. First, it's just for fun. Then they start to attack each other -- 'You're insulting me' [or] 'You insulted my mother.' They just provoke an argument, and usually they start shooting and it ends badly. If any women are around, it is they who'll hide the guns and knives. This always repeats itself there. Murders and suicides are almost an everyday occurrence."

Sergei Kolesnikov is the founding president of the Irkutsk-based East Siberian Scientific Center of Russia's Academy of Medical Science. Kolesnikov has written that indigenous Siberian peoples have "a decreased ability to detoxify the liver, hence the quick development of alcoholism in this population."

Polina Borisenkova, a sociologist in Moscow who is part Evenk, subscribes to this view also. "This problem [of alcoholism in Evenkia] has always been known. It's simply genetic," Borisenkova says. "These people don't have the enzymes to break down alcohol. It's a fact, written in the scientific literature."

Research in the U.S and Asia has concluded that as a result of a genetic variation, nearly half of East Asians have only one liver enzyme to metabolize alcohol, rather than two enzymes as in populations in other parts of the world.

However, David Anderson, a Canadian lecturer in anthropology at Scotland's Aberdeen University and a frequent visitor to Evenkia, insists the causes of alcoholism among the Evenks are socioeconomic.

Anderson explains that, because of the shortage of alcohol, "a lot, if not the majority, of the people in the community might in fact be drinking at one time" after a shipment arrives.

"This has led to the stereotype that Evenki people drink more than Russians or that they have a genetic intolerance for alcohol. Both stereotypes are untrue. They're viciously untrue, as a matter of fact," Anderson says. "There's absolutely no evidence to support a genetic difference, let alone an ethnically distinct reaction to such dire socioeconomic consequences. And I would put to you that if Russians or Canadians or Europeans were forced to live in similar conditions, they too would be driven to drink because of the dire hopelessness of the situation."

Anderson says one aspect that is apparently unique to the Evenks is their acceptance of what he terms "Russian folk models of the reasons for alcoholism."

"Most Evenki people would judge a drinker very harshly, especially if that drinker were a woman, and would see it as a collapse of moral character in that individual, rather than a disease brought upon by a bad situation," Anderson says. "Many Evenki people will confirm that they have a genetic disability to process alcohol and a genetic weakness, which of course is unfounded and untrue. But that contributes to their feeling of powerlessness."

The Canadian anthropologist says while there is not much difference between Evenki alcoholism and alcoholism in other parts of the world, "rural indigenous people are some of the most disempowered peoples in any part of the world, whether it is Australia, Canada, or Siberia."

"[Alcoholism] really has more to do with the history of those communities and how industrial forms of structured exploitation affect these communities, removing their autonomy and ability to build lives as they want to, leaving them with a sense of hopelessness. So you get this terrible cycle where people aren't able to help themselves, and then they end up in this sort of remorseless cycle of drinking, which then leaves them less able to help themselves."

Anderson says one of the most dramatic effects of the fall of the Soviet Union was the "complete systemic collapse" of Evenkia's health system. Basic health needs were not being met in villages or even major settlements.

When people had to fly hundreds of kilometers just to visit a dentist, many simply decided to move elsewhere. During the 1990s, at least half the population of Evenkia's two biggest settlements, Tura and Vanavara, moved away for good.

Unemployment soared. Today, only two or three Evenks out of several hundred inhabitants in many rural communities are employed. Anderson and Brzakova say the rest have no incomes or even subsidies to buy what they need to feed their families -- be it bullets for hunting or fishing nets. Anderson says that, as a result, "people are left in a desperate state of psychological collapse.

The Canadian anthropologist notes that under Soviet rule, Evenkia had several highly educated doctors who were working in central hospitals and outlying regions. "Within 10 years, you saw a change in conditions from that of a modernizing industrialized country to one of the Third World. It's not even a change within a lifetime. It's a change just within a small fraction of a generation. Within a short period of time, basically from 1991, the life expectancy of an indigenous person in an Evenki rural village dropped from 50 to 42 [years]."

Anderson says the incidence of infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, which had been virtually eliminated during the Soviet period, by 1999 reached epidemic proportions, infecting between 10 and 30 percent of Evenkia's population. And the toll from alcohol abuse increased, as well: "Perhaps most tragically, the rate of violent deaths due to alcohol -- that is, violent deaths due to exposure or to violence -- was almost four times the rate of natural deaths."

Help has come from a part of the world with similar terrain and similar experiences with alcohol abuse among the indigenous population -- northern Canada.

Anderson was a project manager on a recently concluded two-year Canadian-Evenk program on rural health, sponsored by the Circumpolar Institute of the University of Alberta. He says the project found that some of the ideas that aboriginal peoples are using in Australia and Canada to cure themselves of alcoholism had never been voiced at all in Evenkia, such as the ability to use traditional religion or culture to build up a sense of self-respect, and to use people within the community to police bootlegging and other illegal sales of alcohol.

Anderson notes that when a group of Evenki health workers visited villages in the Canadian Arctic, they witnessed traditional initiatives that local people were taking to improve health and fight alcoholism in their communities. These included sweat-lodge ceremonies used to build up spiritual strength and cure alcoholism.

Anderson says this awakened memories in the minds of the visiting Evenki medical practitioners. Before they went to Canada, all of these people were "very modern, clinical types of medical workers who would dress in medical outfits and who would keep a very Western-looking nurse's office within their community."

"And when they came back, they would invite older people to come in and do certain Evenki rites such as -- Evenki people also have a spiritual smoking rite where they burn bits of wild reindeer fat over hot coals in order to feed spirits and in order to strengthen and clean the environment in which they are working," Anderson says.

	top
	homepage
	features


	Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty © 2004 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Contact us: [email protected]

108

Hey im NEW

by kozmik in

i pertain to a congregation in the orange county.

from the ages of around 5-16 i went to all the meetings etc etc.

i am currently 18 years of age, although i am not the ''ideal'' christain boy, i have strong faith in jehova.

XQsThaiPoes

Run for cover there are a lot of self proclaimed "nice" people here that don't like the Watchtower. Hey welcome, and stop sinning oh wait we can't. Somebody rigged the dice man.

60

Harmful or Dangerous?

by Sunspot in

jw
friends

in view of the recent ban in russia, and the statement that the government feels that the wts is considered harmful and dangerous, my thoughts are these;

i think that anyone or anything that purposely tampers with the very fabric of people's families, is dangerous, but that's just the way i see it.

maybe this sounds extreme, but then the watchtower society is extreme, and too, i speak from personal experience.. .

XQsThaiPoes

I think you are far off we are like the tobacco company the friends, and families of smokers are the next targets. If anything they will try to promote some type of guerilla witnessing "be nice" campaign. Play volley ball with you uncle and talk about ?Jesus?.

Remember all JWs want is immortality they don't give a crap about ?spiritual food? or ?buying out the opportune time? blah, blah, blah. In most industrialized nations most are just coasting and waiting for the GT. I don't know where exactly most exes live, but it seems like either I am too cynical, or they looked at the WTS with rose colored glasses while involved, or maybe they left in the 70's when people thought Armageddon was coming "soon". I am not saying JWs don't believe anymore, but most are going to college, getting married, knocking chicks up (hopefully in that order), living their lives, and giving a paltry 2.5 hours of sitting outside donut stands ?witnessing? to homeless guys, and pigeons.

I don't know maybe you guys used to be missionaries, pioneers, or COs. People go out every single day, and now feel used. I sorry if you do, but in most places where the numbers are decreasing like North America. It is not that intense. Heck if you have a tivo you don't even have to rush home to catch the end of your favorite shows anymore. Its not as harmful as smoking, or drinking something legal that notbody wants to ban in Moscow trust me.

21

BETHEL LABORATORIES

by badboy in

jw
friends

.

i understand that wt had laboratories that did some animal experments.. what went on there?

XQsThaiPoes

The Watchtower is the closest thing to the Illuminati the real world has ever seen.

61

If The Watchtower Allowed You To Ask A Question From Readers......

by minimus in

jw
friends

what would your question be?

XQsThaiPoes

If you don't believe in anything anyone says (including Jehovah) can you still be a Jehovah's Witness?

39

WT illegal doctrine

by itsallgoodnow in

after reading the nov 1 1999 questions from readers about voting... http://www.jwfiles.com/vote.htm.

i'm wondering if they felt they needed to change their teachings on this because they feared legal action against them for disenfranchising their people.

am i on the right track with this?

XQsThaiPoes

What if you were repentant?

Actually anyone one wana tell me how they vote in kingdom halls to amend the articles of corporation or how the GB or Elders decide anything. I think many JWs don't realize they vote for leaders all the time. BTW you can vote anyway if they find out whom you voted for just sue you'll get a windfall.

Elders force child to marry.

by XQsThaiPoes in

categories tv radio communicate where i live index search .

low graphics version | change edition

XQsThaiPoes

A slave is obedient even to a cruel master?...

by cyber-sista in

just recently sister x from the kh where i recently attended had another meeting with the elders there to try and help she and brother x with their abusive marital relationship.

they are constantly meeting with the elders and have done so for many years over this and everything other decision they need to make in their lives.

they are very "elder dependent" but their lives never seem to improve and in fact it just seems to go from bad to worse.

XQsThaiPoes

You are slightly off. If he were "worldly" they would ignore the abuse, too and be more adamant that she stand her ground to make a good example to try to win him over. It is the mind set that bad things only happen to bad people. If you are good then Jehovah will rescue you eventually. They apply this to every thing. It is not a big cover up just faulty logic.

39

WT illegal doctrine

by itsallgoodnow in

after reading the nov 1 1999 questions from readers about voting... http://www.jwfiles.com/vote.htm.

i'm wondering if they felt they needed to change their teachings on this because they feared legal action against them for disenfranchising their people.

am i on the right track with this?

XQsThaiPoes

add that the generals and colonels and sargeants

I can't for legal reasons there is no chain of command that?s why things are like they are. The Watchtower knows if it had a chain of command they could be sued when elders act up. So anything resembling one they dismantled. Every thing is passed by word of mouth mostly. THose that ask for things in writing are considered pest.

After all, it's the elders, etc. who enforce Watchtower doctrine on the R&F. So, why aren't they being held accountable wrongfully disfellowship?

I have no Idea, but it probably has to do with inertia. There is little quality control for the elder body. If an elder reads at a 3rd grade level nobody is going to tell him to step down because he may not be sharp enough to competently take care of the congregation. In a lot of halls that is the case. Many elders barely understand what they are reading, and because the watchtower style is less than straight forward calamity ensues. I was at a hall where the "smart" professional elders (all minorities) were forced to move because of too many catfights with the "good ole boys". It got to a point of publicly dissecting their families before the meetings. Stuff like "isn?t your skirt too short to be an elders wife?" or ?that sweater is a little tight don't you think?. Not in private but before the meetings. The truck drivers won out and the IQ of the hall dropped to room temperature.

I don't mind "wrongful" disfellowshiping as much as the "wrongful" reinstatement is what really bugs me. Some people are back in the thick of it almost instantly disfellowshipings become temporary vacations of hedonism, and others can't get back unless they move. I am sure you know the cases in which people "leave the truth" in reality they planed on coming back the whole time and just felt like having fun.

39

WT illegal doctrine

by itsallgoodnow in

after reading the nov 1 1999 questions from readers about voting... http://www.jwfiles.com/vote.htm.

i'm wondering if they felt they needed to change their teachings on this because they feared legal action against them for disenfranchising their people.

am i on the right track with this?

XQsThaiPoes

Fine If J.R. Brown told the elders to report child abuse when the law requires it and they didn't would you think he was in control?

Unless elders have secret decoder rings to decipher what the watchtower "really means" then I feel my analogy stands. What ever the rules of the org were when the JW was introduced to the "truth" usually sets their trajectory for the rest of their JW career. So when the WTS says about face it usually takes several years to put the breaks on the beast.

Low Graphics version \| Change edition	About BBC News \| Feedback \| Help


	E-mail services \| Desktop ticker \| Mobiles/PDAs \| Headlines for your site
	Back to top ^^

XQsThaiPoes

Posts by XQsThaiPoes

Russia: Efforts Under Way To Confront Region's Rate Of Alcoholism (Part 3)