Mid Sweden University

Aims: To examine which factors were associated with non-lethal violent victimization in Sweden in the period 2004 to 2007. Methods: Data come from the Swedish National Public Health Surveys, undertaken annually between 2004 and 2007. A total of 29,923 randomly selected respondents aged 16 to 84 from across Sweden responded to a mailed questionnaire. Logistic regression analyses were used to examine which independent variables were associated with having experienced violence in the previous 12 months. Results: Male and female respondents who were younger, single, lacking in social capital and who engaged in harmful alcohol consumption were significantly more likely to have been subject to violence. Furthermore, men who were in the lower income groups or who were Nordic, and women who were of a non-European origin, were also significantly more likely to have been victimized. Conclusions: The risk of non-lethal violent victimization is not spread equally throughout Swedish society. Specifically, those who are socially and/or economically disadvantaged are much more likely to experience violence. This highlights the importance of working to reverse the growing inequality that has occurred in Sweden in recent years that continues to be linked to the risk of being a victim of non-lethal violence.

Levels of institutional trust in Russia are amongst the lowest in the world. As yet, however, little research has focused on this phenomenon at the sub-national level. The current study examines trust in social and political institutions among citizens in Moscow in 2004. Results showed that levels of institutional trust are extremely low and that there were only three institutions (the church, president and hospitals) that were more trusted than distrusted. Moreover, although the effect of some demographic and other independent variables on trust stretched across institutions, several variables had a unique impact in terms of trust in the president.

Background: Despite a high prevalence of smoking for decades, recent research has documented an increase in the rates of both male and female smoking in post-Soviet Russia. As yet, however, little research has taken place on smoking at the subnational level. The current study addresses this deficit by examining smoking in Moscow — the city that has been at the forefront of the entry into the Russian market of transnational tobacco corporations (TTCs) in the transition period. Methods: Data were obtained from the Moscow Health Survey 2004 — a stratified random sample of 1190 people representative of Moscow’s larger population. Information was obtained about subjects’ smoking habits and age of smoking initiation. Results: The prevalence of smoking was high among both men (55.5%) and women (26.9%), with significantly higher rates in the younger age groups. There was also a high prevalence of smoking initiation before age 15 years, especially in the youngest women (18—30 years). Logistic regression analysis showed that respondents’ age, binge drinking, locus of control and economic situation were important determinants of smoking. Conclusions: Although lifestyle factors seem to underpin the generally high levels of smoking, other things, such as its high prevalence in the younger generations and the factors associated with smoking (locus of control), nevertheless suggest that the TTCs may have played an important role in the spread of smoking in transitional Russia’s changing social environment.

Objectives:  The aim of this paper is to present the Moscow Health Survey 2004, which was designed to examine health inequalities in Moscow. In particular we want to discuss social survey problems, such as non-response, in Moscow and Russia. Methods:  Interviews, covering social and economic circumstances, health and social trust, of a stratified random sample of the greater Moscow population, aged 18+. Reasons for nonresponse were noted down with great care. Odds ratios (ORs) for self-rated health by gender and by six social dimensions were estimated separately for districts with low and high response rates. Bias due to non-response is discussed. Results and conclusions:  About one in two (53.1 %) of approached individuals could not be interviewed, resulting in 1190 completed interviews. Non-response in most Russian surveys, but perhaps particularly in Moscow, is large, partly due to fear of strangers and distrust of authorities. ORs for poor health vary significantly by gender, occupational class, education and economic hardship. We find no significant differences in these ORs when comparing districts with low and high response rates. Non-response may be a problem when estimating prevalence rates or population means, but much less so when estimating odds ratios in multivariate analyses.

Russian public health and its social determinants have been the theme of several recent studies. In one of these, Rose [(2000). How much does social capital add to individual health? A survey study of Russians. Social Science & Medicine, 51(9), 1421–1435] puts forward a composite model as a way of getting away from two traditions: one that postulates that social capital influences health independently of human capital attributes (education, social class, income, etc.) and one that postulates that human capital is the main determinant of health, while social capital is more or less irrelevant. In this study, we investigate the composite model, conceptualising social capital as a type of capital, on the basis of Bourdieu. By doing this, not only do the relations between social capital and other types of capital become relevant, but also whether the effect of social capital on health differs depending on the possession of other types of capital. We used the Taganrog survey of 1998 which used structured interviews with the family members of 1009 households and the response rate was 81%. We found that social capital is stratified by education, and also that its effect on health varies depending on the volume of educational capital possessed. It also seems to be extremely important to specify different types of social capital, in order to get a better overview of possible mechanisms by means of which different types of capital might affect health.

Description Since the publication of Leon et al.'s (1997) seminal study, alcohol has been increasingly recognized as an important factor in Russian excess mortality during the transition period (Nemtsov, 2002). Besides its more obvious contribution in the form of alcohol poisonings, liver cirrhoses, and alcoholic psychoses (Reitan, 2000), it has also been linked to cardiovascular mortality (McKee, Shkolnikov & Leon, 2001; Shkolnikov, McKee & Leon, 2001) and to deaths due to external causes (Shkolnikov & Mesle, 1996). In particular, it has been associated with homicide. In the period 1965-1984 a connection was observed between these two phenomena at the aggregate level in Russia (Nemtsov, 2001). Although this seems to have become somewhat weaker as other factors, such as the rise of a new criminal elite, have become important for homicide during the transition period (Nemtsov, 2001), alcohol nevertheless continues to play an important role in violent mortality in contemporary Russia (Pridemore, 2002a). Indeed, up to 80% of all homicide offenders may be intoxicated at the time the offense is committed (Chervyakov et al., 2002). This connection between alcohol and homicide in Russia is not new. Although during the Soviet period statistics relating to all "unacceptable" causes of death, including homicide, were withheld by the authorities (Pridemore, 2001), Soviet criminologists using smaller samples were nonetheless able to highlight the existence of this relationship while discussing the nature of homicide more generally. Research from the 1960s showed that between two-thirds and three-quarters of all intentional homicides involved alcohol (Connor, 1973; Shelley, 1987), although there were large interregional variations that may have had a "cultural" component underlying them--i.e., where alcohol consumption levels were lower among certain populations, such as the Moslem groups of the Caucasus region (Connor, 1973). For Russia this figure (74%) remained constant until the end of the Soviet period, according to court statistics (White, 1996). Despite the presence of this relationship during the second half of the 20th century, it would be premature to conclude that this was merely a Soviet phenomenon that continued into the post-communist period. The detrimental effects of alcohol on morbidity and mortality in Russia were fully understood by the first decade of the 20th century (White, 1996). During this period increased levels of drunkenness were also blamed for the rising levels of violent criminality in both the city and the countryside (Snow, 1987; Neuberger, 1993; Frank, 1999). This may explain why statistics relating to the state (sober/inebriated) in which offenders committed criminal acts were recorded by the judicial authorities from 1904 onwards. Even while arguing that the quality of these statistics was less than ideal, Tarnovskii (1908) nonetheless suggested that there was a connection between alcohol consumption and homicide. (1) Alcohol was also argued to be a factor behind the increase in certain motives underlying homicide during the early part of the 20th century (1901-1910) (Mel'nikov, 1917) which included the "revolutionary years" 1905-1907, when a large increase in the number of homicides was observed (Gernet, 1974; Ostroumov, 1980). Study aim This study aims to extend the existing research on the relationship between alcohol and homicide in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods by using vital statistics to examine this relationship statistically in the latter years of the tsarist regime, 1909-1911. This was one of the most turbulent periods in Russian history. The rapid industrial advance that began in the last decade of the 19th century (Falkus, 1972) had its corollary in increasing levels of urbanization as thousands of peasants flocked into the largest cities (Bater, 1996). The social and structural changes created by this process were being exacerbated by the dislocations still being felt from the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and the 1905 Revolution. Moreover, change was occurring not only in the cities. Prime Minister Stolypin's attempt (1906) to alter the structure of the Russian countryside by creating a class of landowning peasants was helping turn peasants against one another (Mel'nikov, 1917). In relation to this, it is important to examine whether these factors had any impact themselves on homicide rates. After consulting contemporary criminological literature (Messner & Rosenfeld, 1999; Pridemore, 2002b) and historical studies of the correlates of crime in other societies (Lodhi & Tilly, 1973; McHale & Johnson, 1976; Zehr, 1976), several structural variables were used as controls and were adjusted for in the analysis of the relationship between alcohol consumption and homicide (Table 2). Most of these variables fall within what has been termed "social disorganization theory" in the criminological literature. This theory has its roots in the writings of people such as Tonnies and Durkheim, who suggested that as the processes of urbanization and modernization occurred, the bonds once holding traditional communities together were broken. Factors such as higher levels of residential mobility, greater population densities, and ethnic heterogeneity are all now argued to result in less integration and increased societal disorganization. In these conditions weakened social control allows both crime and violence to grow (Pridemore, 2002b). It should also be noted, however, that despite the abovementioned changes, at this time Russia still remained very much a rural society. If a relationship between alcohol and homicide can therefore be identified in this earlier period, when Russian society was very different from the way it is today, this would suggest that other factors, apart from, for example, the effects of large-scale urbanization and industrialization in the Soviet years, or social shock and societal disorganization in the transition period, might have been important in linking alcohol and homicide in Russia across the course of the 20th century. Data and methodology Data Homicide Unlike the earlier research conducted in tsarist Russia, which used judicial statistics, this article makes use of the vital statistics data on homicide. Data for the years 1909-1911 were drawn from the Report on the State of Public Health (Otchet o sostoyanii narodnago zdraviya), a publication issued annually by the directorate of the chief medical inspector of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Upravlenie glavnogo vrachebnago inspektora M. V. D.). It contained information about the total number of homicides (i.e., corpses where a forensic-medical examination had determined homicide as the cause of death) in the provinces of the Russian Empire. It also contained regional population data that allowed crude homicide rates to be calculated for each region. Although the quality of medical data from this period has been criticized as being somewhat rudimentary (Novosel'skii, 1916), we have no evidence that it was either deliberately or systematically distorted. A homicide rate for each study region was created from these data by dividing the...