It’s easy to spot those who have won and those who have lost since the USSR fell apart. Most of the winners are in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Oases of affluence these, home to the wheelers and dealers, the entrepreneurs driving the economy into the fast l

The players in this tragic tale, ageing and other not-so aged women left alone physically by bereavement, or deserted emotionally by menfolk without jobs, without direction – menfolk who fled the fold, often for the bottle. Life’s losers all these, whose support system – the safety and security of cradle to grave social support in Soviet times – is but a memory now.

But you’ll find lost generations across this vast landscape as Russia endures a values crisis marking a people’s struggle for survival in new, uncharted and disturbing times.  Towns and villages through 11 time zones where relics of Soviet-era industrial dinosaurs crumble into decay. Plants and factories collapsing about the communities, for whom the now obsolete giants once were succor, once were food and drink.

Social problems endured by sections of Russian society confront a government bound by a duty to sustain its people as it takes them into the emerging new Russia. Social scientists have been probing how folk here have gone about tackling change. Research has peeled back a graphic gauging the pain and gain of a society enduring 13 years of turmoil.

The experts charted change seen through the eyes and common experiences of three generations, all living in times of profound upheaval, all telling their own stories about how they've tackled the challenge.  Their tales were woven into a report on “human development” as assessed by experts from the United Nations Development Programme agency in Moscow. Their findings were and unveiled to professionals analysing demographic change, an issue ringing alarm bells in the corridors of power.

The 120-page study looks at attitudes to life among three age groups, “soviets, parents, and children.”  Heavy research text reflects the scientific basis of the profiling. But it reveals, too, some intensely intimate assessments of what Russia's transformation has meant to citizens seeing their life courses change direction. And what this has meant to their own perceptions of “self worth” and personal esteem.

People themselves and their development should be central to social and economic progress, said Russian Federation Council chairman Sergei Mironov applauding what he called a thought-provoking report.  The generation issue had always a sensitive one, he said – an issue particularly pressing now that major changes were influencing Russia’s social and economic life, new priorities shaping up.