Darby Dixon, at Thumb Drives and Oven Clocks, posted a link to an article in the Sunday Herald about falling reading rates in Russia. Seems that when reading was a political act, or when your only alternative was Soviet TV and radio, lots and lots of red people read.

In 1991, the year the Soviet Union imploded, 48% of young Russians systematically consumed literature. By 2005 that figure had shrunk to just 28%.

And for the next generation, things can only get worse.

What is being called a systematic crisis even extends to the traditional bedtime story for children. In the 1970s, 80% of parents read aloud to their children. Today the figure is just 7%

Probably because it is easier to sit a kid in front of a TV than read to them. And while we all complain about kids spending too much time in front of the TV — they do! they do! — as a parent I can remember times when I wished my kid would spend more time in front of the TV. Darby’s post is called “Congratulations America! You’ve Won the Cold War.” It does seem to me to say something about reading, consumerism, and entertainment. But what it says is not entirely clear. In the 1800’s, people bemoaned the rise of novels and predicted that reading them corrupted youth, particularly young women. Now we say that about video games, particularly with regards to young men. A weird kind of progress there. Is it bad that Russians have something better to do than read? Only if you believe that there is almost nothing better to do than read.