ABSTRACT
It is widely observed that age associated transitions (linked to widowhood, worsening health, and retirement) alter the quality and quantity of social relationships and thus tend to heighten loneliness in older adulthood (Lopata 1995, Fees et al. 1999, Pinquart 2003, Dykstra et al. 2005). Importantly, feelings of loneliness are indicative of more than negative affect. Loneliness correlates with heightened risks of mental illness and suicide in older adults (Peplau and Perlman 1982), and weak social relationships more generally are among the most central predictors of mortality and morbidity in older adulthood (Dykstra 1995, 2009). In Eastern Europe, and Russia in particular, scholars have noted that circles of friendship and other informal associations have served to help make ends meet in times of economic insecurity and insulate citizens’ everyday lives from negative effects of the state (Rose 1995). Macro level social and demographic conditions prevailing in many of the former Eastern bloc countries, specifically their very low fertility levels, rates of steady emigration among working-age adults, and eroded socialist era employment and welfare guarantees, may be behind the particularly high levels of older adult loneliness witnessed in the region (de Jong Gierveld 2008, de Jong Gierveld et al. 2011).
