In fact, daily headlines in Moscow during the winter include body counts of the inebriated people who died of exposure. In the United States, which has almost twice the population, about 300 a year die from the same cause. Drinking is behind many of the violent and accidental deaths in Russia. With the present pattern, a baby boy stands almost a 1 in 4 probability of dying from some sort of external trauma. That compares with about 1 in 30 in Britain.
Russian women are twice as likely to die from alcohol poisoning or injury as American men.
Russians are also heavy tobacco users. Medical authorities say smoking accounts for 20 to 30 percent of deaths from heart disease and cancer. And Russian death rates from these diseases are twice those in the United States. There is also a rapid spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis, AIDS and other sexually transmitted disease in Russia. One study predicts HIV will infect some 13 million Russians by 2005.