Saving Lives

Russians love to have a good time.

That was the greatest surprise after the fall of communism – seeing groups of Russians at some global fun place smoking, drinking, hooting loudly and in general enjoying themselves to the hilt.

It took the French two thousand years to create their fine wines, rare cognacs and famed gastronomy. It took the Russians a couple of years to become connoisseurs of all this.

The old stereotypes are dead. Gone are the Russians from James Bond movies, goose-stepping to the orders of some spinsterly SMERSH shrew. Gone are the sullen masses of the Brezhnev era.

(By the way, where were those supermodel types in the Soviet Union? Were they hiding in the crowd, all six feet five inches of them? Well, Russian women are a different subject altogether, deserving a column of its own.)

Americans used to think that Russians smoked and drank themselves to death because they were fatalistic and because their lives were so dreary.

“So what? You’re going to die, anyway, right?”

Now we know that Russians smoke because they like it. It feels good. And drinking feels good, too. And driving very fast on bad roads. But sweating at the gym is boring. And going to see a doctor is stupid. Doctors always find something wrong with you and before you know it, you’re dead, whereas if you hadn’t gone to the doctor you would’ve lived to be a hundred.

Plenty of Russians are convinced that Americans lead extremely boring, regimented lives, eat at McDonald’s every day and constantly pop pills.

Russians like life to be exciting, even if it means dying for it.

And die they do. Russia, with barely two percent of the world’s population, accounts for 12 percent of deaths from ischemic stroke, which is attributable to smoking. The average Russian smokes nearly 2,800 cigarettes a year – or 140 packs for every man, woman and child.

But this should change if the new smoking ban has its intended effect.

When the Russian Duma puts its mind to something, it doesn’t settle for half-measures. Russia may have changed since Sean Connery played James Bond, but Nyet still means Nyet. Starting on June 1, Russians were banned from smoking in bars, restaurants or hotels. Also, no smoking on long-distance trains or at train stations. Actually, no smoking anywhere: even Sheremetyevo Airport is being forced to get rid of its smoking lounges.

The new ban fits in with a broader European and American trend. Smoking is out of fashion; non-smokers no longer want to inhale the harmful byproduct of smokers’ self-indulgence; governments balk at the cost of treating smoking-related disease.

But Russia is not Europe – and certainly not America. On much of its territory, winter temperatures settle in for months well below zero. And Russia is a huge country. Smokers traveling from Moscow to Vladivostok by train will have to wait more than a week for their first chance to light up.

On the other hand, Canada is also very cold and very large, yet Canadians smoke only about 800 cigarettes a year – one of the lowest rates in the Western world. Snow-bound Scandinavians also have severe restrictions on smoking and have quit in large numbers.

But Russia is different. Russians are likely to run out for a smoke in the middle of a polar night without bothering to put on their fur coats. This is why Dmitry Medvedev’s contention that the smoking ban will save up to 200,000 lives a year is probably a pipe dream. Instead of emphysema, Russian smokers will be dying of pneumonia.

In retrospect, the smoking ban put in effect by Nicholas I in the first half of the nineteenth century was more humane. He merely forbade smoking in the street.