Health crisis in Russia. I. Recent trends in life expectancy and causes of death from 1970 to 1993.

The authors analyze trends in life expectancy and causes of death in Russia from 1970 to 1993, with a focus on reasons for the recent declines in life expectancy. "Before discussing the trends themselves, we shall...look at the possible distortions that changes in data quality may have produced. However, even if it has been exaggerated to some degree, nobody contests the reality of the Soviet health crisis, and we shall attempt to derive some explanation by analysing the age and cause-of-death structures of mortality in Russia."