A chapter in his book on the Russian population crisis is titled “Russia’s Ominous Patterns of Mortality and Morbidity: Pioneering New and Modern Pathways to Poor Health and Premature Death.” He showed that no modern country had ever seen people die at the same rate in peacetime. According to 2006 figures, wrote Eberstadt, male life expectancy at age fifteen in Russia compared unfavorably with that in Ethiopia, Gambia, and Somalia. Two things appeared to be killing Russians disproportionately: diseases of the cardiovascular system, and external causes, such as injuries and poisoning, including
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