11/84Ratio of physicians to inhabitants in the Soviet Union: 1:270
Ratio of physicians to inhabitants in the United States: 1:520
3/84Portion of the U.S. land mass owned by the federal government: 1/3
3/84Strategic minerals supplied by the Soviet Union to the United States: 6
3/84Movie theaters in the United States: 16,901
In the Soviet Union: 144,100
In the Soviet Union: 4
In Switzerland: 20
7/84Number of Rolls-Royces in the Soviet Union: 10
9/84Number of American objects currently in space (operational/defunct): 2,800/2,500
1/85Percentage of Russian soldiers God will kill at the end of the world, according to Jerry Falwell: 83
U.S. tests: 13
5/85Annual U.S. arms exports to the Third World: $9,500,000,000
Annual Soviet arms exports to the Third World: $4,500,000,000
7/85Foreign aid budget of the Soviet Union in 1978: $3,500,000,000
9/85Pounds of frozen chicken Peru exported to the Soviet Union this year to help pay back a loan: 1,860,432
9/85Vietnamese and Russians killed on screen in Rambo: 75
Americans: 1
Students in the Soviet Union who are studying English: 4,000,000
3/86Number of Russians who subscribe to the New York Times: 7
4/86Number of spacecraft launched by the United States in 1985: 17
4/86Percentage increase in the number of Americans planning trips to the Soviet Union in 1986: 54
5/86Number of banks in the West that are owned by the Soviet Union: 6
5/86Portion of the Soviet Union’s urban population that shares a kitchen and bathroom with another family: 1/5
6/86Percentage increase in trade between China and the Soviet Union in 1985: 45
7/86Rank of the Soviet Union, South Africa, and the United States in per capita prison population: 1,2,3
7/86Amount the United States spent in 1985 on radio broadcasts to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: $146,559,000
Estimated amount the Soviet Union spent trying to jam those broadcasts: $300,000,000
In the Soviet Union: 22,500
10/87Bibles and hymnbooks the Soviet Union has allowed the Russian Baptist Union to import this year: 20,000
11/87Liters of vodka drunk in the Soviet Union in 1984: 2,577,000,000
12/87Number of U.S. cities and towns named Santa Claus: 3
12/87World rank of the Soviet Union’s annual cabbage crop: 1
2/87New business activities the Soviet Union will allow individuals to engage in for profit beginning May 1: 29
9/87Total number of vetoes cast by the United States in the U.N. Security Council: 50
Number of vetoes that have been cast by the Soviet Union since 1980: 2
10/88Percentage of Americans who oppose using nuclear arms in response to a non-nuclear Soviet invasion of Europe: 88
10/88Number of the 7,886 Soviet Jews granted Israeli visas this year who settled somewhere other than Israel: 6,739
11/88Percentage of Americans who believe that the Soviet Union is a member of NATO: 16
2/88Percentage increase, since 1981, in speaking appearances by Soviets on the network evening news: 682
2/88Geiger counters Christie Brinkley carried with her on her recent trip to the Soviet Union: 1
4/88Percentage of the Soviet Union’s population that was killed in World War II: 10
7/88Value of the arms that Warsaw Pact members have bought from NATO countries since 1982: $35,000,000
Value of the arms that NATO members have bought from Warsaw Pact countries since 1982: $165,000,000
7/88Percentage of all ice cream consumed by Muscovites that is vanilla: 95
7/88Number of Soviets in Petrozavodsk who were crushed to death in liquor-store lines last year: 3
10/89Ratio of Soviet arms sales to Third World countries to U.S. arms sales to Third World countries in 1986: 4:1
Ratio today: 1:1
11/89Number of parking tickets issued to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations last year: 4,072
12/89Number of the 3 highest-grossing foreign films shown in the Soviet Union last year that starred Steve Guttenberg: 2
12/89Number of designs submitted by Soviets for a national memorial to those who died under Stalin: 176
4/89Percentage increase, since 1987, in the number of arrests for assault and battery in the Soviet Union: 41
7/89Percentage of Muscovites who say that “average people don’t have any say about what the government does”: 43
Percentage of New Yorkers who say this: 52
7/89Estimated change in the distance between the Hawaiian Islands and the Soviet Union each year, in inches: -4
1/90Percentage of Americans who said in 1984 that the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union was a “very important” problem: 70
Percentage of Americans who say today that environmental degradation is a “very serious” threat to national security: 77
11/90Amount the German government has pledged to help pay for U.S. military operations in the Gulf: $1,000,000,000
Amount it has pledged to pay the Soviet Union to resettle Soviet troops stationed in East Germany: $13,000,000,000
12/90Minimum amount each Soviet family emigrating to Israel this year received in Israeli government subsidies: $11,000
Estimated percentage of Soviet immigrants to Israel this year who are professionals: 55
4/90Number of months the 4 managers of the Moscow McDonald’s attended the Canadian Institute of Hamburgerology: 9
7/90Amount the U.S. government has paid Romania since 1980 for Soviet-made weapons for intelligence purposes: $40,000,000
Estimated amount of the payment that went directly into the Ceausescu family’s private bank accounts: $8,000,000
8/90Ratio of the average office rent in Moscow’s business district to the rent in midtown Manhattan, per square foot: 2:1
10/91Percentage change, since 1989, in Soviet arms sales to the Third World: -7
Percentage change, since 1989, in U.S. arms sales to the Third World: +131
10/91Percentage of Japanese who say that the Soviet Union is the greatest threat to their nation: 22
Percentage who say the United States is: 24
11/91Number of times CBS interrupted Miss Teen USA on the first night of the Soviet coup with bulletins on the crisis: 0
12/91Projected average annual growth rate for the U.S. economy during the 1990s, according to Merrill Lynch: +2.2
12/91Number of pizzas Moscow’s Pizza Hut delivered to the Russian parliament building during the Soviet coup: 260
12/91Estimated number of mosques that have been built or reopened in the Soviet Union since 1989: 4,800
3/91Number of Jews who arrived in Israel from the Soviet Union last year: 145,000
Number of Palestinians who arrived in Jordan from Kuwait last year: 250,000
Number of Palestinians who have been laid off by Israeli manufacturers this year: 8,500
8/91Number of times Nixon stopped to autograph food-ration cards during his trip to the Soviet Union last March: 1
8/91Number of times the Soviet Union has voted with the United States in the UN General Assembly since 1989: 22
1/92Percentage of Russians who say that newspapers should be “mainly run by the state”: 41
1/92Number of members of the Cossacks, a Moscow motorcycle gang: 8
Number of motorcycles they own: 1
11/92Rank of The Rich Also Cry, a Mexican soap opera, among the most popular TV programs in Russia: 1
11/92Price of an eight-week course in striptease at Moscow’s Taif School of Erotic Dance, in rubles: 3,000
4/92Percentage of urbanites in the former Soviet Union who say they would like to own a weapon: 53
6/92Number of Alcoholics Anonymous groups formed in Moscow since 1987: 24
6/92Percentage change, since 1990, in U.S. tobacco sales to the countries of the former Soviet Union: +73
7/92Percentage by which Boris Yeltsin increased Russian Army officers’ salaries in February: 90
9/92Copies of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People printed in Russia since 1990: 2,667,822
12/93Estimated percentage of the value of each bank transaction in Russia that is spent on bribes for Central Bank personnel: 15
12/93Rank of Snickers, among the most popular candy bars in Russia: 1
2/93Number of copies of Robert’s Rules of Order bought by Russia’s Congress of Deputies last fall: 1,500
3/93Chances that a Jew living in the former U.S.S.R. has applied for permission to emigrate to Israel since 1989: 3 in 4
6/93Estimated portion of the 1994 Pentagon budget that is devoted to defending against the former Soviet Union: 1/2
6/93Ratio of U.S. aid pledged to Russia to U.S. spending on strategic nuclear weapons and defense systems next year: 2:3
7/93Number of current and former Russian Army officers enrolled in Moscow’s East-West School of Business: 200
1/94Percentage of Russians who believe their country will become more democratic in the next few years: 36
1/94Ratio of Russians with a favorable opinion of Stalin today to those with a favorable opinion of Gorbachev: 6:5
2/94Number of animals a Moscow circus left on a Japanese dock in 1992 to make room on its ship for newly bought cars: 93
2/94Price paid at auction last December for an unused urine bag carried on the Soyuz 22 Soviet space flight: $1,035
2/94Number of parking tickets given to former Soviet embassy employees in Washington, D.C., that remain unpaid: 50,693
3/94Portion of all nuclear reactors currently under construction worldwide that are of Soviet design: 1/3
3/94Portion of the world’s landmass that rightfully belongs to Russia, according to Vladimir Zhirinovsky: 1/5
Ratio of Russians who believe that Zhirinovsky is a “fascist” to those who believe he is “the man of the year”: 1:1
6/94Number of government employees Vice President Gore invited to accompany him on his trip to Russia last December: 600
Number this was reduced to after Ambassador Thomas Pickering complained: 200
7/94Percentage of Russians who say they would like to return to their country’s “pre-1985 situation”: 21
9/94Ratio of the number of prisoners awaiting trial in the United States to the number in Russia: 1:1
1/95Chances that a legal immigrant to the United States from the former Soviet Union receives welfare: 1 in 6
1/95Price of an “authentic Russian street sweeper jacket,” from the Peter the Great Coat Company, in Minneapolis: $79
11/95Number of years by which Russian president Boris Yeltsin has outlived the average life span of a Russian male: 5
11/95Percentage increase Yeltsin proposed last year in the number of signatures required to run for the Russian presidency: 1,900
3/95Percentage of Russians who say they would prefer the government of Leonid Brezhnev to that of Boris Yeltsin: 46
6/95Chances that a Russian medical-school graduate in 1990 could not read an electrocardiogram: 1 in 2
6/95Copies of the premier issue of the Russian-language edition of Cosmopolitan sold in Russia last summer: 60,000
8/95Number of Russians injured on escalators in the Moscow Metro last year who were drunk at the time: 84
8/95Ratio of the amount of oil spilled near Usinsk, Russia, since last August to that spilled by the Exxon Valdez: 3:1
8/95Percentage change since 1994 in the price of one minute of prime-time TV advertising in Russia: +200
1/96Months of “corrective labor” to which. a Russian journalist may be sentenced for ridiculing President Yeltsin: 12
12/96Amount that Wanted, a British TV game show, pays contestants for each day they elude a team of former KGB agents: $1,560
12/96Weeks after Russian president Boris Yeltsin had a heart attack last summer that the CIA found out about it: 11
2/96Place for which Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky are tied, among the ten political leaders Russians most trust: 8
9/96Chance that a campaign story about Boris Yeltsin aired on prime-time Russian TV last spring was positive: 1 in 2
Chance that a campaign story about any other Russian presidential candidate was positive: 1 in 12
9/96Ratio of annual U.S. trade with the countries of the former Soviet Union to U.S. trade with Africa: 1:3
11/97Amount NASA has paid Russia since 1994 to let U.S. astronauts train aboard Mir: $470,000,000
11/97Factor by which Forbes magazine’s estimate of the net worth of Russia’s security chief exceeds his own: 75,000
12/97Number of the world’s ten busiest McDonald’s franchises that are in Russia or Hong Kong: 5
2/97Ratio of U.S. defense spending to the combined total spent by Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya: 2:1
9/97Number of trout and perch dumped into Russia’s Lake Ukshe last July for Boris Yeltsin’s fishing trip: 10,000
1/98Number of hours a Moscow hotel flew a Microsoft flag within view of Red Square last fall when Bill Gates visited: 36
Number of lunches Gates ate in Moscow that were not from McDonald’s: 0
1/98Ratio of estimated U.S. aid to Russia through the year 2000 to the amount of aid George Soros has pledged: 4:5
11/98Annual amount that Americans spend on vodka, expressed as a portion of the value of Russia’s publicly traded companies: 1/3
11/98Number of Moscow’s major newspapers that mentioned last August’s Clinton/Yeltsin summit the day before it began: 0
Number of U.S. households that chose professional wrestling over the President ‘s televised apology that month: 6,379,000
12/98Amount the U.S. Energy Department plans to spend by 2000 to keep Russian nuclear scientists employed: $40,000,000
12/98Percentage of Russians who say they have confidence that Boris Yeltsin can run the country: 2
3/98Percentage change in the size of Russia’s economy since the country began following the I.M.F.’s advice in 1992: -25
5/98Number of minutes that Mir’s Russian cosmonauts spent this year advertising a “space pen” live on QVC: 15
6/98Amount by which U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa last year exceeded those to former Soviet countries: $1,504,000,000
8/98Estimated portion of the value of the currency circulating in Russia that is in U.S. dollars: 1/2
8/98Number of bids received by the Russian government last May when it put its remaining national oil company up for sale: 0
Percentage by which the asking price was reduced a month later: 24
11/99Percentage points by which voter turnout for Russia’s last national election exceeded U.S. turnout in 1996: 21
11/99Ratio of the revenue Russia expects to collect this year to the revenue New York City collected: 7:8
6/99Estimated portion of the $4.8 billion that the IMF loaned Russia last July that has been lost or stolen: 1/5
6/99Number of years after the Soviet national anthem was retired that Russia’s Duma voted last March to reinstate its tune: 7
6/99Number of Kiss concerts that the band has postponed in Russia due to the country’s instability and anti-American mood: 3
8/99Tons of uranium from Russia’s nuclear arsenal that the country will sell to a U.S. company over the next twenty years: 500
1/00Number of years after Jews settled in China that they were first allowed to live in Russian territory: 1,045
11/00Number of former Soviet republics whose per capita GDP was higher in 1997 than in 1990: 0
12/00Change in the number of Russian voters registered in the three months prior to Vladimir Putin’s election: +1,298,090
12/00Percentage of the votes cast in Chechnya last March that went to Putin, according to the Russian government: 51
2/00Percentage of Chechnya’s air force destroyed last September when Russia bombed a single plane: 100
2/00Ratio of the price of a 30-second Super Bowl ad to what Pizza Hut paid last fall for an ad on a Russian space rocket: 2:1
5/00Age by which Russian president Vladimir Putin tried to volunteer for the KGB: 15
5/00Estimated percentage of people living in Russia’s Ingushetia province last February who were Chechen war refugees: 57
Percentage change since then in the number of U.S. troop deployments: +400
10/01Percentage of Russian nuclear scientists who say they are willing to work on another country’s missile-defense program: 21
3/01Days after Time named George W. Bush 2000’s man of the year that Russians named Vladimir Lenin man of the century: 4
4/01Estimated percentage of immigrants to Israel from former Soviet states since 1998 who were not Jewish by birth: 60
7/01Number of Russian news organizations that were sent a press release in February touting a fake company: 21
9/01Amount the federal government paid Harvard researchers in the 1990s to help design Russian market reforms: $40,000,000
11/02Places by which Russia’s ranking in the U.N.’s Human Development Index of living standards has fallen since 1990: 31
2/02Minimum number of physical assaults made on Russian journalists in 2000: 60
7/02Length in pages of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear-arms-reduction treaty signed by George H.W. Bush in 1991: 630
1/03Percentage of the $1.1 trillion in Iraqi oil contracts that are held by French or Russian companies: 69
2/03Percentage of Moscow residents who say that city residents from Chechnya or the rest of the Caucasus should be expelled: 25
2/03Minimum number of soldiers killed or severely injured each year in the Russian army’s initiation hazing: 2,000
2/03Rank of the size of Russia’s and Turkey’s standing armies, respectively, among Europe’s largest: 1,2
2/04Minimum price a Russian company charges to provide an alibi for an adulterer’s absence: $34
3/04Minimum number of nuclear weapons in the oceans as a result of U.S. and Soviet accidents: 50
5/04Percentage of senior management positions in medium-size Russian companies that are held by women: 42
Percentage of senior management positions at equivalent U.S. companies that are: 20
6/04Number of times that none-of-the-above won a Duma seat last winter in Ulyanovsk, Russia, Lenin’s birthplace: 2
6/05Chance that a Russian scientist says he or she would consider working for North Korea: 1 in 7