A Russian Ambulance Is Seldom Chased

Lyudmila Rolshchikova was walking down the sidewalk near her home when a chunk of ice the size of a desktop fell seven stories, bounced off a porch roof and hit her in the head, killing her instantly.

In itself, the death of the 52-year-old cleaning woman was not unusual--falling icicles claim an estimated 10 victims a year in Moscow. What is rare is that her family has gone to court to pin liability for her death on the workers who were supposed to remove the ice before it fell.

If the family defies precedent and succeeds in proving negligence, the workers could be sent to jail and Rolshchikova’s survivors could receive as much as $23,000 in compensation--a huge award by the standards of Russian justice.

“It is very difficult to win a case like this,” Tatiana Dmitriyeva, a family friend and law student who has doggedly pursued the matter, said, expressing a view with which experts agree. “People are not held accountable. No one has ever been put in prison or paid damages in such a case.”

For most Russians, such hazards as falling icicles, contaminated tap water and trolley buses that give off lethal electric shocks are an accepted part of daily life. From poisonous bootleg vodka to deadly Moscow traffic, Russians live with a wide range of avoidable risks that most Americans would not tolerate.

Accidents are the second-leading cause of death in Russia--a country where the life expectancy of men is an especially dire 59 years. In 1995, government statistics show, a Russian was nearly five times more likely to die in an accident than an American.

Russia’s fledgling legal liability and insurance systems have done little to create financial incentives for the prevention of accidents, the cleanup of pollution or the protection of workers, experts say.

Liability insurance is virtually nonexistent, and the resolution of disputes, if it happens, is handled through personal negotiation. In the rare cases when a court orders a defendant to pay damages for a death or injury, the judgments are usually so small that paying compensation costs less than taking steps to ensure the same thing can’t happen again.

Many Russians simply trust in fate to protect them from all manner of everyday hazards: erratic drivers, unmarked holes in streets and sidewalks, crumbling buildings, tainted food products, polluted air and water, dangerous workplaces and unsafe public transportation.

Russian fatalism toward life’s accidents is often summed up in a favorite proverb: “If you are doomed to die from fire, you won’t be drowned.” Few drivers buy auto insurance--but many keep religious icons on their dashboards, figuring it can’t hurt and it might help.

But beyond Russia’s fatalistic streak, most Russians feel there is little they can do to change things, large or small.

Decades of Soviet dictatorship and, before that, centuries of brutal czarist autocracy taught Russians not to speak out. Many had high hopes for their country after the fall of communism, but the tainted democracy that has taken root in the past five years has left them deeply disappointed. With corruption rampant and the government unable to pay its bills, most Russians have lost faith in politicians, the government or the courts to solve their problems.

A Disillusioned People

“People are disillusioned,” said anthropologist Anton Ivanov, a research fellow at the Center for the Study and Prevention of Conflict. “They don’t think they can change anything through concrete action.”

Many Russians turn instead to alcohol--and that is becoming increasingly dangerous. The volume of toxic moonshine vodka sold in Russia is on the rise, and bootleggers are becoming increasingly skilled at bottling their products to look legitimate.

On June 3 in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, police reported that 22 people died and 12 others were hospitalized over a four-day period from drinking a batch of illegal vodka. The liquor was made with poisonous methyl alcohol instead of ethyl alcohol. It tasted like rubber, consumers reported, but that didn’t prevent dozens from drinking it.

The high rate of accidental deaths in Russia--including alcohol poisoning--is a major factor in the decline of the nation’s population, a presidential commission reported last month. Deaths in Russia now exceed births by 600,000 annually, the commission said. Of boys who are 16 today, only 54% will live to see age 60--a rate worse than 100 years ago.

In Moscow, hazards that contribute to Russia’s high death rate are not hard to see. On the congested streets of the city, it is every man for himself. Rattletrap Russian cars belch thick smoke as they zip along, often ignoring painted lanes. Motorists rarely slow to let pedestrians cross a road--and honk at those who do. It is common to see old women scurrying to dodge traffic and pedestrians standing in the middle of an eight-lane highway with cars whizzing by in both directions as they wait to cross.

In smaller cities and rural areas, many of life’s hazards are different, but just as preventable.

Two children, ages 5 and 6, recently died in the village of Sud-Nikolayevka in central Russia when they found a grenade on the street and began playing with it. The same day, a container of waste emitting radiation was found in a forest near the southern city of Stavropol.

In Pogranichny in the Far East, a woman bled to death while giving birth when the power company shut off the hospital’s electricity in a dispute over the nonpayment of bills. In a Moscow suburb, 15 homes burst into flames one afternoon because another utility company mistakenly connected a high-pressure gas line to the residential system. In Poronaysk on remote Sakhalin island, 394 people contracted hepatitis last month from the city’s tap water.

Russia’s heavy winters create special hazards. Besides facing the danger of falling icicles, many people slip on icy sidewalks and streets. For older people, such falls can result in crippling injuries.

To melt snow and ice, Moscow spreads a chloride salt on the pavement that is famous for killing trees and corroding shoes, cars and electric lines. On occasion, it has eaten through insulation on the wiring of city trolley buses, causing electricity to surge through the cars and zap passengers.

Trolley Electrocutions

After three people were electrocuted while boarding trolleys in 1995, the transit agency tried to improve insulation on the cars but advised passengers it was their responsibility to avoid injuring themselves: “To avoid an electric shock, you should jump into the trolley bus, putting both of your legs on the floor simultaneously,” Moscow transportation agency President Alexander Ulyanov said at the time. “To descend, you should jump out in the same manner.”

While the United States has developed a vast legal and insurance system to establish liability, punish negligence and pay compensation for damages, Russia is only beginning to develop a civil liability system.

In all of Russia, there are 26,500 lawyers--fewer even than in Los Angeles County, which has 40,186 practitioners. By comparison, the United States has 946,000 lawyers.

Insurers are just beginning to get established in Russia, where premiums for property and liability insurance totaled $953 million last year. In contrast, total premiums just for property casualty insurance totaled $254 billion in the United States in 1995.

Since the collapse of communism, Russia’s legal system has been slower to change than most of its institutions. Laws governing liability and negligence are on the books, but their enforcement is haphazard at best.

Still, legal experts say new types of lawsuits are emerging that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times: Complaints alleging medical malpractice, negligence, consumer fraud and improper actions by the government are all on the rise.

“Now we have whole categories of suits we never had before,” said Ernest M. Ametistov, a justice of Russia’s Constitutional Court, the equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court. “I don’t want to say that everything is OK and people’s rights are protected. We have very many serious problems. Many people can’t find protection in the courts. But we have made great progress from what we had five years ago.”

The case of the falling icicle highlights the difficulty of bringing a successful action against the government--particularly the housing agencies that oversee most property in Moscow.

This matter involved both a criminal and a civil complaint. But, as in the United States, Dmitriyeva’s civil case would be much stronger if she could first prove criminal negligence.

After Rolshchikova’s death, prosecutors concluded there was no negligence and quickly closed the case. As a friend of the family, Dmitriyeva was legally entitled to handle the case even though she is still in law school. But to persuade prosecutors to reopen the investigation, she first had to uncover the law governing removal of icicles from city-maintained buildings. Although ostensibly a public document, it is unavailable at public libraries or government offices, she said.

“To prove to the prosecutor’s office that a crime has taken place, you have to have the public safety regulations, and often it is humanly impossible to find them,” she noted. “It took me four months, and only when I found them and took them to the prosecutor’s office did they decide to have a hearing.”

Even then, the prosecutor’s office might not have pursued the case--except Rolshchikova’s death was reported by a local television station. The law requires the prosecutor to investigate a case if it has received such public attention.

Dmitriyeva believes that investigators were reluctant to tackle the matter because the prosecutor’s office puts a higher priority on protecting the government than on safeguarding the public. A victory in the case could set a precedent requiring city housing agencies to spend more money and do a better job of maintenance.

“We have not yet overcome the state of the Soviet Union where it is almost impossible to bring a lawsuit against a state agency,” she said.

Dmitriyeva is also pursuing a civil lawsuit on behalf of Rolshchikova’s daughter, Elizaveta, 22. But the way damages are calculated, she will be lucky to win enough to cover the older woman’s funeral costs. The law strictly limits compensation for lost wages or expenses, and courts seldom award more than token sums for pain and suffering, particularly in comparison with their American counterparts.

She would face fewer legal hurdles and probably receive more in damages if the ice had struck a good car instead of Rolshchikova, Dmitriyeva said.

Motivated by Anger

Dmitriyeva said she was motivated to pursue the case by her anger at the housing agency.

But she acknowledged that her determination to see the workers punished and the family compensated is extremely rare. People die every winter after they slip and hit their heads on icy public stairways that are supposed to be kept clear, she said, but seldom do their families take the matter to court.

“In Russia, an average person would not think of suing,” she said. “It’s your own fault. You slipped. A Russian person finds only the strength to deal with the grief. As for finding the truth or justice, no one would even think about that.”