Capitalism Brings New Smiles to Russia

An old cliche about Soviet Russia was that no one here smiled. But one of the secrets long hidden behind the Iron Curtain was the millions of gapped, iron-toothed mouths, mauled by the most basic of dentistry techniques and the most primitive of Warsaw Pact equipment.

Now Russians, growing self-assured as their lives begin to stabilize after years of political and economic upheaval, are finding time and money to rectify the situation. Suddenly, they want to make their post-Soviet smiles the gleaming white of omnipresent Western toothpaste ads.

“Foreign companies that produce and sell toothpaste and hygiene products are seriously interested in the Russian consumer market and are very active in placing ads,” said Victor Kolomiyets of Media-Service, a branch of the Video International advertising firm. “Four or five years ago, there wasn’t a single toothpaste ad on television. Now you see them on every channel.”

The number of advertising hours on Russian television is growing sharply, but the time devoted to toothpaste commercials is growing even faster, Kolomiyets said.

In January, Russians were exposed to 9.6 hours of toothpaste ads, which then made up 5.5% of total advertising time; by October, they could watch 31 hours of dental ads, which by the fall accounted for 6.5% of the total time Russian television stations were giving over to advertising.

If an average Russian family had left its TV on all the time in the first 10 months of 1997, members would have been exposed to 134.9 hours of toothpaste commercials.

The ads are having their desired effect.

Tanya Nesterova, 50, decided last spring that it was time to have her entire mouth seen to. The teacher turned housekeeper, a mother of two who recently separated from her husband, paid 8 million rubles ($1,500) to have ceramic crowns put on all her upper and lower teeth. In the U.S., the cost of a single crown ranges from $500 to $1,000, but the average wage is much higher.

The once-shy Nesterova, who used to hide her mouth behind a cautious hand whenever she laughed, admits she was transformed by the month of dental visits, in which her old teeth were filed down to dark brown stumps before the crowns were slotted into place.

“Now I smile all the time, of course,” she said happily. “It’s done wonders for my self-esteem.

“When I was young, I used to be terrified of the dentist. I never used to go, and that was where the problem started. I got my first false tooth when my daughters were born, when I was 34, and after that it was downhill all the way. Finally, I decided it was time for a fresh start.”

It would have been impossible to make the same decision four or five years ago, Nesterova said, when the Soviet Union had recently collapsed and panic-stricken, politically explosive new Russia was in the grip of galloping inflation that hit 2,500% in 1992.

“If it had been then, maybe I’d have had to go without new teeth,” she said. “There are plenty of people around who don’t have teeth because they didn’t have money at the right time.”

Nowadays, life for ordinary people has become more stable. Nesterova, who earns $400 a month from two part-time jobs and did not have the entire sum she needed to pay the dentist upfront, still had no trouble finding friends who would lend her half the money without worrying that the ruble will have tumbled in value before they are repaid.

To cope with the new demand for dentists, private clinics have sprung up around Moscow. The Moscow Dentistry Institute is the overbooked destination of choice for students hoping to get rich in their profession.

The new clinics add choices for patients who grew up going to the dentist at their local state medical centers but grew tired of the long waiting lists and delays at the cash-strapped state facilities. The clinics have also gone some way toward replacing the dental offices in huge Soviet factories that once gave their workers free care. (Factory workers today are lucky to get their wages, never mind dental care.)

But not everyone is happy with the changes. Irina Shinkarenko, who has been head dentist at central Moscow’s run-down Clinic No. 3 for more than a decade, is scathing about the free-market ways of post-Soviet dentistry.

“There’s too much competition nowadays,” she said. “In the good old days, people used to get in line at 6 a.m. to see us. But now, people come less. To persuade them to turn up here, we have to do things we’d never have dreamed of doing before--like giving out free advertising calendars with our name and address on the back.

“Our problem is that we don’t have the most modern of technology,” Shinkarenko added in a long litany of regrets. “Our equipment isn’t bad--our drills are Czech--but they’re not the top-of-the-range Western stuff that would attract wealthy customers.”

In the long, bleak corridors of her clinic, mostly elderly people wait stoically, either standing or perched on scruffy chairs. Several clutch white handkerchiefs to swollen mouths. Everyone is silent.

The typed price list taped to the glass partition in Clinic No. 3’s chilly reception area focuses almost exclusively on remedial work: fillings, false teeth and crowns.

The price of an ordinary checkup is not listed because the idea of preventive dentistry is still little respected in Russia. Nesterova, the woman with the new smile, only laughs at the widespread Western notion of going twice a year to the dentist without being in agony first.

“Of course, it’s up to each person to decide how often to go,” she said. “I do know one person who goes all the time, my auntie; she has them push and prod at her teeth when there’s nothing wrong at all. I think it’s because she’s got nothing else to do with her life. It all depends on the person.”

Educating people into looking after their teeth before they rot is one of the main goals of the new private clinics for well-off clients.

“Whether or not you choose our clinic, we strongly advise you not to wait for the critical moment but to visit a dentist not less than twice a year,” exhorts the glossy promotion leaflet of the Radix clinic, a favorite of Russia’s super-rich. “Visiting the Radix clinic will give you full satisfaction, because of our comfortable conditions and welcoming atmosphere.”

The very existence of clinics such as Radix is a sign of Russia’s new confidence. Designed to lure back the wealthy, who have spent the post-Soviet years having their teeth flossed and glossed in the West, the Radix clinic offers conditions luxurious enough to persuade even the most nervous millionaire to face the chair in his own country again.

Coffee brews in a corner. Marble floors gleam. The magazines of the ultra-wealthy are scattered on glass tables. A dental hygienist has a corner salon, and a glittering glass cabinet displays Oral-B dental products. Nurses smile dazzlingly as they slip in and out of surgical rooms equipped with high-tech drills and chairs. Clients can forget their worries during their examinations by slipping on electronic eye masks inside which they can watch the latest movie releases.

Radix head dentist Aslan Kanukoyev surveyed the realm he created just over two years ago, after taking out a loan from banker acquaintances, with profound satisfaction. Its futuristic techniques have attracted more than 5,000 clients.

“I always dreamed of the day when I could have a place like this,” he said.

But, so far, clinics like his are out of reach of the average Russian. It costs $250 to have a tooth crowned here, Kanukoyev said.

“Of course, we do have some . . . let’s call them middle-class . . . patients, who come to us because they recognize the quality of our work,” he added. “But I don’t know where they get the money from.”