Recently, the Centre for Demography & Human Ecology in Moscow in collaboration with the Institut National d’Etudes Demographiques in Paris undertook a reconstruction of registered deaths in individual republics of the former Soviet Union. The first set of such data covers deaths registered in Russia between 1965-1993. The present article extracts information on registered suicide mortality & reviews its trends & age & sex patterns. The link between alcoholism & suicide is strongly suggested. (6 refs.)