Nowadays Russian roulette is generally understood to mean a particularly grim game of chicken in which you load a revolver with a single bullet, spin the cylinder, put the gun to your head, and pull the trigger. None of the Russian history experts we contacted knew for certain that the Russians played Russian roulette. And it’s not just we layfolk who think like that. It tells you something about Russia, or at least Western perceptions thereof, that this isn’t one of those questions you dismiss out of hand.
