Did the Russians ever play Russian roulette? Somewhere I acquired the explanation that czarist Russian officers played the game to prove their bravery. Could you get to the bottom of this barrel for me? –Perry Starkey, San Antonio, Texas
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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. Anybody who goes through with it is either dead or crazy (remember Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter?), so clearly this is the sport of desperate souls.
Call it a fine point, but to me five bullets is a much different proposition than one bullet. The former is basically suicide, with the empty chamber offering fate a little wiggle room. The latter is a game, albeit a sick one. Both versions are played in Surdez’s story, but it’s no surprise the game variant stuck in the public mind.
