In the three Baltic countries, just like in most of the post-Soviet world passing from centrally planned to market economies, the growth of mortality started accelerating in the late 1980s, acquiring an unprecedented extent in the early 1990s. However, since the mid-1990s mortality trends have been changing again: the enormous decline in the situation of the most recent past is being overcome (Fig. 1). Thus, during the nearly ten-year-long transitional period, mortality changes in the Baltics have been diverse and by no means unilateral: in some years the trends have even changed their directions. However, from a long-term perspective, the shifts in mortality during the transitional period can hardly be identified as the formation of a new mortality pattern. Most likely, the transitional period has not changed the mortality patterns of recent decades (Katus, Puur, 1997) but only made them more conspicuous. The recent changes in mortality typical of the Baltic countries and the whole post-Soviet region have drawn the attention of researchers both in the countries concerned, and beyond. Researchers stress that the Eastern European and, in a way, Central European mortality changes of the last three decades are unique in their features. They are defined as a new pattern of epidemiological transition, one that deviates from the collective experience of other developed and middle-income countries (Murray, Bobadilla, 1997).