Alcoholism In Russia
June 24, 2008
Great video on the culture and history of alcoholism in Russia on CBSNews.com.
I wish it talked more about the impact on children though.
Click the link above or the embedded video below to watch.
I didn’t write much about the alcoholism I observed in Yaroslavl, but I saw plenty. I suppose this is as good a place as any to jot down a few quick memories:
* Public drunkenness, from what I could tell, was officially overlooked. However, the drunks as a whole seemed to hold their liquor pretty well. While public drunkenness was common, I didn’t see violent or sick or really menacing drunks. To tell you the truth, almost all of the ones I saw seemed pretty happy.
* Our group was warned at orientation not to drink with Russian strangers, especially without a designated teetotaler. The vodka in Russia is incredibly potent, and our organization’s staff had been alarmed after a few previous volunteers passed out in a Yaroslavl bar and were kindly carried (literally!) back to the hotel by amused locals who’d drunk them under the table. So the staff wisely made the rule — don’t drink with Russian strangers! This rule was absolutely no problem for the group I was with, because as it turned out, we all were total lightweights without much interest in drinking. I think we were in Yaroslav for a good three weeks before we finally gathered in the hotel bar to experience our first shots of Russian vodka. After one or two shots, we unanimously agreed that we’d had enough and left!
* Near the center of town is the main trolley stop, a big circular track (not coincidentally, the trolleys stop LITERALLY at the front steps of a historic church — an enduring reminder of the Soviets’ contempt for any religious institution or its symbols). Commuters congregate around this circle as they wait for their trolleys. One night, I was puzzled to find an SUV (SUVs themselves are rarities) parked dead in the center of the waiting area, just a few yards from the church steps — it was like finding an SUV parked on a subway platform. When the trolley pulled into the circle, it didn’t immediately stop at the church steps where commuters were waiting … it stopped at the SUV! Four jolly drunken men descended from the trolley carrying a passed-out, dead drunk buddy. The passed-out guy was limp as a rag — each buddy was carrying a different limb (one had his left arm, one had his right arm, etc.). The trolley patiently waited as the men packed their buddy into the SUV and zoomed away. Then the trolley rolled up a few feet to the church steps for its next load of passengers. Another day at the office, I guess. Whether the SUV was parked on the trolley platform by special permission, or whether that’s the unofficial drop-off spot for passed-out passengers, I have no idea. I just remember that the other commuters waiting on the platform seemed as bewildered as I was, and the whole episode was uncomfortably bizarre.
– You hear a lot about cheap Russian vodka, but beer’s really popular too. You do NOT hear about laws regarding open containers, drunken driving laws, public drunkenness, etc. I’m pretty sure they have some version of them — they just don’t enforce them.
– The only acceptable way to drink Russian vodka, I’m told: a quick, icy cold shot, straight.
– Alchohol use escalated dramatically during Glasnost when the Russian economy tanked. The translators said that, at one time, the government made alcohol much more difficult to obtain, but people just brewed their own, and as a result, many were poisoned and died, so the restrictions were abandoned. The general consensus of the people and the government seems to be that, despite the incredible problems resulting from rampant alcoholism, there’s really no alternative to its widespread and affordable availability. They feel very strongly that it’s a lesser evil than the inevitable home brewing that will result from restricted from availability. Apparently, the intricacies of home distillaries are extremely common knowledge among Russians. (Interesting but unrelated aside: apparently, the art of mushroom picking is even more common among Russians than home brewing skills. The Russians are crazy about mushrooms, and from a young age, they all seem to learn how to pick good ones and identify the poisonous ones. “We were out picking mushrooms,” they’ll say, the way Americans might say, “I spent the day at the lake.” Whenever we told a Russian person that we didn’t know how to pick mushrooms, they’d look at us like we were idiots.)
