Gorbachev war against excessive drinking: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/o72bmcWr0JmZe2g.html Moonshining with my grandpa video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fqdkZKeLs9WtqXU.html Hello, comrades! My name is Sergei. I was born in the USSR in 1971. Since 1999 I have lived in the USA. Ushanka Show channel was created to share stories as well as my own memories of everyday life in the USSR. My books about arriving in America are available at www.sputnikoff.com/shop (Russian or English versions) or on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B08DJ7RNTC Please contact me at sergeisputnikoff@gmail.com if you would like to purchase a signed copy of “American Diaries” Fan Mail: Ushanka Show P.O. Box 96 Berrien Springs MI 49103, USA You can support this project with tips by clicking a "heart" under this video, or: Via Patreon here: www.patreon.com/sputnikoff Viia PAYPAL: paypal.me/ushankashow Ushanka Show merchandise: teespring.com/stores/ushanka-show-shop If you are curious to try some of the Soviet-era candy and other foodstuffs, please use the link below. www.russiantable.com/imported-russian-chocolate-mishka-kosolapy__146-14.html?tracking=5a6933a9095f9 My FB: facebook.com/sergey.sputnikoff Twitter: twitter.com/ushankashow Instagram: instagram.com/ushanka_show/ Reddit: www.reddit.com/user/Sputnikoff

"If life was so good, why was everyone drinking so hard?" Oh, that's an easy one. Life was *so incredibly good* that they couldn't stop partying to celebrate just how good it was.

I grew up on an Indian Reservation in Montana. The alcoholism rate amongst men was 85%. Even though they get lots of Government money so that they didn’t have to work much, they had empty meaningless lives. Suicide was common. My Dad renounced his membership in the tribe and we moved 1,000 miles away. We had a poor but happy life.

I visited the Soviet Union in November 1984. Moscow was cold, bleak and depressing, and I've never seen so many drunk people in my life. To get back to hotel room I had to step over the sleeping drunks who were too hammered to get back to their own rooms. Some of reason for this may lie in that it was bleak and depressing but also, perhaps people had no personal agency over their lives. They had little control, little say and little responsibility.

there's a lot of painful stuff in here. i'm sorry about the way alcohol harmed you and your family, and your nation. i think it's generous and important for you to share your stories. thanks, man

Not being able to set your own path in life and achieve your own education, career and wealth goals has a very depressing effect on people. It’s no different in the US. For whatever reason if someone doesn’t have the opportunities to pursue a fulfilling life depression and self medication can follow. I’m highly educated. Undergrad and graduate degree; plus one full year 45 hours a week in a department of defense school. I was unemployed some years ago for a month. Was shocked to find myself drinking and I was not a drinker, I don’t drink alcohol now. But the absence of worth and purpose was a deadly feeling.

Heavy drinking goes back to the Tsars and serfdom. Back then, it was one of the few pleasures that was easy to find, relatively plentiful, and affordable. It starts a cycle that's hard to break - parents to their kids, then their kids and so on. Frequent trauma, like wars, famine, disease, and terror from the state don't exactly help either.

They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work....

Finishing college in Germany in 1990 and working at a research center, a Russin colleague invited us to take a road trip to Moscow and then down to Tblisi in Georgia. The USSR was still a thing at the time, and we jumped onto this chance to see the other side of the iron curtain. Vodka was like a currency. Gas stations had no gas until you handed over vodka. They had measuring cups. A tank of gas was 1/10th of a liter, plus a few rubles for whatever the price of gas was. Without vodka, no gas. Whomever we met, we had to drink with. Half liter capped beer bottles of vodka for lunch. No need to make them reclosable. We were shocked seeing one of the female colleagues drink a bottle of vodka for lunch. I made it back many times in the late 90s on business, and. Idea and cognac bottles came out in the offices for one celebration or another. Vodka made people give speeches, and everybody was just happy and excited and drinking, and it seemed to be a constant celebration of one thing or another. What I saw was mostly social drinking, and that included work events. We knew that there was no way that any of this was tolerable in the long term, but people drank so they could break down social barriers and anxieties, and it felt like a tool to make everybody happy. This was drinking on steroids, and I had never seen this before. Watching this video put everything into context.

In the Eighties, here in Finland there was a word "vodgaturisti", a vodga tourist. As we visited Soviet Union by school trips, as teenagers we noticed that we coud also buy alcohol, and as anything Western was worth a lot of rubles, we sold aftershaves and nylon stockings etc , and traded Finnish Marks to rubles. We ended up with two plastic bags of money, but as there was nothing to buy with rubles, we gave them to our local quide girl. She almost fainted and said that there is at least her two year's salary... There were shops that had nice things, but they were only for tourists and local elite as you could pay there only with foreign currency. Fo a Finn, Soviet Union was like a gray nightmare, like another planet. We also created a "backwards butterfly theory", as the young soviet girls were slim and pretty. Butterflys are first ugly fat maggots, but turn into beatiful butterflies. But in Soviet Union that seemed to go other way around... Russian people are warm, good people. We were sorry for them.

I worked as an ambulance attendant in a small northern Montana town while I was in college. Our biggest category of assistance was hauling drunks to the hospital. Some of them were so drunk and the temperatures were very cold that I couldn’t see them living. Some didn’t.

I'll tell you about Poland. 20 years ago, a lot of men has had drank on the front of the shop from the morning. Now, when they work, they see that they can buy a car, manage a house, They can achieve almost everthing to happy life . They don't drink. There is no one in front of the shop.( in small villages people buy and drink out of shops , small ones)People need to see the target in thier life .They need to know that work will change their lives. This is what happened in Poland.

_"Drinking Hard And Hardly Working?"_ That sounds like every sales rollout meeting I've ever attended, and we weren't talking about socialism, I can assure you.

I don't know about other E. European countries, but in Poland the 1/2 L bottles of vodka kind of became like a currency for paying things off when you really needed to get something done.

One of the best moments of my alcoholic life happened in Essaouira, Morocco, where I found that exact 750ml bottle of Stoli in an underground liquor store, brought there by bright-eyed 7-year old who can tell a Western alcoholic at 50 paces.

I think there was a lot of trauma from the massive amount of deaths in WW2 people drink to deal with it

examples in history. 1. in 1500 in the Ottoman empire when coffee was invented everyone drank it every day until everyone had the same bad breath 2.tea was so popular in England in 1800 that every household spent 5% of their income on tea only. and tea imports account for 10% of the England import value 3.with a campaign to reduce alcohol consumption. Man finds a new direction which is soft drink (which causes diabetes). led by Argentina (2022) (155 Liters Per Capita)

I spent two years working in Azeraijan 2000 to 2002. Drilling in the Caspian Sea. Listening to the stories of the old soviet days with my Azeri colleagues. It sounded just as you are telling it, only much worse. the volume of Vodka consumed on the Oil drilling rigs. the inefficiency. the breakdowns the delays in logicistic supply. It occoured to me how the Soviet Union was collapsing from the inside. I had been working in the drilling business for 30 years , in many countries arround the world. Head down tails up. Bust Ass, Time is money. Most importantly NO BOOZE. If such was the state of this most critical industry that powered the whole economy. Then the rest must have been, or definatly was a shambles. To have supported the promised Workers paradise with care from Womb to Tomb. They needed to be working their BALLS OFF. Instead they were Jacking off and Pissed as rats. A society of WGAF "Who gives a Fuck". and CBFA "Cant be fucking arsed" Such a shame. They could have had it all. but they pissed it up against a wall. Interesting channel by the way. Thanks for your frank and honest accounts.

In our country we also had same facilities for drunk ppl found on street by Public Security officers. It was called "záchytná stanice" (can be translated as detainment station or likewise) And ppl were imo mainly drinking because you were living in grey hell (Every single building was grey everywhere you looked. It is really depressive sight on its own right). You were stuck in dead end low paying job (unless you were good in sticking up to superiors, there was no hope for any promotion and for that meager salary you could buy vodka, bread and maybe meat if it wasn't already handed away by the time you got through the queue at local store). You couldn't buy any personal luxury stuff like cars (...well technically you could but it was 15-20yrs avg waiting time if you had a family not to mention it was usually worth 40-60times of your salary if not more). TV was almost mark of high social status (like 50% couldn't afford this kind of expense) and radio wasn't really for entertainment at the time. You were forbidden from traveling, there was no internet and radio+TV programs at the time totally sucked butt. And oh ye...there were no cellphones either and having line phone was also something not everyone had. You couldn't vote out government which was main cause of this crap...the heck you couldn't even say they are doing something wrong (cus it was quite few hard hits to yer lower jaw by apprehending officers and quite few years to be spent behind bars if you did). And as a cherry on the top there was literally NOTHING ELSE to do besides walks in the park and occasional physical activities, which for majority of ppl are either not very frequent, or (as in my case) outright boring AF and totally avoided for such reason. So if you weren't drinking, you were imo a hopeless optimist, one of upper strata, or high on something harder than booze...

I was born in East Germany and from my childhood memories I can acknowledge that heavy drinking habits were a common problem in socialist countries. My family came from a rural part of the country and I clearly remember the many times we were visiting our relatives and former friends once we were moving to Berlin and everytime I witnessed men who passed out in public on their way home from the kolchos. I believe that one reason amongst others for why heavy drinking habits were so common in socialist countries, is the fact that many people were feeling that their life's, their work or their ambitions were so limited by the oppressive nature of these societies and thus became less meaningful. In order to cope with this reality drinking heavily allowed many people to numb themselves, making the situation a lot more bearable for those who had troubles coping with the limitations of living in an oppressive society.

When I was in my 20's (1970's) the general feeling in America about working conditions in Russia was "You pretend to work, and we'll pretend to pay you."

Happy New Year, Sergei!! Thank you for the most productive and time appropriate video :)

People were not drinking because life was so good. Life was so good because people were drinking.

Thank you for sharing your story. My own family has dealt with a lot of alcoholism, and it's nice to hear from someone who's experienced similar things halfway across the world.

The reason they drank so much is that their ability to choose for them self was severely impeded.

Impressive how you find all the background material-photos, documents etc... Thanks for excellent content!

In the mid 90's I worked in a warehouse for soda, beer and other alcoholic beverages. Every morning I went to get coffee with colleagues before we started work and every morgen there was a colleague Russian sitting at a small table near the coffee machine. Every morning before he started work he first drank a bottle of vodka and we always knew when he ran out of money because then he drank methylated spirits with a bottle of water. We were always amazed how he could function at all.

I live in a town in Canada, alcoholism and drug addiction has been a problem here for many years now. It seems it's influenced my entire family, an has sure had its influence on me. Especially being a young dude in these uncertain times, it's hard to resist a drink. Takes everything, but in the end only creates problems, never fixes any.

My Uncle Casper was a problem drinker, he farmed. And well he provided the whole town with vegetables all summer long, he could grow stuff. I remember my aunt asking to go over and get some eggplant. So my uncle said come take a walk and well he took me to one of the fields it was all eggplant and there were really good ones. He was so proud to show me this, I was maybe 28 at the time, a young working pilot. I was impressed. Then he died and the way he died alone with well a lot of empty bottles around his house. He would have been considered a moderate drinker by Russian standards. One of the Reasons Russia is in such a mess is well Vodka. To fix their problems they first need to fix the excessive vodka consumption. That is the hard part. So sad about your father.

I remember reading a story in a newspaper (New York metropolitan area) towards the end of the Cold War, about Soviet soldiers stationed in Poland. They had abandoned their tank, fully armed and functional, for a case of vodka!!! I figured the end was near for the Soviet Union when I read that, but was somewhat skeptical about that tale. Well, this video confirms that the story was 100% accurate. Thanks for the history lesson, once again.

It's a problem everywhere. My father didn't drink. But my mother was a closet alcoholic. When he died she came out. I unfortunately as my 2 brothers got her gene. It was such a problem for me sent me to prison 3 times. 3 time straighten me out been sober Feb 19 2010. Life is so much better.

When I visited Sweden in 2006, I learned that there was a big problem with alcoholism, as well. More binge drinking, though. Metalheads - like myself - have a love relationship with alcohol, too. And many other artistic and bohemian cultures. Alcohol can be irresistible and seductive, because of its effects. You drink to celebrate, you drink to forget about problems. I mean... there's not really one reason.

I think drinking was so prevalent in Soviet life was due to two main parts: higher latitude so dark cold winters, depressing and such. The other reason is the oppressive nature of life. Most people are poorer and have very little to their own name. It’s very hard to move up in society and people can find themselves in dead end jobs in a small home. They are faced with so much difficulty that they turn to the only relief they know.

My dude. This is actually a very old statistic, by which I mean that if you look back in history even a hundred years (well after the sainted Tolstoy and Kropotkin, who both railed against it in their own ways), you will see that Russia has always had this problem. As you know. Just consider what happened when the last Tsar before Putin tried to ban it in 1914... My friend Slava first went back to visit Russia maybe 5 years ago, after living in the US for 25 years or so, since he was a young boy. He knew all about vodka consumption. At his wedding, even though he had actually become a huge weed smoker and didn't actually drink much at all, the older generation drank so many gallons of it that neither he nor I could believe it. But when he went back to Moscow again for the first time since he was a kid, he was just very deeply shocked and depressed at the sight of all the vodka-men passed out at 8 am on the benches of all those lovely little parks in Moscow. Of course the answer to your question--why do Russians drink so much?--is very, very obvious. My wife grew up in Czechoslovakia in the 70s, and her stories are no different. I didn't actually even believe her (and Slava) until I lived in the wretched Khrushchoba building that was her home for so many years. In the West we have anti-depressants, many other pharmacological options and endless entertainments. When you live in a concrete shoebox and you know that you have no options at all, why not crawl into a bottle that doesn't yell at you or condemn you to a dreary, pointless existence? The only competing explanation is the peculiar quality of the soul-killing shade of gray that only exists in Eastern Europe and Russia. It's depressing enough in the UK and Germany, etc, but this grayness in the sky, the buildings and all relationships is absolutely lethal east of the Oder. Hard to describe to people who have never lived in these places, but it's fookin' true. It's the absolute antithesis of sunny California, where anything is possible. Instead, it's gray, cold and wet there, where nothing is possible. Nietzsche would have been even darker if he had to live in the Gray Lands. As sh*tty as the consequences are, who wouldn't seek even temporary escape in a bottle of clear poison?

Alcoholism was a big problem during the zarist regime too (not implying life was great during USSR), and still is in most postsoviet countries

Assumptions, assumptions... There were no "Vitryazvitel"s in Armenia, and we have a completely different drinking culture and social constraints. There might be various reasons why the winners' names are Armenian, but that list doesn't come from Armenia 100%. Fun fact: the world's earliest known winery has been discovered in Armenia.

On my summer vacation from San Clemente High School back in 1971, I met many un-sober folks on the streets of the Soviet Union. I spent a lot of time toasting to "international workers solidarity" & "to the friendship between our two northern countries", being as I was originally from Canada. The locals got a kick outta a foreign kid that spoke Russian with a Ukrainian accent. (Thanks, Roger!) For years thereafter, I called Stoli "Russian Antifreeze". Those experiences when I was 16 years old pretty much turned me off binge drinking alcohol. There's nothing like waking up in a forest after a night of heavy festivities , not knowing where you were or what you had done.

I was told a story about these facilities by a Russian girl I met in LA. She told me how her father woke up in one to find the man in the bunk next to him was Boris Yeltsin.

The Russian government monopoly on vodka was set up by Tsar Nicholas' II's finance minister (Sergei Witte). It was the only feasible way to fund government projects like the Trans=Siberian RR line (which costs several hundred million Rubles). Witte worried about its effect on the Russian population-but there was no way to tax incomes in Tsarist Russia. The vodka monopoly was picked up by the Communist Lenin-and Stalin extended it..later, Gorbachev (AKA "lemonade Joe") tried to end it, but it was essential to government finance.

You’re father sounds like a good man just doing his best

I would say they drank because there was a lack of other things to do. The state likely had an interest in limiting other social contacts.

Russia didn't have prohibition. In the U.S. in the 1910s alcoholism was a huge problem before, deeply ingrained in working-class culture. While it was only temporary, prohibition really changed the cultural role of alcohol tremendously and in only what, 13 years. European countries with "soft" prohibition, like limits on how much you can buy from state liquor stores, accomplished the same except over a much longer period. It's often said prohibition was a failure, but from the facts it was massively successful and was repealed largely because alcoholism largely disappeared (statistically speaking), the culture changed, and people no longer understood why alcohol should be banned. Russia just never forcibly dealt with the problem.

Your honest analysis of your life earned you a subscribe. My grandfather was also a drunk. When we were kids we used to play a game of "find grandpa's bottles"... Interestingly they were always empty.

World war 2 did a real number on people and the whole nation or rather nations(including the occupied countries) were suffering from PTSD. Only coping mechanism they had was to drink, no one talked as things didn't work that way back then. From my personal experience the wounds of WW2 in many of those ex-soviet countries, have not started to heal until recently with the great-great grandchildren of the people who lived through WW2. I believe the occupation made things worse and stunted the healing process as life in Soviet was hard in the way that you had no real incentive to be ambitious due to ambitions mostly leading you nowhere. Among other things. "Arbeit macht frei" could be applied to the whole union as hard labour was a virtue for virtues sake. Your father seemed like a pretty great guy I have to say, seen the worse part of alcoholism in the family myself and how people get messed up. Great video, and great channel. Take care!

Hello Sergei! I haven't seen a video of yours in a while but I decided to jump back in here. Wishing you a great 2023!

I think living in Russia would turn anyone to alcoholism.

One Finnish historian said on a radio programme once that it all had to do with the Vikings and mead. The northmen introduced mead to what they called eastern lands. At some point (much later on) the authorities imposed a ration for mead. Then when stills became more affordable, distilled alcohol replaced (mild) mead but the volumetric ration remained unchanged.

Thank you Sergei . I am 73 , and was always mystified by the Soviet Union . As a kid in the 1950s and 60s we were made to fear the Soviet Union . But then, once in awhile i would find Soviet photo magazines showing happy people who looked like us . By high school i realized that both the US & USSR had a propaganda operation going on . I really appreciate your videos . Keep up the good work !

There is a book, "Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State" by Mark Schrad that goes into detail about the conflicted relationship that the Russian governments have had between the need for vodka revenue and the detrimental effect vodka had on production and society. I listened to it on audio maybe around 2014. I don't remember that it had any of what you told us about the drying out services in Brezhnev days, though. I hadn't heard about them before, but maybe what you told us explains a scene in the movie Autumn Marathon. (The audible narrator's pronunciation of Russian words was terrible. I don't expect narrators to have a good pronunciation, but it would be nice if they made an effort. Even words that are commonly known to Americans were unrecognizable. It was a good book, though.)

The late Chrostopher Hitchens was a young socialist ,against things like drugs and prostitution,within hours of visiting Cuba on a socialist student trip,he was offered both.he then reversed his views quickly.

Our teacher in metal trades class would tell partial stories occasionally when class was almost over about his early life working in a steel mill and other machine shops. He had this one story I heard several times about touring a Russian factory with a small group. They stopped the tour for lunch and when they came back there were women running the equipment instead of the men they were introduced to earlier. He asked where all the men went and it was explained to him that the men would get drunk on their lunch break, so their wives would finish their shift. From his explanation it was so common in most industries that they usually had to do their demonstrations in the mornings before the workers were drunk. Of course we thought it was badass being high school kids, but now it just sounds like a miserable existence.

On a visit to Russia I was impressed with how well they looked after their cemeteries. I made the observation that you had to die to get looked after properly! On looking at the headstones I was amazed at the young ages of death. Mainly due to doing stupid shit when drunk. Drowning seemed to be very prevalent. Note to self. Do not jump in the river when pissed.

Awesome channel. I was born just a couple years before the Soviet Union fell apart, so everything I know about those times is what my family has told me. This channel is allowing me to fill in the gaps.

One of the hardest working human beings that I have ever come across was a good ol'boy from Kentucky who drank a half gallon of cheap whiskey every day of his life. Seriously we moved trailers, I watched him use a chainsaw on a roofing system on a double wide. Functional alcoholism is out there. He long before lost his driver's license, but as far as working, I do not think many people could surpass him.

I love your compositions. You have a great narrative style and it's very personable. Rather than listening to an academic video about Soviet sociology, I get to hear actual stories about your life. It's more relatable this way. You paint a real human picture of your society.

Back in the 80s I read an article in a (West-)German magazine about Soviet stores running out of sugar because it was all being used for moonshining. Moonshiners had switched to candy which was still available but was also getting short due to the moonshining demand. Back then I was wondering if some bored editor had invented that story - as unlikely as it may be. No longer.

We had such facilities in Poland. They were called "Izba Wytrzeźwień".

I’d suppose people drank so much because even if they have a job and being poor was comfortable, people had little opportunity to make substantial improvements to their lives. What was there to really strive for? Additionally, there was little to distract people from thinking about this reality. In the US, we have a huge entertainment industry and consumer culture distracts people. If you can afford to go to dinner and a movie and buy a cheap new gizmo it serves as a decent distraction from economical inequality.

imagine being forced to pay to sober up when all of your money goes to vodka. they must have really hated that.

As a kid in then a part of USSR I used to spend my summers at my granny's in the countryside. I used to take my bicycle to the local shop to help her out with groceries. One day I noticed a tractor idling in front of the shop, with the driver nowhere to be seen. And the next day. And the day after that. It later turned out that the driver had been in in such a hurry to get his afternoon vodka, he had left his tractor running, thinking he'd be back soon enough, but ended up getting into a drinking spree with his buddies forgetting all about his tractor with its engine running for three whole days. There were also serious incidents, the one I witnessed was that a tractor had veered off a perfectly straight road into a ditch, rolled over and caught fire with a massive trailer of hay rolls in tow. Me and my dad rushed over there just like everyone else. It's still the biggest vehicle fire I've ever witnessed with all the hay rolls in flames. As a kid I was told back then that the driver got out safely, but many years later I heard that he actually got trapped inside and never made it out, and that vodka had been the main reason of the accident.

I'm a father who drinks occasionally (maybe once or twice a week, depending on social circumstance) who's siblings are full-fledged alcoholics, I feel the need to tell you: Your father very likely hated himself every time he got drunk because he loved you and knew how much it hurt you, but at the same time, he felt powerless to avoid drinking. I don't know what it is exactly, but I've acutely witnessed love ones who don't want to drink their families miserable but struggle knowing they've already hurt their families and children so much to the point the only respite from the deep seated guilt, and ability to even function without bursting into tears every moment of their lives, is four fingers into a bottle. It's not an excuse, I'm just letting you know (from what I've seen) they aren't so much choosing booze over their family, often they are choosing to nudge themselves and everyone just one more day forward without tears, knowing consciously the risk but hoping dearly they have the strength to hold themselves just below that threshold until tomorrow when they may have the strength they don't have today.

It sounds like Russians drink to a level that makes the Irish say, “Goddamn. Are you trying to kill yourself?”

I think the drinking was mainly the government being able to control a majority of its citizen's while making a profit at the same time. Almost pushing alcoholism with the amount produced, it seemed almost impossible not to drink in the ussr; great video!

Part of the reason i think is BECAUSE they didn't need to worry about those basic necessities. I think it's important to have enough and the right type of responsibility in life.

Happy New Year Sergei! I hope you and you family are doing well. My wife and I visited Ukraine in 2002 and loved everything about it! Ever since, Nemiroff has been our favorite brand of Vodka. In moderation, of course.

This video reminds me of when I worked on a hospital floor from early 2021 to mid 2022. A third of the patients were there for alcohol related issues mostly cirrhosis and pancreatitis. The protocol for these patients was to remove the hand sanitizer from the wall before they even set foot in the room because they would instantly start drinking it the second we left the room after admitting them.

Privit, Sergei & thank you for the great video - outstanding commentary, pics & footage! I gave it all up 16 years ago myself after a “long & successful” 35-year relationship (kind of a dysfunctional relationship, ha, ha) with alcohol. Many a bottle of Stolichnaya passed my lips. Fortunately I never reached the “heights” of these characters in the video, however. Thanks again. Buvai!

Also from former Soviet Union. Answer for your question have many sides : you were more or less an slave and there were impossible to follow your dreams (like there were very hard to choose your career, even place where you lived etc). Smaller places were nothing else to do ... work, maybe cinema and that's it. Overall culture - drinking was good hobby for men. Also there were maybe some genetical propensity for alcoholism. Know few guys, who went full alcoholics less then a year. Overall stagnantion, just nothing happened with in people's lives usually.

Honestly I think the Stolichnaya redesign is a bad idea. It's just vodka, but it's still destroying history over politics. I hope in 50 years people will look at it and laugh, like "Freedom Fries" or "Police Dogs" (assuming people are still around in 50 years.)

To be fair, I would be drinking myself numb too if I had to live in a communist regime. Can't imagine the stress of not knowing what batshit crazy policy is gonna happen the next day.

I read "Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State"by Mark Lawrence Schrad by a few years back. It broke my heart for for the Russian people. Alcohol is a world plague. AA saved my life at 28, am now 77. My last drink remains my last drink. I pray for you.

A bottle every two days? Sounds about right. I mean it's not good, but that is probably reflective of the reality of being a functional alcoholic. Speaking from experience, drinking much more than that daily over very long of a period really runs you down and you cease to function. Like hitting rock bottom and backing off 5% so you don't die, instead of doing the rational thing and quitting entirely.

Great episode! My mother was an alcoholic and ruined my life from age 12 on. The only good thing about it was that it made me HATE any wine, hard liquor and even beer; so it's like i was vaccinated against it! (which saved me from wasting thousands of dollars in my life, which i used for important things instead.) i'd say in RU vodka was used so you could forget the winter cold, the life you led if poor and of course, male peer-pressure. And the only good thing i read about Pootin is that he wants RU to quit drinking (tho' i want them to wait until they lose-the-War, ha-ha!)

really enjoy your videos, it is amazing to hear first hand experience on how soviet culture, and era was.

In anyplace in the world where people feel limited to their free will, they'd easily take to drugs and alcohol as an escape.

These videos are invaluable! As a young person that lives in a post cold war world it's very difficult understand what life was like in a society that no longer exists. Your perspectives on ethic identify are incredibly insightful!

When they say everything was free it meant everything was accessible & affordable

I think Soviet people drank so much in the late Brezhnev era because it was the Era of Stagnation and Developed Socialism. The cheap housing, cheap public transportation, and 100% employment left people with too much extra money and not a lot to do with it. If the Soviet Union had put a bigger emphasis on producing consumer goods, at least some of that vodka money could have been spent on other things. Better entertainment options could have also siphoned off some of that extra money. Video game arcades, rated R movies, and magazines like Playboy could have enticed some men to spend a part of their disposable income on something other than liquor. True alcoholics will drink regardless, but it could have prevented at least some of the drinking due to boredom.

Everyone had the right to be equally drunk.

Thank you Sergei for your video. I find stories or how common people lived in what was once the Soviet Union. You asked the reason why people back then drank so much from the minds of Americans and I will give you my opinion. First off I feel that the society when you grew up were proud people. They saw so much tragedy in the war, so much death, and the ones that made it thru were the winners or at least I feel that is how they might have felt. I think I read or am aware that the leaders, the important people made lots of speeches always telling the populist how great the communist party is, How great the housing was, how other countries (like the US) was always trying to keep the country from advancing or threating the peace of the people (Maybe yes, maybe no?). I feel many things the speeches was telling everyone wasn't true (sometimes or many times). Now if you make a society frightened, and lie to a society ( or realize it's lies after time) the trust is dissolved and maybe boredom, the want to have things but seeing no way to get those things, seeing pictures or movies from other places (unauthorized type) the people long to travel and see those things,,,, Freedom to make peoples own choices? Self worth I feel is very important,, Working hard to make something for ones self is much more gratifying than being given something, feeling like people count,, Maybe that's why in WW2 the people all worked towards a common goal,, to win to feel worth, pride. Now Growing up poor is fine if you no nothing else,, Same with me, I didn't grow up in USSR so I can only really comment on things how I see it and I'm not collage educated so I maybe very wrong about everything. I will say when I saw unfair or bad things happening to the people or when Russia tries to make things work out well,, and it goes bad I feel bad, like I would for anyone trying and it fails, speaking mostly from the 1980's onwards,, Don't know much about things before then. Everyone needs a uplifting history, Pride, Strength in what they are and where they come from. If that image is looked thru a mirror that unclear it's hard to have that feeling? Booze can make things look in focus for a while anyway, or takes worry away, or getting drunk the people could get angry and tell it how things are, not the way they say it is,,? Thank you, I'll keep watching your channel.

American here. I have an alcoholic father as well, decades of family drama as a result. Alcohol is a terrible drug.

Sergei, have you done a video on insurance? I'm curious if car insurance was something you need to have when you owned a car. And, also, if people bought life insurance (if it even existed). Another topic is telephones. Did many people have them in their homes? Love your videos and Happy New Year!

I always thought that it was just my house where Mom and Dad were playing "hide and seek" with vodka to dilute it. I really enjoyed the video and the comments--everyone is coming together and sharing their trauma.

Easier to control drunks, they do not do a lot of thinking.

I’m sorry that your father wasn’t there for you most of the time because of all of the depression and alcohol use. That’s really challenging and difficult. I’m glad you had some good times in the countryside in the summer…seems to me from watching your channel over the years that your summers at your grandmother’s cottage were your best times. It’s amazing how bad the alcohol problem was! Not surprising that Gorbachev tried to control it…it must have been a national crisis at this level. I wonder with everything going on now (and hearing how much alcohol is with the ‘mobilization’) how bad the alcohol problems are in Russia now compared to Soviet/Breshznev times?

My father was a drinker but not a daily one and he only drank standard strength British larger about 4 percent. But I actually have some very fun memories of him when I was a child he would let me stay up late and we would watch 18 rated movies and TV shows while eating fast food. He would only ever drink socialy and only kept a few bottles of wine in the house, if he drank at home it was 2 cana. He did own a hotel with bar and it was the only bar in Cardiff, Wales that was open 24/7 even on Christmas, Christmas eve. Any day or time it was open. I worked in their as a child and teenager and I would let people smoke, when the smoking ban started I thought it would be a really bad idea to get rid of the smell of smoke as the smell of stale beer and other bad stuff in bars is worse. Especially outside of the summer people would only come in when I worked. I really did not care what others did as long as they did not hurt each other so I did see alot of cray stuff but I only ever drink a measure of single malt whiskey or good quality spiced rulum, or something fancy for the taste. I lived in East Asia nearly all of my adult life but would spend some months back home and usually live with my father. He would visit me quite often and he was like the tank in Tianamon Square but he did not stop, he was an usually tall man and when he was drunk after going to a western bar all eyes on us. He was never nasty but sometimes if the police pissed him off on other nations he would threaten to break their legs or even push them out of the way or give them a slap when they try to extort him. He came really close to being shot my a policeman in Mexico while drunk after punching him for trying to shake us down. He had a gun pointed at him and he just said shoot you coward ..... Sometimes u would pick him up from the bar he would ask me for fried chicken. This was at 3am usually but quite often he would talk his mind and tell me some of the familys dirty laundry and things from his life I think he only ever told me. From a young age my father treated me like an adult, we would go on vacations twice a year or more. Even though he was divorced to my mother I would see him every day as a child. I have chronic pain and take opiate medication so too much alcohol could kill me, that and working in a bar really puts you off it. A few times after drinking vodka or cider he would be passed out on the floor but it was very rare. I only see it twice and hear about it 1 time. I feel so sad that he died suddenly for a strange poison when I was 28. I was on vacation in America and I was the last one to talk to him but at least put last conversation was good. He said I love you son see you soon I said the same back. I was the last person that he knew that he talked to as 6 hours later he was put in a comma by medical staff. On the way to jfk driving like crazy when I learned what the poison was and he would surely die I had a breakdown and all I knew is I have to go to a doctor and get some diazepam or xanax or something to calm me down as they won't let me on the flight like this. A doctor was pretty understanding seeing me sleep deprived and suffering but wow was it expensive. I hated the medical staff for keeping him alive in a vegatative state, My father asked me to promise him if he is ever a vegeatible to kill him ASAP and that his body should be buried at sea. He only told me about the sea burial and I hate my family wanted him buried and I nearly punched the fu eral director for embalming him as he thought that was the worst. He only wanted his body to rest in the place he most love and be fish food. I come from a small family at that was the first death of a family member u had to get over. I still bring beer and cigarettes to his grave. When i was a child he was the strongest man I knew even as an adult I knew that people that really pissed him of. Most would have a really hard time to take him down. Some people used to think he was a fool as he was kind and would smile often. He never once hurt me physically or even with words. Thr worst thing is the police are useless and I have no answers. If he died in a motorbike crash at least I would know he died doing what he loved and no whys. I'm sure your father maybe had some burdens you never knew about, fathers usually hide that especially from sons. Peer pressure is very powerful.

I don't think anyone in the West ever thought the Soviet Union was a "workers paradise".

Have you ever done one about hard drug use in the soviet union?

The causes for drunkenness could be trauma, sadness, depression, genetical disposition, boredom, hopelessness, I guess.

What an interesting well presented show you have. Cheers from Vancouver!

17:42 “why do you think Soviet people were drinking so much?” The first answer that comes to mind is boredom. I used to have a binge drinking problem and it was in large part due to boredom. I also watched a video yesterday that said the cold dreary climate of Russia causes many people to get depressed (and bored) and drink.

If all one does is work with few abilities to get away, then of course alcohol becomes an option. I had one workplace that encouraged this behavior as a way to cope with 12+ hour days, never being able to be home with the family, and few days off.

Yeah. This brings back memories. I spent three weeks in Poland, in 1977 and every other day, I got hammered. They liked to play this game: Let's get the new guy shitfaced! When the regular wódka ran out, there was always samogon, somewhere. And hardly anyone bothered with beer - I had to acclimatise quickly. I've never drunk so much alcohol, so quickly, before or since. Left me with a lot to think about, while I was recovering.

My family is from Afghanistan, when the Soviets were occupying there, they would give out bags of beer or some hard liquor because my dad said people would go blind from that. But from my understanding is leaders like Stalin heavily encouraged drinking in the now post soviet states so the people grow a dependency on alcohol. I don't know about Tajikistan but in Kyrgyzstan they drink and it's basically traditional although they're supposed to be devout Muslims.

This is really funny. Thanks much for being so honest about life in Soviet Russia.

Great video. Great honesty

My buddies and I went to an old, abandoned Soviet military base in the countryside of former East Germany. We got into the housing units and they were: A. All exactly the same, no big surprise. B. They were littered with empty vodka bottles. Like, literally (yes literally) no less than 100 per apartment. The hallways were just as bad.

After the American Revolution , Washington expressed concern about the rampant alcoholism , especially among war vets. He actually thought the young republic would not survive if the trend continued

No one ever said life was good in the Soviet Union,or in Russia. Bit I lived in the great US and I also drank a lot of Vodka,so environment is not the only variable in heavy drinking.

Your father was on the light end of it, no doubt. The fact that he fully provided without dipping into the main income is as good as it gets given the cultural situation, with the exceptions of those who drank little/did not drink. Hard to imagine how a worker could have a social life if they did not drink back then.