So, friends — today will be a great and interesting post about Soviet alcoholics and how in General drinking in the USSR. If you do not know is that during the “blessed stagnation” (as they call Brezhnev era fans of the USSR) many people were drinking, but now it somehow is not accepted to remember is on TV more tell all sorts of tales about the “horrors of the nineties”. And people are willing to believe in these stories — because people either forget or never knew the true numbers of alcohol consumption under Brezhnev.
No matter how argue with that, fans of the scoop, but USSR during the seventies and eighties of goals was the real country household of alcoholics — it was during these years alcohol consumption among ordinary citizens has reached maximum numbers, and this is what I you in detail and clearly tell in this post. About the “dry law” Gorbachev also talk with him a few tried to correct the situation with domestic Soviet alcoholism, but only made it worse.
So, in this post — facts and figures about how the USSR was drinking under Brezhnev, and also about what happened under Gorbachev. Come under kat, there interesting. Well, friends to add do not forget)
As the Soviet Union drank themselves under Brezhnev.
Those who think “highly Brezhnev’s USSR” a country of cultural and malopyuschy people, I suggest you look at the statistics. In the 1960-ies the average citizen in the Soviet Union consumed an average of 4.6 litres of alcohol a year, the beginning of the “stagnation” of the 1970s, this figure had increased to 8.44 liters (i.e., almost 2 times), and by the early 1980s this figure reached as much as of 10.6 liters of pure alcohol — a dry figures of Soviet statisticsto show exactly how increased consumption of alcohol in the Union.
Now let’s translate this into specific drinks. In half-liter bottle of vodka contains 200 grams of pure alcohol, this means that the average Soviet person in 1981 drank 53 bottles of vodka a year. If to translate into the wine — it will be 118 bottles of dry wine. Don’t know about you, but to me these figures are shocking. And the right to drank only wine and drank mostly strong alcohol, and all the fortified stuff like “Solntsedar”, from whose nose was crimson, and his face shimmered red-blue-green shades.
You also need to consider the fact that the statistics said “the average temperature in the hospital” — because the USSR was completely teetotal people, and those who consume very moderately (say, 10 bottles of vodka per year). But then it turns out that enough high consumption figures (actually, a bottle of vodka per week) need to multiply in order to get a true picture of alcohol consumption.
Plus, this also need to add on the consumption of moonshine and all sorts of homemade “liqueurs” from homemade alcohol, or the consumption of any “improper fluids”, like Cologne, varnish and steklomoya — which nobody ever considered. What could be the real picture? Hard to say, since such calculations no one did, but I think that among the drinking population figure 53 bottles per year can safely be multiplied by 1.5-2 times.
What we still have the statistics of the Brezhnev years? From alcohol poisoning in the USSR in the early 1980s, died 2% of all deaths in the country of men. I repeat, not from the effects of years of alcohol abuse (such as heart attacks, pancreatitis, cirrhosis, and other “charms”), and from poisoning. About converti of all murders in the country (23.7 per cent) occurred in a condition of alcoholic intoxication, was about the same and the number of suicides in a drunken state.
In absolute terms, from reasons connected with alcohol, died in the Soviet Union 351 thousand men and 135 women tysch annually, which amounted to 486 thousand people. This is comparable to the population of big cities of regional importance.
Why do people in the USSR were drinking?
Why the Soviet people were drinking a lot? Can be thus implemented a cunning DULLES plan for the destruction of the Soviet Union, and night over every Soviet mechanic was standing marine NATO, which was poured through a funnel that vodka in your mouth? Of course not. The cause of total drunkenness was itself the Soviet state and the Soviet system itself.
Modern psychiatry says that sleep starts is the one who has no inner core and the desire to grow and to achieve something in life. These conditions are “fundamentally” was provided in the USSR — the inner core of the personality could not occur in society, the basis of the existence of which was unquestioning obedience to superiors and ideology (generated from another school), and something to “achieve in life” was too difficult — ceiling and development of the Soviet man was an engineer in KB with a salary of 200 rubles, crappy Bungalow (not like the great linguist and physicist) and the same crappy apartment.
Simply put, the ordinary Soviet person was drinking out of boredom. Higher mechanic-machinist will not jump, no their job will not start, the border will not go more than 200 rubles per month will not receive. Here and there remained only to ride on weekends to the country and drinking with friends.
In addition, in the Soviet society was extremely high tolerance to alcohol. “Officially” there were all sorts of anti-alcohol posters, sobering-up stations and movies in which a policeman strongly scolded the drunkard, but in reality, alcoholics are pitied, they were busy and tried not to fire without reason. In contrast to the “damned dissidents” who were locked up in a madhouse and prison, alcoholics were flesh of their flesh in this system — it was thought that “comrade messed up a little, but it is certainly ours, a proletarian”.
What happened under Gorbachev?
Pay special attention to the fact that all this happened in those “blessed the years of the Brezhnev stagnation”, which is so fond of praising the fans of the USSR. Supposedly, that’s when the USSR was hoo! We feared most in the world, Woo-hoo! And then came “the hell with the spot on his forehead” and ruined everything!
Let’s remember what happened in those years. When Gorbachev began the policy of perestroika and was declared the publicity means that many of the problems of the Soviet system was discussed openly. In the mid-eighties, finally openly been said that the Soviet Union is a country domestic drinkingand need something to do. On may 7, 1985 adopted a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On measures to overcome drunkenness and alcoholism”, better known as “the beginning of the anti-alcohol campaign”.
In parallel with this, the Soviet state has gone on unprecedented measures — more than in 2 times has increased the price of vodka, with the result that its consumption is strongly reduced. This measure, incidentally, was not immediately accepted and a long discussion in government circles — because the income from the sale of vodka to the population accounted for a considerable part of the Soviet budget (Yes, solder the population of the Soviet state, not the NATO commandos on the DULLES plan).
And parallel to this, the Soviet government finally allowed more or less trouble-free trip abroad, mind our own business, Cooperatives, etc., which allowed to find itself, many of those who under Brezhnev had just quietly asleep at the factory or in research Institute of meaninglessness and despair.
Epilogue.
According to statistics, in the last years of the Soviet Union’s alcohol consumption per capita was 3.9 liters instead of 10.6 under Brezhnev. And you can continue to believe that in 1970-e years Soviet Union was the “great state with the most reading nation in the world“. Yeah, most of the label of vodka “Wheat” read.
Write in the comments what you think about all this, I wonder.
© 2019, paradox. All rights reserved.
