Russia and their vodka
miller8966
Posts: 1,450
CNN) -- The Russian government let the green dragon -- the folk name for alcohol -- out of the bottle last month when it announced a tax hike on vodka. Acting President Vladimir Putin has been hiding from the dragon ever since, wary of getting burned before the March 26 presidential election.
When news broke of the decision to raise state duty on vodka by 40 percent, panicked and grumbling consumers formed long lines outside distilleries to stock up. Regional governments outside Moscow, up in arms and fearing civil disobedience, united in refusing to implement the new measure.
Macho Russian men consider the judo-loving Putin a man who can hold his vodka, but if he were perceived to be trying to get hold of theirs, judo moves would not help. So Putin, eager to hold on to his presidential front-runner status, has avoided the issue altogether.
To comprehend the risks of coming between a Russian and his vodka, you have to understand that what in Russian means "little water" or "dear water" is not just the national drink. It is an ancient and profound part of what it means to be Russian.
The Germans have their beer; the French their wine; the Spanish sangria; the Japanese sake. Flourishing deep in the Russian soul is an affinity for vodka.
Vodka is alternately glorified -- the stuff of romance, celebration, camaraderie, succor during long and bitter nights, of fine dining with caviar -- and condemned as the scourge that fuels Russia's astoundingly high rates of alcoholism.
The latest vodka dispute is not the first time Russians have in waited in line for their favorite drink. This queue outside a liquor store was during fall 1998 when the ruble was devalued and vodka became a substitute for paper money.
Drunkenness admirable in some circles
By no means do all Russians drink too much, or at all. But annual consumption of vodka in the nation of 146 million is 4 billion liters a year, according to Time magazine.
The Russian Health Ministry estimates consumption in 1996 was 18 liters of pure alcohol per adult. That is pure alcohol, which is the rough equivalent of 38 liters of 100-proof vodka per person a year.
According to preeminent Russian scholar Bruce Lincoln, who has lived in Russia, written at least 12 books on the subject and is distinguished research professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, the Russian word "zaploi" means roughly, "I was so drunk last night I couldn't remember a thing." And that is admirable in some circles.
The economy depends on it as surely as millions of Russian alcoholics -- estimated to number 2,269 per 100,000 people, according to First Deputy Health Minister Gennadi Onishchenko. Profits from sales of vodka have helped send troops to Chechnya and Sputnik and Mir into space.
The government tax hike may force buyers to stay away from commercial vodkas and seek products from moonshine industry
A long alliance with vodka
A crucial symbiotic vodka-based relationship exists between the public and the state. Since Ivan the Terrible, the state has used proceeds from sales of vodka to further its domestic and foreign agendas, and the Russian public has always obliged by consuming vast amounts of it.
The holy -- or unholy -- alliance between Russians and vodka began in the late 1400s, when vodka began to be distilled in Russia. Within another 100 years, the state set a monopoly over the production and sale of vodka that would last for the next four centuries, according to Muscovite journalist Andrey Sebrant.
But the public costs are astounding. Between 1960 and 1987, 30 million to 35 million people died of alcohol abuse. In the 1980s, 74 percent of murders were committed under the influence. Worker production on paydays and following weekends drops as much as 30 percent, according to one estimate.
Putin, exercising extreme caution, has steered clear of personal support for the tax hike, declaring last month that the measure had nothing to do with him.
The Gorbachev lesson
Putin has not forgotten his history lessons. The last Russian leader to interfere with his countrymen's drinking habits was former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose well-intentioned attempt in the 1980s to reduce alcoholism was a political disaster.
Appalled by statistics that reported up to 40 percent of the Russian adult male population was alcoholic, "Misha" cut back production and hours that vodka could be sold -- earning the utter disdain of the Russians.
Although the benefits were obvious -- longer life expectancy, fewer divorces and accidents -- Russians hated sobriety by government decree.
Gorbachev's efforts resulted in huge revenue losses, lengthy lines and a booming black market in alcohol. More than that, they lost Gorbachev the affection he expected from the Russian people for Glasnost; instead he received only their loathing.
Gorbachev reportedly tells this story: "This guy," he says, "was standing in line for 10 hours to buy vodka, and finally decided to go to the Kremlin to kill Gorbachev. The next day, the guy was back in the vodka line: 'It didn't work,' he tells the others. 'The line to the Kremlin is even longer.'"
A call to revolution?
In a land where the average wage is $60 a month (and about $36 in poor rural areas), the rise in state tax -- which started February 25 by decree of the Economics Ministry -- will put the price of a liter of vodka at 62 rubles ($2.15). In some quarters, that is a call to revolution.
When the duty hike was announced, the anger in the long queues outside vodka outlets all over Moscow was directed at the government and its top man. "You can't raise the price for such a vital product before the elections," one Russian standing in line at a distillery told DPA, the German Press Agency. "That's how you lose votes."
"The government hasn't got any money and it needs more, so it steals from us," groused pensioner Alexei Dikchus, leaving a Kristall vodka factory's outlet store -- after a three-hour wait -- with 30 bottles in tow. "Putin's going to lose a lot of votes to the Communists because of this," he told The Vancouver Sun.
Rural regions, where poverty is much greater than in Moscow, rebelled. They feared that a possible nose-dive in consumption and rise in illegally produced vodka will hurt their own fragile tax revenues.
"We can't afford to do this. People will stop buying vodka," Alexander Alexeev, chief of administration for Ryazan region, told Scotland on Sunday newspaper. "We don't get any subsidies to support us. In fact, vodka takes care of 20 percent of the region's budget."
Moonshine vodka a potential killer
People will stop buying state vodka, that is. "Never underestimate the ingenuity of a Russian when it comes to getting vodka," Professor Lincoln said. The state plays a risky hand because a rise in prices means more untaxed, black-market vodka. "Russians are great moonshiners and tax evaders," he said.
The business in moonshine, or samogum, is always booming, and goes hand-in-hand with bribery and rampant corruption. Good vodka is brewed from the finest water and rye. Moonshine is concocted from anything handy -- potatoes, apples, wheat. Sometimes, according to Lincoln, sulfuric acid is used. These brews can be lethal.
Samogum sells for 30 rubles, or about a dollar a bottle, and 25,000 Russians a year die of chemical poisoning from bootleg vodka. The cheap brands sell in bottles with no labels and no bottle caps. Why bother? the Russians ask.
A commentator on Moscow's Channel One news addressed bootlegging when he said, "Putting up the prices will cause new troubles -- it really is stupid because it means more people will produce it at home."
Pavel Shapkin, head of the spirits manufacturers' association, has the same opinion. He says only two parties will benefit from the price increase -- the state and black marketeers.
Putin playing it cagey
Putin -- recognizing that a 40 percent increase in vodka taxes was a blunder -- is cagey about the outcome of the hike. He says "the government has taken no decisions on this issue." He may intend to show his hand after the election, but not before.
"Most people in our country, unfortunately, cannot afford to drink cognac or whisky," he told reporters. "Whether or not they are celebrating a holiday, when it comes to hard liquor, Russians drink vodka. That is why any issue concerning vodka cannot be considered a joke."
So far, Sebrant says, the duty hike may have affected production but has yet to trickle down much to price tags on the shelves. Sebrant sees no significant price rise in the vodka kiosks and restaurants in his Moscow neighborhood.
A small increase wouldn't bother the "New Russians," anyway, who show off their ill-gotten gains by paying a Russian's average monthly wage on a single meal in one of Moscow's flashy restaurants.
But the working classes and the pensioners will feel the pinch. Factory workers care whether their usual and prized 100 grams of vodka after work costs seven or eight rubles. The new minimum affects those people with less money, but sometimes greater thirsts.
When talking about the issue, Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov gives the tax hike some spin. He says new minimum prices are a kind of consumer protection -- only at a price of at least 31 rubles per half-liter can a consumer be guaranteed the vodka is legal and not illegal and dangerous rot gut.
Jokes about vodka irrepressible
Although Putin says any issue surrounding vodka cannot be a joke, in Russia, jokes about vodka cannot be suppressed.
"When I used to work at the Academy of Sciences [in Russia] everybody was always trying to arrange lunches," Professor Lincoln says. The Russian tradition of two men on a bottle was considered a little uncouth in civilized circles. So, before going to lunch, two employees would scout around for a third to join them -- a third who didn't drink.
Another story from Lincoln: During World War II, five or six people of various nationalities -- Polish, French, English, Russian -- escaped from a German prison camp. Nazis went after them with their guns and dogs in hot pursuit.
After shooting and picking off the escapees one by one, only the Russian and the Pole were alive and left hiding. It was then that the Russian stood up, opened his great coat, pulled out a submachine gun and mowed down all the Germans.
"Why didn't you do that before?" gasped the Pole.
The Russian pulled a bottle of vodka from his pocket, smiling. "Because," he said. "Now it's two on a bottle."
Most will go to the polls sober
The love of vodka grew out of a peasant culture. For farmers who worked long, backbreaking days and slept through cold and merciless nights, village festivals and drinking were their only respite.
Today, many Russians are cynical toward the electoral process, after years of compulsory voting for one party. They don't have a democratic tradition or sense of civic responsibility in the way the West does, Lincoln says. "Democracy isn't really doing much for them," he says, in these times of rampant crime, corruption and economic chaos.
Still, they will go and vote on Sunday, March 26, Sebrant says, and will probably be sober -- too many police at the polls. They will hold their festivities when the vote is over.
When news broke of the decision to raise state duty on vodka by 40 percent, panicked and grumbling consumers formed long lines outside distilleries to stock up. Regional governments outside Moscow, up in arms and fearing civil disobedience, united in refusing to implement the new measure.
Macho Russian men consider the judo-loving Putin a man who can hold his vodka, but if he were perceived to be trying to get hold of theirs, judo moves would not help. So Putin, eager to hold on to his presidential front-runner status, has avoided the issue altogether.
To comprehend the risks of coming between a Russian and his vodka, you have to understand that what in Russian means "little water" or "dear water" is not just the national drink. It is an ancient and profound part of what it means to be Russian.
The Germans have their beer; the French their wine; the Spanish sangria; the Japanese sake. Flourishing deep in the Russian soul is an affinity for vodka.
Vodka is alternately glorified -- the stuff of romance, celebration, camaraderie, succor during long and bitter nights, of fine dining with caviar -- and condemned as the scourge that fuels Russia's astoundingly high rates of alcoholism.
The latest vodka dispute is not the first time Russians have in waited in line for their favorite drink. This queue outside a liquor store was during fall 1998 when the ruble was devalued and vodka became a substitute for paper money.
Drunkenness admirable in some circles
By no means do all Russians drink too much, or at all. But annual consumption of vodka in the nation of 146 million is 4 billion liters a year, according to Time magazine.
The Russian Health Ministry estimates consumption in 1996 was 18 liters of pure alcohol per adult. That is pure alcohol, which is the rough equivalent of 38 liters of 100-proof vodka per person a year.
According to preeminent Russian scholar Bruce Lincoln, who has lived in Russia, written at least 12 books on the subject and is distinguished research professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, the Russian word "zaploi" means roughly, "I was so drunk last night I couldn't remember a thing." And that is admirable in some circles.
The economy depends on it as surely as millions of Russian alcoholics -- estimated to number 2,269 per 100,000 people, according to First Deputy Health Minister Gennadi Onishchenko. Profits from sales of vodka have helped send troops to Chechnya and Sputnik and Mir into space.
The government tax hike may force buyers to stay away from commercial vodkas and seek products from moonshine industry
A long alliance with vodka
A crucial symbiotic vodka-based relationship exists between the public and the state. Since Ivan the Terrible, the state has used proceeds from sales of vodka to further its domestic and foreign agendas, and the Russian public has always obliged by consuming vast amounts of it.
The holy -- or unholy -- alliance between Russians and vodka began in the late 1400s, when vodka began to be distilled in Russia. Within another 100 years, the state set a monopoly over the production and sale of vodka that would last for the next four centuries, according to Muscovite journalist Andrey Sebrant.
But the public costs are astounding. Between 1960 and 1987, 30 million to 35 million people died of alcohol abuse. In the 1980s, 74 percent of murders were committed under the influence. Worker production on paydays and following weekends drops as much as 30 percent, according to one estimate.
Putin, exercising extreme caution, has steered clear of personal support for the tax hike, declaring last month that the measure had nothing to do with him.
The Gorbachev lesson
Putin has not forgotten his history lessons. The last Russian leader to interfere with his countrymen's drinking habits was former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose well-intentioned attempt in the 1980s to reduce alcoholism was a political disaster.
Appalled by statistics that reported up to 40 percent of the Russian adult male population was alcoholic, "Misha" cut back production and hours that vodka could be sold -- earning the utter disdain of the Russians.
Although the benefits were obvious -- longer life expectancy, fewer divorces and accidents -- Russians hated sobriety by government decree.
Gorbachev's efforts resulted in huge revenue losses, lengthy lines and a booming black market in alcohol. More than that, they lost Gorbachev the affection he expected from the Russian people for Glasnost; instead he received only their loathing.
Gorbachev reportedly tells this story: "This guy," he says, "was standing in line for 10 hours to buy vodka, and finally decided to go to the Kremlin to kill Gorbachev. The next day, the guy was back in the vodka line: 'It didn't work,' he tells the others. 'The line to the Kremlin is even longer.'"
A call to revolution?
In a land where the average wage is $60 a month (and about $36 in poor rural areas), the rise in state tax -- which started February 25 by decree of the Economics Ministry -- will put the price of a liter of vodka at 62 rubles ($2.15). In some quarters, that is a call to revolution.
When the duty hike was announced, the anger in the long queues outside vodka outlets all over Moscow was directed at the government and its top man. "You can't raise the price for such a vital product before the elections," one Russian standing in line at a distillery told DPA, the German Press Agency. "That's how you lose votes."
"The government hasn't got any money and it needs more, so it steals from us," groused pensioner Alexei Dikchus, leaving a Kristall vodka factory's outlet store -- after a three-hour wait -- with 30 bottles in tow. "Putin's going to lose a lot of votes to the Communists because of this," he told The Vancouver Sun.
Rural regions, where poverty is much greater than in Moscow, rebelled. They feared that a possible nose-dive in consumption and rise in illegally produced vodka will hurt their own fragile tax revenues.
"We can't afford to do this. People will stop buying vodka," Alexander Alexeev, chief of administration for Ryazan region, told Scotland on Sunday newspaper. "We don't get any subsidies to support us. In fact, vodka takes care of 20 percent of the region's budget."
Moonshine vodka a potential killer
People will stop buying state vodka, that is. "Never underestimate the ingenuity of a Russian when it comes to getting vodka," Professor Lincoln said. The state plays a risky hand because a rise in prices means more untaxed, black-market vodka. "Russians are great moonshiners and tax evaders," he said.
The business in moonshine, or samogum, is always booming, and goes hand-in-hand with bribery and rampant corruption. Good vodka is brewed from the finest water and rye. Moonshine is concocted from anything handy -- potatoes, apples, wheat. Sometimes, according to Lincoln, sulfuric acid is used. These brews can be lethal.
Samogum sells for 30 rubles, or about a dollar a bottle, and 25,000 Russians a year die of chemical poisoning from bootleg vodka. The cheap brands sell in bottles with no labels and no bottle caps. Why bother? the Russians ask.
A commentator on Moscow's Channel One news addressed bootlegging when he said, "Putting up the prices will cause new troubles -- it really is stupid because it means more people will produce it at home."
Pavel Shapkin, head of the spirits manufacturers' association, has the same opinion. He says only two parties will benefit from the price increase -- the state and black marketeers.
Putin playing it cagey
Putin -- recognizing that a 40 percent increase in vodka taxes was a blunder -- is cagey about the outcome of the hike. He says "the government has taken no decisions on this issue." He may intend to show his hand after the election, but not before.
"Most people in our country, unfortunately, cannot afford to drink cognac or whisky," he told reporters. "Whether or not they are celebrating a holiday, when it comes to hard liquor, Russians drink vodka. That is why any issue concerning vodka cannot be considered a joke."
So far, Sebrant says, the duty hike may have affected production but has yet to trickle down much to price tags on the shelves. Sebrant sees no significant price rise in the vodka kiosks and restaurants in his Moscow neighborhood.
A small increase wouldn't bother the "New Russians," anyway, who show off their ill-gotten gains by paying a Russian's average monthly wage on a single meal in one of Moscow's flashy restaurants.
But the working classes and the pensioners will feel the pinch. Factory workers care whether their usual and prized 100 grams of vodka after work costs seven or eight rubles. The new minimum affects those people with less money, but sometimes greater thirsts.
When talking about the issue, Finance Minister Mikhail Kasyanov gives the tax hike some spin. He says new minimum prices are a kind of consumer protection -- only at a price of at least 31 rubles per half-liter can a consumer be guaranteed the vodka is legal and not illegal and dangerous rot gut.
Jokes about vodka irrepressible
Although Putin says any issue surrounding vodka cannot be a joke, in Russia, jokes about vodka cannot be suppressed.
"When I used to work at the Academy of Sciences [in Russia] everybody was always trying to arrange lunches," Professor Lincoln says. The Russian tradition of two men on a bottle was considered a little uncouth in civilized circles. So, before going to lunch, two employees would scout around for a third to join them -- a third who didn't drink.
Another story from Lincoln: During World War II, five or six people of various nationalities -- Polish, French, English, Russian -- escaped from a German prison camp. Nazis went after them with their guns and dogs in hot pursuit.
After shooting and picking off the escapees one by one, only the Russian and the Pole were alive and left hiding. It was then that the Russian stood up, opened his great coat, pulled out a submachine gun and mowed down all the Germans.
"Why didn't you do that before?" gasped the Pole.
The Russian pulled a bottle of vodka from his pocket, smiling. "Because," he said. "Now it's two on a bottle."
Most will go to the polls sober
The love of vodka grew out of a peasant culture. For farmers who worked long, backbreaking days and slept through cold and merciless nights, village festivals and drinking were their only respite.
Today, many Russians are cynical toward the electoral process, after years of compulsory voting for one party. They don't have a democratic tradition or sense of civic responsibility in the way the West does, Lincoln says. "Democracy isn't really doing much for them," he says, in these times of rampant crime, corruption and economic chaos.
Still, they will go and vote on Sunday, March 26, Sebrant says, and will probably be sober -- too many police at the polls. They will hold their festivities when the vote is over.
America...the greatest Country in the world.
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One if the funniest lines I've heard in some time.
Another story from Lincoln: During World War II, five or six people of various nationalities -- Polish, French, English, Russian -- escaped from a German prison camp. Nazis went after them with their guns and dogs in hot pursuit.
After shooting and picking off the escapees one by one, only the Russian and the Pole were alive and left hiding. It was then that the Russian stood up, opened his great coat, pulled out a submachine gun and mowed down all the Germans.
"Why didn't you do that before?" gasped the Pole.
The Russian pulled a bottle of vodka from his pocket, smiling. "Because," he said. "Now it's two on a bottle."
I thought it was gonna say that the Russian killed the Pole in order to have the bottle himself !!
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1162421411206&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
MOSCOW—An attempt to crack down on bootleg liquor has backfired spectacularly, with dozens of Russians dying and more than 2,000 in hospital as a wave of alcohol poisonings sweeps the country.
Russian television has shown images of hospital wards swamped with yellow-tinged patients suffering from toxic hepatitis and other severe liver diseases. Some regions have declared a state of emergency, and hospitals in Siberia have been turning away patients because beds are already full of sufferers.
The epidemic follows the introduction earlier this year of new excise stamps aimed at fighting widespread sales of counterfeit alcohol. That has driven up the price of alcohol, and bureaucratic bungling has delayed distribution of the stamps, causing shortfalls.
Inexpensive wine has also become scarce in the wake of Russia's ban on wine imports from Georgia and Moldova because of deteriorating relations with the two countries.
Shortages have led to a boom in sales of illegal, homemade spirits and alcohol substitutes, such as cleaning solutions, lighter fuel, anti-freeze and rust-removing chemicals.
"Russia is suffering from a severe epidemic," said Oleg Zykov, director of the "No to Alcoholism and Drug Abuse" foundation in Moscow. "Because they can't find cheap vodka, people are poisoning themselves with terrible surrogates."
Alcoholism and accidents related to alcohol are among the leading causes of death in Russia, especially among Russian men, who have an average life expectancy of only 59 years.
At least 18,000 people died in the first nine months of this year from alcohol poisoning. The current crisis is a blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had made reversing the country's drastic population decline a government priority. Russia's population is dropping by about 700,000 a year.
Reports of a dramatic increase in alcohol-related poisonings began to flood in last week, with poorer regions the worst affected. Officials in the Siberian region of Irkutsk have reported 1,135 victims in the last month, including 25 fatalities. In the western Belgorod region, 44 of 915 people sickened since August have died.
Half-litre bottles of bootleg vodka are reportedly being sold for as little as 75 cents. The cheapest vodka available with an official excise stamp costs about $3.50 a bottle.
The deaths have led to increasing calls from top officials for a state monopoly on alcohol production, distribution and sales.
"If the production and sale of alcohol are in the hands of the state, there will be no bootlegging or industrial spirits and bottles containing unknown liquids on sale in various retail outlets," Sergei Mironov, the speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, told reporters.
Critics have accused the government of taking advantage of the poisonings to renationalize the alcohol industry. The Kremlin has taken steps in recent years to regain control of important industries, including Russia's booming oil and gas sector.
Newspaper Vedomosti this week quoted an unidentified "industry player" as saying the surge in media coverage of alcohol-related deaths is part of a government campaign to lay the groundwork for a state alcohol monopoly.
Previous attempts to combat bootlegging and alcoholism in Russia have failed. A move by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to severely restrict vodka drinking in the 1980s incurred widespread wrath and nearly bankrupted the state, and is believed to have accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Zykov said he doubted the introduction of a state monopoly would be effective in fighting alcoholism or reducing the number of alcohol-related deaths.
"The problem isn't political, it's cultural," he said.
"We need a wider program to fight alcoholism, especially targeting young people, to convince them that drinking is not automatically part of being Russian."
http://www.rense.com/general33/legal.htm
http://www.rense.com/general67/rum.htm
http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/
http://presidiotex.com/aspartame/Facts/Arizona/arizona.html
congrats on ruining the thread
I'm not sure I derailed it. I provided a comparative context to the argument, a parallel train to wave to. I think the trains are moving at the same speed. Fancy jumping from one to the other, and back again, and learning something?