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THE SOVIET UNION:
LOSING THE BATTLE
OF THE BOTTLE
by
Gene H. Hogberg
usE
of a lcohol has been
right ly ca lled "Russ ia's
heredi tary plague."
lt
has transcended t ime and
ideology.
Neither the czars of old nor
the Communist commissars of
the Soviet state have been able
to dissuade their subjects from
t heir stubborn procl ivity for
drink.
Drink may be " Russia's joy"- as
Vladimi r said in the ll th cen–
t ury-but tbe sobering-or rather
unsober-facts reveal that it is also
" Russia's sorrow."
Tremendous Natíonal Losses
T he evil effects of alcohol abuse per–
meate Soviet society. Soviet statis–
tics published in newspapers and on
television blame alcohol for three
fourths of all violent crimes, two
thirds of se-rious industrial , traffic
10
and household accidents, one third
of all sexual dysfunctions and nearly
half of the country's divorces. C lase
to 70 percent of drownings and 45
percent of
all
poisonings are blamed
on drinking.
Alcohol abuse, primarily in the
form of hard liquor, and that most–
ly vodka, takes an alarming toll of
the Soviet Union 's hard-pressed
economy. As many as 30 to 40 per–
cent of Soviet factory workers show
up Monday mornings too drunk or
hung over to perform properly.
"If
everyone carne to work sober and
stayed that way," says one expert,
"productivity would rise as much
as 1O percen
t. "
That figure-an enormous Joss
for the world's second largest econ–
omy- is significant in another
respect. Western analysts, working
from Soviet statistical data, estí–
mate that Russian factory and
office workers "tithe"- and then
some-to the bottle. The sales of
hard liquor account for more than
1O percent- perhaps as high as 15
percent-of all consumer purchases
in the Soviet Union.
Republics on a Sel f -destructive
"Bender"
Far more serious than cold eco–
nomic statistics is the impact of
alcohol abuse upon "the state of
health of the 267 million people in
the U.S.S.R.'s 15 republics.
The impact is so devastating that
Westero observers believe this is
the reason why Soviet authorities
stopped publishing statistics on
alcohol consumption in 1963, and
even more significantly, have not
publisbed life expectancy estimates
in recent years.
By examining other available
official statistics such as census fig–
ures and alcohol production, West–
ern analysts have pieced together a
gr im picture of a union of nations
on a self-destructive "hender."
While the Soviet populat ion
increased 9 percent in the decade of
The
PLAIN TRUTH