Archive Photo Of The Week: The Russian Vodka Affair

Two men fill a briefcase with bottles of vodka as people queue to buy alcohol from a state store.

Gorbachev tried to ban it. Yeltsin enthusiastically endorsed it. This week President Dmitri Medvedev becomes the latest Russian leader to wrestle with his country’s age-old relationship with vodka: from September 1st it will be illegal for Moscow stores to sell hard liquor between 10pm and 10am.

Last year Medvedev declared himself shocked – although surely not surprised – at the scale of Russian alcohol consumption, and began a series of steps to curb a national habit that kills some half million people a year. He is unlikely to succeed; apart from anything else, history is against him. In 986 the the ruler of Kievan Rus Grand Prince Vladimir chose Christianity over Islam as the official religion of the fledgling Russian state. His reason? “Drinking is the joy of Russia. We cannot do without it.”
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