I have just watched a video that puts the blame for Russia’s decline and fall squarely on the effects of governments, and more recently oligarchs, who have made vast profits from selling and addicting the population to cheap spirits. It goes on to compare that with the influence of addictive prescription drugs on America.
It looks plausible (though simplistic) to me. I wondered what the intelligent masses might think.
I don’t really think vodka had much to do with why Russia isn’t much of a world power. It’s a whole set of other things that happened that shaped present-day Russia, chief among them the dissolution of the USSR and the subsequent privatization and chaos that came with that.
The issue isn’t vodka, it’s that there’s a large chunk of the population that resorts to chemical substances to make their lives less awful. The guy in the video points it out- in other countries, it’s a combination of illegal drugs and alcohol. In Russia, it’s mostly cheap vodka. But it’s generally not state-sponsored- it’s a response to demand, not something that’s pushed from on high. In fact, most Western governments are against the illegal drugs like opiates, but that hasn’t stopped that yet.
Fundamentally what happened in Russia was that after the USSR ceased to be, there was basically something of a power vacuum and a dire lack of regulation. Certain people stepped into those voids and built massive fortunes by basically buying up formerly state-owned businesses at kopeks on the ruble, and turning them into profitable enterprises, and sucking up all the profits for themselves. On the government side, those people stood to benefit personally by letting the proto-oligarchs do this.
Since then, the set of oligarchs has shifted around- a lot of the original set are gone, and a new set has risen in their place, this time through alignment with the Putin government, more than through connections with the Yeltsin government and connections with former Soviet industries.
Regardless now you’ve got a class of oligarchs who are fantastically wealthy and powerful, and a set of govenrment types who basically enable them through the government, because they personally benefit from it.
This is not a way to run a country that would aspire to power and influence on the world stage. It might enrich a tiny few, but it doesn’t really make for enterprises that are globally competitive, and nor does it set things up so that the government gets its fair share of tax money to do proper government stuff either.
A possible connection:
One of the problems with the Russian military is shortages of supplies & spare parts, even entire tanks, armillary guns, etc. missing. Allegedly because of corruption by commanders, who sold off the missing stuff to get money for retirement, or to support their vodka habit.
But I haven’t heard reports that the basic Russian soldiers are too drunk on vodka to perform well. Most reports blame their excessive top-down command structure, restricting any individual imitative at the ground attack level.