Increasing alcohol prices is good for the nation’s health, but bad for the politicians’ ratings.
Alcohol and especially the informal liquid currency — vodka — pricing and its availability is a question of state importance in Russia. It influences the leaders’ popularity and stability of state authorities. Trying to change the alcohol market and consumption often led to political deviations.
Just yesterday the official lowest possible price of a bottle of vodka in Russia fell from 220 to 185 rubles (15,9% decrease). Vodka got cheaper after Vladimir Putin announced during the joint session of State Commission and Commission on Culture on the 24th of December 2014 that “one has to fight the population’s alcoholizaition with reasonable means and measures. Increasing the alcohol prices leads only to increased fake substitute consumption”. Five days later, Rosalkogolregulirovaniye (the alcohol market watchdog — Vinileaks editor) ordered to lower the prices.
Increasing alcohol prices is good for the citizens’ health, but bad for the politicians’ ratings. Sobering up population starts to ask government more inconvenient questions. Jay Bhattacharya, Christina Gathmann and Grant Miller in their American Economic Journal article called «The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia’s Mortality Crisis” calculated that the 1985-1988 Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign that severely worsened the attitude towards Gorbachev (there had been few alternative ways to spend free time) also decreased the annual death toll for 24% saving 1,6 million of lives. Russian demography scholar Alexander Nemtsov proved that the level of alcohol intoxications between 1985 and 1988 fell 2.5 times, and the number of psychoses — 3 times.
Just the opposite, easy access to alcohol is good for budgets, softens the perception of everyday life’s reality and lowers the complaints agains authorities.
Tsar’s finance and premier minister Sergey Vitte recalled: “Alexander III used to say he was haunted and worried by the level of hard drinking in the Russian nation and that it was time to take strong decisions against it”. In 1984 Vitte introduced the drinking monopoly to restrain alcohol intake without, though, harm for the state finances. As a result the alcohol consumption rose by 1906 from 6 litres of vodka to 7.4 litres. State incomes form the sales of alcohol rose from 117 million rubles in 1906 to 899 million in 1913, reaching 25% of the total budget — they called it “drunk budget”. Prohibition, introduced by Tsar Nikolay II with the beginning of the First World War, led to a rise of fake alcohol production and budget deficit, that told badly on the population’s spirit both on the front and the back areas. Left without the legal alcohol, the country was misled by demagogic mottos.
Alcohol production, allowed during the period of the New Economic Policy (of 1920-s, Vinileaks editor) was not hit and continued to extend during the Stalin era. Alcohol’s role was significant in the ninefold rise of budget profits of 1929-1938. Soldiers on the frontline were getting 100 grams of alcohol per day during the World War Two. By mid-80s the consumption per capita rose to 14 litres of vodka per year (at the moment being 13,5-15 litres of pure alcohol a year). Putin is not going to repeat the same mistakes Gorbachev did. The drop of vodka’s prices is an attempt to draw away nations’ attention from the troubles of everyday life. And, among them, from the appetizers rising prices.