Alcoholism and Premature Male Deaths in Russia
Written by Laura Miller
08. Sep, 2010 
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There is a hadith about how as we near the Day of Judgment, there will be fifty women for every one man. It may be figurative (for example, eligible single women will outnumber eligible bachelors). Or, in the case of post-WWII Russia, it may be more literal – as in, there are literally more women than men.
A 2003-2005 study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that not only does Russia have an alarming disparity in the life expectancies of women and men – 72 years for women, and just 59 years for men – but that alcohol contributes to the low male life expectancy rate, causing 43% of all premature deaths in Russian men aged 25-54 (and that expectancy rate has been declining since the collapse of the Soviet Union). The study focused on the industrial city of Izhevsk (which is the home of the Kalashnikov), although the findings could come from just about any Russian city, big or small.
What makes this particularly disturbing is not just that able-bodied men are drinking during their most productive years and dying hazardous deaths (car accidents, falling through icy ponds, suicides, alcohol poisoning, and so forth) – it’s what they are drinking that is so tragic. This isn’t only about vodka or other hard liquors. It’s about “surrogate” alcohols, which are products containing alcohol (like aftershave, window-cleaning fluids, antiseptics, and antifreeze) that aren’t meant for drinking. The same young men who abuse surrogate alcohols are prone to episodes of zapoi (periods of two or more days of nonstop drunkenness, during which the drunk man withdraws from normal life). The men in the Izhevsk study don’t just drink; they drink more dangerously and antisocially than they do in Western Europe and North America.
Alcoholism has, in all likelihood, been a social problem in Russia for many generations (the winters are long and dark, and the production and sales of spirits had been important sources of Czarist government revenue). But the problem has worsened over the last two decades. During the 1980s, the government of Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to curb the problem by banning alcohol sales before 2pm, restricting alcohol sales to off-licence establishments, and increasing alcohol taxes. But all the Gorbachev anti-alcohol campaign did was encourage illicit home-brewing of spirits (like moonshine). And after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1989, the campaign disintegrated and Russian alcohol consumption skyrocketed during the 1990s. Male life expectancy declined by six years between 1990 and 1994.
Women outnumber men by the millions in Russia. It cannot be blamed entirely on alcohol; the roots of this skewed gender ratio run much deeper. More than 20 million men died under Stalin, during and after the Second World War. Even more than sixty years later, that gap of “missing males” and “female surplus” has yet to close. And to add insult to injury, alcohol abuse (as well as smoking and poor diet) has been cutting short the lives of many Russian men. After the fall of the Soviet Union, jobs that were once provided by the Communist state began drying up fast – especially in the countryside, where collectivized farms had meant job security. No wonder, then, that in the face of so much uncertainty and growing poverty, many men began turning to the bottle, at much higher rates than the women. Recently, the Medvedev government has been trying to tackle this public health crisis à la Gorbachev – they want to ban alcohol advertising, and to limit the sale of alcoholic beverages from 11pm-10am (although there has been no talk of what to do about home-brewed moonshine, or the availability of surrogate alcohols, which are cheaper than vodka). What will make a significant dent in curbing alcoholism is when young men in Russia believe they have a hopeful future, and something to live for.
