Why are Russians alcoholics?

[loinburger]

Southerners drink Coke.

"What kind of Coke do you want?" "I'll have a Sprite"

[Asher]

Southerners are universally mentally retarded.

[Dinner]

It appears the world wide economic crisis has trickled down to the average Russian. Alcohol sales in Russia are down 18% over the last year. Usually in bad times people drink more but in Russia it seems people cannot afford to drink as much. In other words they were already drinking as much as they could afford and that's not a very good thing for health in Russia.

http://en.rian.ru/business/20091203/157077968.html

[Dinner]

1. It's the drinking culture, fostered by the Imperial goverment that used vodka as a form of taxation on the peasant masses. Alcohol is a very important part of social life here. One of the people I know, an Israeli Jew, was puzzled by a poll in a Russian blog, "which of the dead classical writers would you have liked to drink together with?". It took him several minutes to guess that a long, honest talk over that bottle was implied. In vina veritas.

Yeah, I can definitely see how having large quantities of hard liquor around would encourage people to drink more. That said I think the Czar made the right choice economically. Grain has very little value unless there is a shortage so exports of grain would bring very little revenue. However liquor is a manufactured good with a relatively high value added plus it stores for a very long time and is easier to ship so it was a near ideal form of exports or commerce. It was a way to take low value added goods (grain) and turn it into a medium value good.

I'd also note that many other countries did the same thing. Farmers in the US routinely converted excess grain into whiskey for trade prior to the 20th century, Scottish & Irish farmers did the same, as did several others yet they didn't have nearly as debilitating an alcohol problem as Russia has historically or currently. I think the problem goes much deeper especially since other countries had the same policies/traditions but the current alcohol problem is unique to the former USSR.

[loinburger]

Usually in bad times people drink more but in Russia it seems people cannot afford to drink as much.

They're probably brewing their own and/or drinking shoe polish just like back when Gorbachev was in power. No doubt the drop in alcohol sales corresponds to a sugar shortage.

[JEELEN]

jeelen is fast shaping up to be my favorite new ****poster

See if I care.

It appears the world wide economic crisis has trickled down to the average Russian. Alcohol sales in Russia are down 18% over the last year. Usually in bad times people drink more but in Russia it seems people cannot afford to drink as much. In other words they were already drinking as much as they could afford and that's not a very good thing for health in Russia.

http://en.rian.ru/business/20091203/157077968.html

Finally something intelligent.

BTW, alcoholism was reported in czarist Russia, so it's a bit of a historical problem.

[Elok]

Cyril and Methodius? Have they ever even been here?

That is sort of where you got that "Cyrillic" stuff from. Okay, maybe they didn't come to the land currently known as Russia--maybe it was the Ukraine, I don't know--but it hardly matters, as all of you are the same anyway.

[Ben Kenobi]

It was Moravia, which at the time comprised of southern poland, all of what used to be Czechoslovakia Trans-Carpathian Ruthenia and the Pannonian plain.

It was Vladimir the Great who brought Christianity to the Kievan Rus about 2 centuries later, who at the time were the chief power of Russia.

[Kitschum]

Technically, they developed the Glagolitic alphabet, and not the Cyrillic that S-t Cyril lent his name to. The Cyrillic did incorporate a few Glagolitic letters, but resembles the Greek a lot more. The naming confusion a historical quirk.

The Cyrillic alphabet was created in Bulgaria and the Church Slavonic language is effectively Old Bulgarian. Loanwords from CS is the reason that Russian has a double set of a lot of words, like grad/gorod 'town', glava/golova 'head', drag/dorogo 'dear', etc.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well it makes sense they would. Vladimir was in direct contact with Byzantium. He wasn't converted by St. Cyril.

[onodera]

The Cyrillic alphabet was created in Bulgaria and the Church Slavonic language is effectively Old Bulgarian. Loanwords from CS is the reason that Russian has a double set of a lot of words, like grad/gorod 'town', glava/golova 'head', drag/dorogo 'dear', etc.

Used to have a double set of words. The meanings have diverged since then. A head of a person is golova, a head of an administration is glava. Dorogoy is expensive, dragotsenny is precious. Gorod is a normal word, grad is an obsolete one.

That is sort of where you got that "Cyrillic" stuff from. Okay, maybe they didn't come to the land currently known as Russia--maybe it was the Ukraine, I don't know--but it hardly matters, as all of you are the same anyway.

I know who the guys were, thank you wery much. I also know enough about them not to mention them in a conversation just because I have heard their names, as they have never been to Russia or the Ukraine in the first place, and even if they had been, wouldn't have ruled it, being scholars, not warlords.
This is the country they've been to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gr..._svatopluk.png

[Kitschum]

Used to have a double set of words. The meanings have diverged since then. A head of a person is golova, a head of an administration is glava. Dorogoy is expensive, dragotsenny is precious. Gorod is a normal word, grad is an obsolete one.

I'm adopting a long perspective on what constitutes Russian.

Anyway, as far as I understand the Church Slavonic-originated words usually occupy higher prestige (or poetic) meanings and circumstances, while the originally Russian/East Slavic words are typically more everyday words. In this it would be similar to the status of (Old) French words in English, or German words in Scandinavian for that matter.

[Wezil]

I have no idea how to format this:

Suicides per 100,000 people per year[2] Country ↓ Males ↓ Females ↓ Total pop. ↓ Year ↓

Lithuania 68.1 12.9 38.6 2005
Belarus 63.3 10.3 35.1 2003
Russia 53.9 9.5 30.1 2006
Slovenia 42.1 11.1 26.3 2006
Hungary 42.3 11.2 26.0 2005
Kazakhstan 45.0 8.1 25.9 2005
Latvia 42.0 9.6 24.5 2005
Japan See: Suicide in Japan 34.8 13.2 23.7 2006
Guyana 33.8 11.6 22.9 2005
Ukraine 40.9 7.0 22.6 2005
South Korea See: Suicide in South Korea 29.6 14.1 21.9 2006
Sri Lanka[3] N/A N/A 21.6 1996
Belgium 31.2 11.4 21.1 1997
Estonia 35.5 7.3 20.3 2005
Finland 31.1 9.6 20.1 2005
Croatia 30.5 9.7 19.7 2005
Serbia and Montenegro 28.4 11.1 19.5 2006
Hong Kong 22.0 13.1 17.4 2005
Moldova 31.5 5.1 17.8 2006
France 26.4 9.2 17.6 2005
Switzerland 24.7 10.5 17.6 2005
Poland 27.8 4.6 15.8 2005
Austria 24.7 7.0 15.6 2006
Czech Republic 25.5 5.6 15.3 2005
Uruguay 24.5 6.4 15.1 2001
People's Republic of China 13.0 14.8 13.9 1999
Denmark 19.2 8.1 13.7 2001
Seychelles[4] N/A N/A 13.2 1998
New Zealand[5] 20.3 6.5 13.2 2008
Sweden 19.5 7.1 13.3 2002
Bulgaria 19.7 6.7 13.0 2004
Germany 19.7 6.6 13.0 2004
Trinidad and Tobago 20.9 4.9 12.8 2000
Slovakia 22.3 3.4 12.6 2005
Romania 21.5 4.0 12.5 2004
Cuba 18.6 6.2 12.4 2004
Suriname 17.8 6.4 12.1 2000
Bosnia and Herzegovina 20.3 3.3 11.8 1991
Norway 15.7 7.4 11.6 2005
Canada 17.3 5.4 11.4 2004
Iceland 16.2 6.1 11.2 2005
Portugal 17.5 4.9 11.2 2003
United States 17.7 4.5 11.1 2005
Luxembourg 17.7 4.3 11.0 2005
Australia 17.1 4.7 10.9 2003
India 12.2 9.1 10.6 1998

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

[Dinner]

Lithuania has the highest suicide rate? No wonder we haven't heard from Saras in so long.

[Elok]

I know who the guys were, thank you wery much. I also know enough about them not to mention them in a conversation just because I have heard their names, as they have never been to Russia or the Ukraine in the first place, and even if they had been, wouldn't have ruled it, being scholars, not warlords.
This is the country they've been to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gr..._svatopluk.png

When did I say they ruled it? I used their names as a stand-in for the concept of "since the dawn of what passes for civilization over there," ie when some Slavic (pseudoslavic, whatever; you were all just slave-trader fodder until around the age of discovery when we switched to Angolans) people or other acquired a written language. It's not fair to count the time before that, as you had nothing to do back then but procreate, whack each other with sticks, and drink booze all day. The fact that you have continued to do pretty much nothing else over the intervening centuries, however, is pretty sad.