Poll #1480328 FLU PREVENTION
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What's the best way for flu prevention?

Poll #1480322 Когда же?
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Когда все это закончится?

One of those several tags associated with Russia, vodka is.

Russian government has recetly initiated the public discussions about the ways to limit spirit consumption nationawide.
Since it is dangerously high, and having negative effect on public health.

Well, I can witness, it is.

This is not to  make any prognosis of what such consumption will lead to.

But rather to investigate how historically come russian do consume (or abuse, shall I say) heavy spirits in such amount.

It starts from the intriguing fact that russian governors massively used spirits sales as a significant source of the national income. Russian historians themselves refer back to Ivan the Terrible, who was first to turn the spirits sales to an exclusive domain of the government.

But what makes it intriguiing is that since then the governors stimulated their population to greater consumption of spirits! Same as nowadays corporations do in their marketing.

It even went to the point of open resistance of polulation to this stimulation policy!!

Numerous facts of social unrest are well known to historians as driven by those who were against such policy. Those were referring to negative effect to morals; to decreasing productivity of farmers; etc. Remarkable was the split of traditional russian Orthodoxy in 1700s: when so called raskolniks ("splitters") appeared to declare their aversion to Peter the Great' reforms. Particularly, to the one about propageting culture of spirits consumption.

The resistance, as also well known, had been cruerlly stifled.

As a result of such a policy: a tavern per a town in 1600s grew to half a milion of taverns around the country in 1863.

In the soviet period... well, it should be enough to refer to Stalin's comment of 1927:

"When we were considering the state monopoly on vodka, the decision was either: to become entirely dependant on capitalists by handing over to them all our fabrics and plants in order to get funds; or to establish a monopoly on vodka to gain money for development of our industry".

So, vodka traditionally is one of the major sources of sustainable income to the state budget in Russia. Thus the governments have always been interested in high consumption rates.

And logically, they still are.

So, back to the recent discussions.

Does it mean that due to the financial crisis and the budget deficit, the goverment looks for taking over the spirits production industry?
Which has been reported to be one the fast gworing markets (and very much open so far) over the last years.

... and that public health is just an excuse?

On the other hand, this is to disprove the allegation that russian drink so much just because they...love it :)

Мутация госкорпораций Сколь бы жестко ни высказался в адрес госкорпораций в послании Федеральному собранию президент Дмитрий Медведев, к их скорому упразднению или преобразованию это не приведет. Возможно, это не так уж и плохо. открыть материал ...

"За". Есть отрасли, которые, оставь их "частной инициативе", не будут развиваться, т.к. очень ресурсоемки, касаются национальной безопасности страны, коммерчески не привлекательны и проч. и и.д.

"Против". Непрозрачность, неэффективность, со всеми вытакающими отсюда "национальными особенностями".

Мое мнение, "за" - притянуто за уши. Да, есть особенности у выделенных отраслей, но ведь есть и общеизвестные традиционные решения [участия гос-ва в отраслях экономики].

"Госкорпорация" же это, скорее, некий продукт сопротивления номенклатурной традиции.