A great article in Russian Life Journal (RZh): **The Damned and the Saved Anti-Alcohol Campaigns in Figures and Facts ** The Bottom Line of Prohibition Anyone who comes across historical materials from 1914–1917 will be quite surprised. First, there is nowhere any evidence of the public discontent one might expect over the sharp restrictions on alcohol sales (vodka was allowed to be sold only in restaurants and only in strictly measured quantities). Even those who were ready to object to the tsarist government on any pretext reacted to prohibition without any agitation at all. Even more surprising are reports from the provinces (diaries, studies, private correspondence): the war is on, people are unhappy about many things, but as for prohibition—no sorrow and no irritation. It is hard to say how much trust should be placed in the sociological surveys of the time, but most of them say that 85% of the population supported extending prohibition “not only for the duration of the war, but forever and ever.” And here are the statistics. Trade in alcoholic products was halted on July 19, 1914, for the period of mobilization, and at the end of August the ban was extended for the entire duration of the war. By 1915, labor productivity had already risen by 13–15%, the number of workers fired for disciplinary reasons had fallen by more than 70%, and the number of suicides in cities had dropped by 20%. But the most impressive figures concern the rise in public prosperity. **From 1914 to 1916, bank deposits grew by 2.14 billion rubles (before that, the total annual increase had been two orders of magnitude smaller). It would be wrong to regard all that money as savings rescued from being drunk away—the country had entered wartime inflation (money was already being printed without gold or commodity backing). Even so, by the most conservative estimates, a third of those savings was the result of prohibition. ... **So, around 27,000 people died of alcohol poisoning in 1984 (roughly the same number as die now). In 1985, the figure was 15,000, and in 1987 and 1988 it was about 12,000 each year. In other words, instead of ruined souls, the anti-alcohol campaign was saving at least 10,000 people from death every year. When I first saw these numbers, I could hardly believe my eyes. But what about denatured alcohol, what about Lily-of-the-Valley cologne, antifreeze—the stuff our fellow citizens supposedly drank themselves senseless on? As it turns out, the explanation is very simple. Most deaths from binge drinking are caused not by chemicals or low-quality drinks: people poison themselves with perfectly ordinary, standard alcohol—vodka, which in large quantities is itself a deadly poison. But tens of thousands saved from poisoning are far from the whole story. One look at the graph and you cannot help noticing something remarkable: beginning in 1985, the steady rise in mortality that had started in the mid-1960s suddenly breaks off sharply and reaches an absolute minimum in 1987—that is, the peak year of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign. And as soon as the anti-alcohol campaign began to fade, mortality started rising steadily again; and when, in the early 1990s, vodka ceased to be scarce and became one of the most accessible goods around, including in terms of price, the mortality curve shot upward, setting unprecedented records. What is at issue here is death from accidents, cardiovascular disease (which accounts for about a third of all deaths), and victims of domestic homicide—in all these categories, the period from 1985 to 1987 saw not merely an obvious decline, but an unprecedented one. **According to various demographic estimates (comparing the mortality growth trend before the anti-alcohol campaign with the actual mortality level in 1985–1991), the result of the anti-alcohol campaign was that between 900,000 and 1.2 million people simply remained alive. **http://rulife.ru/index.php?mode=article&artID=767 A graph confirming the figures on lower mortality and higher birth rates during Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign was posted a few months ago by neznaika_nalune; I posted it too. It is worth noting that murders and suicides are in direct correlation. Russia needs a new anti-alcohol campaign. Lately there have been clear signals that such an issue is under consideration. If Medved (a colloquial nickname for Dmitry Medvedev) could summon the courage to launch it, taking into account the negative experience of the foolish campaign-style excesses of 1985, he would be genuinely impressive. Though of course, there is no way to gain approval ratings from this. He will have to choose between ratings (the Olympics, nanotechnology, Dancing with the Stars) and something less glamorous but more useful.