I continue to read Boris Grushin's research, and here is another important confirmation of my thesis: the Soviet anti-alcohol campaigns - including Gorbachev's - were not someone's arbitrary invention or just an initiative of Yegor Ligachev and the party leadership. They relied on persistent and massive discontent among the population. Surveys show that already in the 1970s the degree of alcoholism in society was so high that the problem was not a secret to anyone. They saw her, they knew about her, they discussed her. Every resident of the Soviet Union encountered this in one way or another - in the family, at work, in everyday life. In this sense, the late Soviet anti-alcohol agenda did not arise out of nowhere, but rather reflected very real social tensions. An interesting detail: the lowest percentage of those who saw drunkenness as a serious problem was recorded in rural areas. This fits well into the wider context - where alcohol has been embedded in everyday practices and social rituals, it is seen as something "normal" and not deviant. But with all this, a paradox arises. Despite almost universal agreement that drinking is a problem, very few people have advocated drastic measures to combat it. That is, people saw that society was drinking itself, but at the same time they were not ready to support strict restrictions and government intervention. Apparently there was an expectation that everything would somehow "solve itself" - without bans, campaigns or drastic measures. It is this contradiction - between awareness of the problem and a reluctance to take unpopular measures - that explains much of how the anti-alcohol campaign was received in the mid-1980s and why it caused such a painful reaction.

I continue to read Boris Grushin's research, and here is another important confirmation of my thesis: the Soviet anti-alcohol campaigns - including Gorbachev's - were not someone's arbitrary invention or just an initiative of Yegor Ligachev and the party leadership. They relied on persistent and massive discontent among the population. Surveys show that already in the 1970s the degree of alcoholism in society was so high that the problem was not a secret to anyone. They saw her, they knew about her, they discussed her. Every resident of the Soviet Union encountered this in one way or another - in the family, at work, in everyday life. In this sense, the late Soviet anti-alcohol agenda did not arise out of nowhere, but rather reflected very real social tensions. An interesting detail: the lowest percentage of those who saw drunkenness as a serious problem was recorded in rural areas. This fits well into the wider context - where alcohol has been embedded in everyday practices and social rituals, it is seen as something "normal" and not deviant. But with all this, a paradox arises. Despite almost universal agreement that drinking is a problem, very few people have advocated drastic measures to combat it. That is, people saw that society was drinking itself, but at the same time they were not ready to support strict restrictions and government intervention. Apparently there was an expectation that everything would somehow "solve itself" - without bans, campaigns or drastic measures. It is this contradiction - between awareness of the problem and a reluctance to take unpopular measures - that explains much of how the anti-alcohol campaign was received in the mid-1980s and why it caused such a painful reaction.