Russia is a country that has a lot of serious problems.

Her ports are easy to blockade.

She's dealing with sanctions from taking over Crimea.

She has numerous separatist movements going on across her internal borders, and her population has been declining for years.

But out of all of these problems, perhaps none are as big or as challenging as Russia's oldest problem alcoholism.

To say that Russia is fond of alcohol would be an enormous understatement.

Legend has it that in the late 10th century, the pagan Russian Prince Vladimir the Great sent envoy's across the world to discover and bring back all of the major world religions for the Russians to choose from.

Once the buffet of religions were brought back to him, he supposedly rejected converting to Islam on the sole basis that it would prohibit his people from drinking the booze.

And so he chose Christianity instead.

Alcohol has always remained incredibly popular in Russia ever since, and it's often been a little too popular 10 years ago.

In 2010, a study was conducted by the World Health Organization, on which countries consume the most alcohol on a per capita basis.

Of the top 10 countries on that list, nine of them are all located in Eastern Europe, and five of them are former Soviet states Ukraine, Russia, Lithuania, Moldova and Belarus.

Russia, however, is a particularly bad case because she has the fourth highest per capita consumption of alcohol in the world.

But she also has 145 million people, meaning that a lot of people drink a lot of booze for context.

Average Russian adults were drinking over 50 18 leaders of alcohol per year.

But the situation is vastly different for Russian women and Russian men.

Russian men on average, were drinking farm or than women more like a ridiculous 26th leaders per man in the country.

Let's extrapolate this.

The average Russian man was drinking just over 26 liters of alcohol per year, and 51% of that amount were all spirits or liquor like vodka, which means that the average Russian man was throwing back around 23 shots of straight up liquor every single month in addition to around a full leader of beer or wine.

And this was just the amount of booze that the average Russian man was drinking.

There were millions of Russian men who were drinking much, much more to compare with other countries.

The average American adult was drinking just over nine liters of alcohol per year, and the average Japanese adult was drinking just over seven leaders, meaning that the average Russian man was drinking almost three times the amount of alcohol that the average American adult and nearly four times more than the average Japanese adult waas.

The consequences of this much alcohol consumption have had enormous impacts on Russian society.

In 20 12/30 percent of every death in Russia was directly attributable to alcohol.

And since men are the primary drinkers, Russian men are the ones who were the most severely affected.

Russian men have among the lowest life expectancies of anywhere in the world, and back in 2010, it was only 65 years, which is on a par with men in Afghanistan or South Africa, and was even lower than men in Sudan or Yemen.

Boys who were born in Russia in 2006 were estimated to have life expectancies that were a whopping 17 years lower than boys born in Western Europe.

I made another video a while ago about how Russia's population is shrinking, which you can watch later.

But suffice to say, the alcoholism epidemic.

And it's effects on shortening men's life spans to almost a decade less than women in the country has not than helping.

Alcoholism and alcohol related deaths have almost always been a significant problem in Russia.

But the problem became the worst it's ever been in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the USSR in the 19 nineties.

Within a few years of the collapse, the former countries of the USSR lost approximately 40% of their Soviet era GDP, and the ruble lost 99% of its value against the US dollar.

It was a complete economic catastrophe for Russia and all of the former Soviet states, and many began to turn to drinking in order to cope.

This wasn't helped by the fact that the price of vodka across the former USSR collapsed in the same way the country itself did, According to another paper that was published in 2010.

The average monthly income in Russia in December 1990 could afford to buy 10 liters of vodka.

But just four years later, in December 1994 that same monthly salary was able to instead a for nearly 47 liters of vodka.

But it's bleak as the alcoholism situation was looking in Russia from the nineties.

Up until 2010, things have actually changed dramatically for the better.

Since then, realizing just how dire the problem within the country had become, the Russian government began instituting various policies in the 20 tens to attempt and curb the tide of alcoholism all stores in the country where banned from selling any alcohol.

Past 11 PM, the minimum retail price of vodka in the country was doubled, and a total advertising blackout on alcoholic products was instituted nationwide.

Despite his best efforts, though, other problems did arise.

With the minimum price of vodka in the country doubling, resourceful Russians began turning to illegally produced and cheaper bootleg vodka, which had disastrous results by 2016.

Approximately 20% of Russia's entire alcoholic consumption was simply bootleg vodka, and most of this was just pure alcohol that had been diluted down toe feel like vodka.

In December 2016, 78 people died in the city of Irkutsk in Siberia after drinking scented bath lotion that had been mislabeled as a drinkable bootleg alcohol.

And in response to that tragedy, Russia began to institute MAWR bands on non food items in the country that contain any more than 25% alcohol.

But despite some setbacks and tragedies along the way, Russia has miraculous.

Lee managed to reduce the rates of alcoholism in the country since 2010 today, Russia only ranks 14th in the world per capita of alcoholic consumption, and Russians are only drinking one third of the booze that they were back in 2003 at least, according to official state sponsored Russian data.

If this data is accurate, it means that alcoholic consumption in Russia today is more similar to the levels that air seen in either Germany or France, and life expectancy for men in the country has accordingly gone up.

Russia is, thankfully, in a much better place than she was in the past, and things are continuing to get even better and even more hopeful, 2020 has been a bizarre year.

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