Heavy vodka consumption has ruined the health of millions of Russians. Now beer is replacing the national drink as the tipple of choice for many drinkers, writes Simon Pirani.
At R2 for half a litre, it is less than half the price of imported Heineken. "And to us, it tastes better," says 17-year-old Sasha. Like many of his generation, he prefers beer to vodka, which he drinks only at home on celebratory occasions. The thought of teenagers in underpasses drinking bottled beer does not usually please the over-50s, but it thrills Aleksandr Nemtsov. As a researcher of alcoholism and its impact on health and mortality, he greets the move among young Russians from vodka to beer as "a positive development". Nemtsov, who heads an alcohol research project at the Health Ministry's Institute of Psychiatric Research, says: "Beer has become the main drink at young people's gatherings. It's common to see both young women and young men drinking it on the street. "Any move from harder drinks to softer is good news. It brings down the overall alcohol intake per head." Nemtsov says Russia's alcohol consumption level is marginally down, but it remains the world's highest. Vodka, and addiction to it, are the only culprits worth discussing, Nemtsov adds: "Whenever vodka consumption falls, deaths from cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, suicide, murder and some other causes fall. There is a correlation. No matter how much beer you drink, you could never get those results." Nemtsov's enthusiasm for teenagers' drinking habits is shared by Russian beer companies. They brewed a record 4,3 billion litres in 1999, 27 percent up on 1998. The expansion began in the mid-1990s, and was boosted by the August 1998 ruble devaluation, which made foreign beers hopelessly uncompetitive. Russian breweries are making better-tasting beer. Modernisation, and the resulting quality improvements, has often been funded by foreign investors, of which South African Breweries, Heineken of Germany, Interbrewing of Belgium and a Scandinavian partnership, BBH, are among the largest. Kingsmill Bond, a Deutsche Bank analyst specialising in eastern European consumer markets, notes: ""When the Russian consumer buys beer, it is one of the few instances in which he gets a high-quality, but cheap, domestic product. This is a real success story -- one of the only ones." Hans Christian Jacobsen, head of the food and agriculture division of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, the largest single investor in Russian brewing, says: "This industry was tremendously underfunded. Investment has enabled it to work wonders. Russia was a huge untapped market for beer and the domestic companies are making the running." Russia's criminal gangs know a profitable business when they see one. In January, Ilya Vaisman, finance director of Baltika, Russia's largest brewer, was shot dead at his St Petersburg home. Bond of Deutsche Bank commented: "Criminal activity is a real problem for the whole market, not just for Baltika." The beer boom does not mean that Russia's age-old vodka problem has disappeared. Those who track Russia's birth and death rates say it remains a key factor, particularly in reducing the life expectancy of men. Judith Schapiro, head of transition economics at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, who studies Russian demography, says that "the rate at which Russians die has been falling since the mid-1990s, after a huge surge upwards during the market reforms. "This may be related to lower vodka consumption, but it is difficult to tell. One factor that is hard to measure is the extent of illegal liquor production. Government control over producers has improved, but there is a long way to go." Aleksandr Nemtsov points out that the Russian state always had a love-hate relationship with vodka -- a major cause of disease, addiction and early death on one hand, a tremendous source of tax revenue on the other. When he started researching alcoholism in the early 1980s, it did not officially exist. Like atomic accidents. The Soviet Union finally admitted it had a problem in 1985. Its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, launched a vigorous temperance campaign. Consumption of legal alcohol sunk from 10,5 litres per person per year to less than four litres. Nemtsov's statistics, including illegal supplies and home brew, show that the actual figure probably fell from more than 14 to about 10,6. The next big shift occurred in 1992. Market reforms brought hyperinflation, unemployment and fear of the future to millions. Social tension, combined with a slower rise in vodka prices than other prices, drove the crucial figure up to nearly 15 litres again. Suffering from addiction and related psychological conditions increased to an even greater extent than alcohol consumption. Poverty and regulatory chaos meant that people drank more bad-quality illegal or home brewed vodka. "Living standards have continued to decline," Nemtsov explains. "There has been a considerable fall in the intake of calories and protein, at least up to 1996. But life expectancy is increasing -- because overall, since people have less money, they drink less vodka." He warns that improvements in the statistics for alcohol-related disease and deaths may not continue. The sharp rise in the death rate in 1992-93 carried off many older alcoholics. There have been fewer new ones in recent years because Gorbachev's temperance
campaign stopped some potential heavy drinkers starting on the rocky road.
But now those who began bingeing in the early 1990s will start to suffer
diseases and death caused by addiction. -- Gemini News
Simon Pirani is a freelance journalist who writes about Russia and the former Soviet Union. |