Word: vodka
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...outskirts of Uvarovo, where our two-car convoy pulled over so we could say one last goodbye. All was darkness, except for the expanse of snow caught in the headlights. With lightning speed, plates of foods materialized on the closed trunk of one of the cars. A bottle of vodka appeared. The occasion seemed to demand a humorous toast...
Disturbed by his countrymen's fondness for the bottle, Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 launched an all-out campaign against alcohol. The Soviets raised the legal drinking age from 18 to 21, limited the hours when alcohol could be sold and increased the price of vodka from 4.7 rubles ($7.75) to 10 rubles ($16.50) a liter. But popular resistance has forced Gorbachev to ease up on his crusade, and public drunkenness is on the rise again...
Soon enough, though, signs of change emerge. Traffic is much heavier, and if Pepsi has not exactly replaced vodka as the national beverage, it is widely available. Cooperative restaurants enjoy a fairly brisk business, at least among those who can afford the prices (lunches and dinners often go for $20 to $30 a person, without drinks or wine). Major hotels offer Western joint- venture seekers many distinctly unsocialist hard-currency attractions -- slot machines, for one -- while out on the sidewalks, better-dressed young people hurry by, oblivious to the stiff-knuckled old women sweeping the streets with birch-branch brooms...
...Sergei Kaledin's A Humble Cemetery, the pressures on the hulking workman Sparrow (Mikhail Zhigalov) include a legacy of family violence, a stretch in a work camp, virtual gangsterism in the cemetery where he works as a gravedigger, and a dangerous weakness for vodka. There are performances of enchanting sweetness from Anton Tabakov as a young co-worker and of feral malignity from Valeri Shalnykh as a mock-friendly gang enforcer. But the most memorable scenes show Sparrow alone with his cacophony of fears, climbing arduously up to a bell tower where he can hear the euphony of wind...
...Twelve years ago, I gave up spirits. I used tobe a pretty good scotch drinker. I haven't tastedscotch in 12 years. After that I had only wine,and perhaps an occasional martini, occasionally alittle vodka with smoked salmon, caviar, somethinglike that. That was just occasionally...