History Main / VodkaDrunkenski

* In ''Manga/{{Shy}}'', Russia's superheroine, the aptly named Spirits, is perpetually sloshed and often has a bottle of vodka in her hand, outright complaining when a hole in her stomach keeps her from drinking. Despite this, when [[DriveLikeCrazy]] not behind the wheel, she's actually a great hero.

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* Vasiliy Stalin in ''Film/TheDeathOfStalin''. [[spoiler:He was an alcoholic in RealLife and drank himself to death two days before his 40th birthday.]]

* In a subversion one Russian agent during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII was sent to get into a {{drinking contest}} with a Turkish dignitary. However pretty soon the Russian was babbling like an idiot and the Turk was gleefully recording everything; Turks, being brought up on the [[GargleBlaster formidable]] Rakı (nicknamed Lion's Milk), know how to handle drink. For reference, Rakı, due to its high anis contents, will turn milk-like opaque emulsion when water is added. "High", here, meaning ''over 50% alcohol.'' Oddly, while Turkey is officially a secular state, its population is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Religion 96 percent Muslim]]. [[{{irony}} A religion that forbids drinking in a nation that invented one of the most powerful alcoholic beverages known to man]].
* Norwegian Prime Minister UsefulNotes/EinarGerhardsen once visited a Soviet Kolkhos (i.e. a "common farm"), and was served the traditional beverages. What the proprietor didn`t know, was that Gerhardsen never touched alcohol, and was served water. The local man-in-charge presumed it to be vodka, and entered a drinking contest with Gerhardsen. Every time Gerhardsen toasted, the proprietor did likewise, and drank with him. Over time the Russian started to get somewhat unstable, and had to excuse himself. Meanwhile, Gerhardsen continued in the same pattern with his glass of water, and got the reputation as an incredibly hard drinker, being able to drink an experienced Russian under the table. The Russian probably never learned the truth.

* A high-ranking Red Army officer who defected to the West in the mid-1970's described during his debriefing how anything up to a third of all Russian tanks committed to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 were immobilised and rendered useless owing to soldiers either drinking vital alcohol-based lubricants, or else using reserve fuel tanks for illicit distilling and transportation of home-brewed vodka - which was so utterly unsuitable for powering a tank that once the reserve tank was switched on, the "fuel" it contained fouled (and often destroyed) the engine. He described a situation where the whole of the march route into Prague was lined by immobilised tanks that had broken down largely for this reason. This apparently also happened a lot during the Soviet Union's abortive attempt to "pacify" insurgency in Afghanistan in the 1980's.

->''"Drink is the joy of the Rus." [[note]]'Rus' being [[UsefulNotes/KievanRus the early Medieval nation]] from which modern Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians originate.[[/note]]''

GloriousMotherRussia. Supposedly, it's the coldest place on the planet, and really depressing. The obvious solution to this problem? Booze -- copious amounts of booze. So much, in fact, that there's a good chance that any given Russian character in fiction will be TheAlcoholic, or at least will look for the slightest excuse to get drunk. They also tend to see green imps rather than PinkElephants. And they probably have the stout constitution necessary to withstand intoxication, because MotherRussiaMakesYouStrong.

* Downplayed with the Russian BadassPreacher Father Dimitri in ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'', who throws down a lot of vodka, but is never impaired by it and by and large seems to have the habit under control.

* In a subversion one Russian agent during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII was sent to get into a {{drinking contest}} with a Turkish dignitary. However pretty soon the Russian was babbling like an idiot and the Turk was gleefully recording everything; Turks, being brought up on the [[GargleBlaster formidable]] Raki (nicknamed Lion's Milk), know how to handle drink. For reference, Raki, due to its high anis contents, will turn milk-like opaque emulsion when water is added. "High", here, meaning ''over 50% alcohol.'' Oddly, while Turkey is officially a secular state, its population is [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey#Religion 96 percent Muslim]]. [[{{irony}} A religion that forbids drinking in a nation that invented one of the most powerful alcoholic beverages known to man]].

Amusingly, the word "vodka" (водка) is actually a diminutive form of the Russian word for "water".[[note]] That would be "вода" (''"voda"'', pronounced roughly like "wadda").[[/note]] So jokes about Russians "drinking vodka like water" (or not knowing the difference between vodka and water) actually have a grain of truth in them.