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From: elt@astrovax.UUCP (Ed Turner)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Red AND Dead
Message-ID: <199@astrovax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Dec-83 11:32:52 EST
Article-I.D.: astrovax.199
Posted: Mon Dec 19 11:32:52 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Dec-83 06:55:38 EST
Organization: Princeton Univ. Astrophysics
Lines: 26

> U.S. News & World Report this week quotes a study which shows some curious
> facts about the Soviet empire.  The life expectancy at birth in the USSR
> actually dropped between 1965 and 1980.  I don't have the figures in front
> of me, but I think these are accurate:  The life expectancy of females dropped
> only slightly, from 74.1 to 73.5 years.  But the life expectancy of males
> plunged from 66.2 years to 61.9 years.  Much of this increased likelihood of
> death is due to heavy alcohol consumption; at least 50% of fatal accidents in
> the USSR are alcohol-related; 80% more alcohol was bought in Latvia in 1980
> than in 1970 (as an example); the average Latvian spends more on booze than
> on clothes; and (the real zinger) the death rate for alcohol poisoning in the
> USSR is 88 times that in the USA!

This sounds a bit incredible, but having spent a little time in the SU, I
can believe it.  The rate of vodka consumption among nearly all of the
Soviet scientists I met was truly amazing.  Also extreme public drunkeness
was much more common than in any other country I have visited extensively.
One of my colleagues there claimed that the vodka supply never dried up 
(unlike all other consumer goods) even in times of short food supplies
because vodka production was given priority over food uses in the 
distribution of the potoato crop.  Perhaps he was pulling my leg.  Another
popular jest was that the Communist Party would not out last the vodka supply
by a week (this one was only told among small groups of friends in private, of
course).

Ed Turner
astrovax!elt