CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/6/2017

Alcohol: Soviet Anti-Alcohol Posters

"Vodka has brought much evil and wrongdoing to the family," reads the copy on this 1977 poster by I. Fridman. (Naturally, the label on the bottle reads, "Vodka.") Reproduced from Alcohol: Soviet Anti-Alcohol Posters, this is just one of 260 artworks collected by Damon Murray and Stephen Sorrell of FUEL Publishing meant to help the notoriously overindulgent dipsomaniacs of the Soviet Union "overcome drinking and alcoholism and to eradicate bootlegged alcohol," as later directed by Mikhail Gorbachev. During Gorbachev's period of prohibition, many Soviet citizens turned to alcohol surrogates including colognes, glues, drain cleaners, medications and moonshine, among others. "The results of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign were the disintegration of the country's economy and the mass drinking that followed," Alexei Plutser-Sarno writes. "According to official statistics alone, consumption of spirits in Russia grew by 233% between 1988 and 1998. If the consumption of bootlegged and surrogate alcohol is taken into account, the figure is much higher."