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Comment by cobaltoxide | Hacker News Reader

Many sources put Russia in the top five for incidence of alcoholism, and the life expectancy of Russian men is famously diminished due to their high intake of alcohol. The life expectancy of Russian women is 13 years longer than for men.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_in_Russia

"A recent study blamed alcohol for more than half the deaths (52%) among Russians aged 15 to 54 from 1990 to 2001.[14] For the same demographic, this compares to 4% of deaths for the rest of the world."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_in_Russia#Alcohol_consu...

I don't think it's just a stereotype.

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2001 was 22 years ago.

And some of the worst times in post Soviet Russia (and former union states). Truly hopeless and desperate times.

In reality, alcohol consumption there is down significantly despite all the grasping around to hate on them:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/01/russian-alcoho...

In fairness, the original anecdote is about 2002

I guess it doesn't take long to fall back on old habits when you're in the trenches though. A lot of translated intercepted calls posted at https://www.youtube.com/@insightsfromukraineandrussia and reports from the front line talk about drunk Russians like it's an epidemic of alchoholism. They also talk about drunk Ukrainians on another one of the podcasts I follow so it's not only the Russians drinking on the front line.

That being said, I have a few Russian friends that immigrated years ago to Florida and they're not big drinkers. They were all from well off families though. Kinda like here, I suspect alcoholism follows poverty.

I doubt Russia is doing all that well 22 years later either..

It really doesn’t matter what you think or how you feel. That’s not how it works.

It’s an objective fact that drinking is down and life expectancy is up there.

Some people are so Rusaphobic on here that they are borderline racist. It’s gross.

> It’s an objective fact that drinking is down and life expectancy is up there

Which doesn’t mean that people are doing fine there.

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