[GSlob]

"Russians drink much less vodka than you think they do."
You might have a point. Venedikt Erofeev, "Moskva-Petushki", wrote that in drinking mere vodka, even from the bottleneck, there is nothing beyond spiritual languor. See his chapter on cocktails. In my time I, a teenager at the time, discovered the purification of wood paint [morilka spirtovaya, uzhgorodskogo khimzavoda] to a barely drinkable condition - and since the knowledge belongs to the people, within 2 months that morilka brand disappeared from all Moscow hardware stores. It was about 10 times cheaper than vodka. And do not forget the colognes.

[antiRepublicrat]

OTOH, there's a reason the Russians called the MiG-25 the "Flying Restaurant" -- it used 500 liters of pure alcohol for cooling and hydraulics. A MiG-25 air base practically lived off the alcohol stores for the plane.