I remember a story I read in National Review about thirty-five years ago.
The author of the story had succeeded in being sneaked into a Soviet air base in Afghanistan. He told some interesting stories about what he'd seen.
One of them was about the strong smell of jet fuel he experienced as he was being driven into the base; the road cut through what appeared to be a swamp.
He asked one of the crew members about this, and they explained it as follows: the aircraft at that base used pure ethanol as a coolant for their radars. They consumed coolant at the rate of one-half ton of ethanol for each twelve tons of fuel burned. Therefore, Soviet accountants checked the fuel and alcohol shipments very closely to ensure that this ratio was maintained, in order to detect any "unauthorized use" of the alcohol coolant.
This meant that for each gallon of alcohol consumed for recreational purposes, about 24 gallons of fuel must disappear. Simply burning it would create a lot of smoke that would be easily spotted, draw too much attention. So the crew members had taken to dumping the fuel out in the woods.
There were several thousand crew members at the base, which by then had been in operation for almost ten years.
Russia would be a much stronger and probably free-er nation if they would learn not to drink themselves into oblivion at every opportunity.
A close friend was working in Russia a couple of decades ago.
A Russian accomplice and he were able to get on base. He used a fake KGB card to bluff his way in.
It does not mean much, but it is a data point.
Here’s another (true) Soviet era story: Moscow gave a certain nail factory a production goal, based on tonnage. The manager of the factory discovered that he could best achieve that goal by producing really big nails.
The manager met his goal, and got a commendation. But nobody could use nails that big. So they were just dumped in a back lot.
Ain’t communism grand? It’s so much better than capitalism.