USSR Wages War on Alcohol
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2018
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sales of alcohol in the USSR were severely limited in 1985 in a bid to fight drunkenness. But the anti-alcohol campaign was abandoned three years later when the Soviet economy was in trouble, and the government need more taxes. Dina Newman discussed the reasons for the campaign's failure with the former advisor to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Alexander Tsipko.
Photo: A Soviet anti-alcohol poster; Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. Choosing what to |
| 0:32.1 | watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:36.5 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:41.5 | telly we share what we've been watching. |
| 0:43.7 | Cladie Aide! |
| 0:45.7 | Loads of games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:48.2 | Lovely. |
| 0:49.0 | Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:51.2 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:54.7 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:58.8 | Hello you're listening to the Witness podcast on the BBC World Service with me, Dina Newman. |
| 1:05.3 | Today we go back to the USSR in 1985, when the Communist Party led by a charismatic new leader Mikhail Garbachev waged war on alcoholism. |
| 1:16.7 | One day in mid-May 1985, soon after his appointment as the head of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gurbachov shocked the residents of Leningrad, |
| 1:29.6 | when instead of getting directly into his car after a meeting with the city authorities, he walked |
| 1:35.3 | into the crowd in the center of the city. |
... |
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