Originally published at: These weird old Soviet anti-alcohol posters are wild | Boing Boing
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A friend visited Soviet-era Moscow. One vivid memory he had was the public vodka dispensers. It looked like a drinking fountain / bubbler, with a metal cup on a chain. You insert a coin, fill the cup, drink the contents, repeat if / as needed, and move on with your day.
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I have a friend that has had the classic Vodka “Nyet” on her wall for a sober decade. It’s worked for her
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I love those Soviet crystal vodka glasses. My parents have a few of those.
I just found a really nice set at Walmart, of all places. If the architects of the Soviet Union could see that…
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Looking right at the decanter I brought back from Mother Russia, it’s a beauty.
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Beautiful. Reminds me that I need a drink.
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Another favorite, which only sneaks a little anti-alcohol in is the “We Smite the Lazy Worker” poster I have had for a couple of decades
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I have that one, too!
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My folks found a near identical crystal set in the Brooklyn home we moved into after 20 years of apartment life. One difference: the set was blood red. Years later, a bit of research on my part revealed that the previous owners had immigrated from Lithuania, and that the family’s mom and my mom shared the same name. Olga.
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FUEL published a very nice book of these called Alcohol: Soviet Anti-Alcohol Posters -246p, compiled by Damon Murray / Stephen Sorrell - it even comes with a lenticular cover animating a man with a glass for a head pouring a bottle of booze into himself - recommended!
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My old roommate was Polish, and had a fascination with Russia. (He explained, on account of him being the last grade school class which was taught Russian under the assumption they were going to get taken over)
He had this particular poster in his collection of soviet era posters. There was a few others (maybe a dozen, across a variety of topics), and they were all pretty wild.
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I absolutely love soviet graphic design.
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That is totally me.
“That akvavit is practically at room temperature! How barbaric! Put it back in the freezer!”
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and thus , why one should smoke the pot instead ~
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Those were probably soft-drink dispensers. They were pretty common, complete with the infamous cup-on-a-chain.
None of the Soviet or post-Soviet anti-booze campaigns worked. I vividly remember taking a morning walk on my first day in St Petersburg and seeing a whole bunch of middle-aged gentlemen three sheets to the wind after getting an early start to their day. I’ve visited lots of places and seen my share of public drunkenness but nothing like what I saw in Russia.
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I don’t have access to this book any more (or perhaps I simply can’t find it), but Barbara Moynahan’s book A dictionary of Russian Gesture has several alcohol related hand signals, including one that says – “I need a man to share a bottle of vodka with”.
На посошок!
(my dad was interested in the language, and read Russian technical manuals, possibly to support his job as an engineer, possibly for other reasons left unsaid.)
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They existed in the realm of propaganda, but were not seriously enforced. People could show up at work drunk and face no repercussions. Or, as in one case I’ve read about, a factory worker could try drinking some industrial-grade alcohol on the job, get taken away by an ambulance unconscious, and then go back to work as usual a few days later. On the whole, the government preferred a drunken populace over one that had time to soberly consider the possibility that their misery had systemic causes.
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