A large study shows that alcohol – and, in particular, vodka – is responsible for Russia’s high and sharply fluctuating death rates. Russia currently has an abnormally high early death rate in men – 25% of all Russian men will die before the age of 55.

One of the authors of the new study, Prof. Sir Richard Peto, explains:

“Russian death rates have fluctuated wildly over the past 30 years as alcohol restrictions and social stability varied under Presidents Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, and the main thing driving these wild fluctuations in death was vodka. This has been shown in retrospective studies, and now we’ve confirmed it in a big, reliable prospective study.”

Prof. Peto and his colleagues note that under Mikhail Gorbachev’s alcohol restrictions in the mid-1980s, alcohol consumption and death rates both fell by 25%.

Following the collapse of communism there was a steep rise again in both alcohol consumption and death rates. More recently, there has been a drop in consumption of spirits as a result of Russia’s 2006 alcohol policy reforms. Again, the death rates have corresponded, with a fall in risk of death before age 55.

Study leader Prof. David Zaridze, from the Russian Cancer Research Centre in Moscow, says: