govt publication put out by the HSS, to the effect that in the mid 1970s, 10,000 Russians a year froze to death while drunk. --------- This sounds a little high -- that didn't even happen winter before last when they lost heating in the Far East and it was 50 below.
About 100 people in Moscow drown every year during the summer, usually because they were drinking vodka and swimming, which is not too smart. A couple of hundred people freeze to death in Moscow every year, almost all of them vagrants who pass out drinking cheap vodka (cheap vodka is often not even really vodka -- they add grain alcohol and methanol and god knows what. Never, ever drink cheap vodka.). Hell, I once, before I knew what vodka could do to me, had so much plowed into me trying to keep up with some Russians that I collapsed in a snowbank for a couple of minutes, something I will never, ever repeat. Never try to keep up with a bunch of Russian muzhiky drinking vodka. I don't know how they do it.
Chris Doss the Russia Journal