BY DAMIEN SHARKOV
Analysts say the vodka market in Russia began to decline gradually in 2007. But it’s accelerated rapidly in recent years, as the country’s economic crisis has worsened.
FOR CENTURIES, going back as far as the days of the czar Ivan the Terrible, vodka has been Russia’s drink of choice. Another czar, Peter the Great, always kept a goblet of vodka at his palace banquets—downing it was the penalty for arriving late. Dmitri Mendeleev, the inventor of the periodic table, wrote his doctorate on the distillation of vodka in 1865. And legend has it that JosefStalin’s father used to give his baby son a cloth soaked with vodka, rather than a pacifier.