A Soviet guide to vodka

One of the perks – a perilous one – of visiting the Former Soviet Union in the 1990s was the cheapness of the vodka. I was used to paying London prices for it but in Estonia (where I lived for two years) you could find bunker-bars where they’d serve you a generous tumbler – enough to blitz you for an evening – for about 40 pence. Most people wanted nothing more from alcohol than that it should anaesthetise them and help them forget, and vodka was ideal for this. Unlike whisky or brandy, you couldn’t crow over its ‘vanilla overtones’, its ‘hints of butterscotch’ or its ‘aged in the wood’ qualities. It simply got you drunk, no more, no less. And the bars served it that way: doled out, clinic style, in a measuring beaker.

The rules for drinking vodka were simple. You never did it without snacks – pickled cucumbers, little open sandwiches or the dried fish the locals loved but which I couldn’t stomach.