"Governments in Communist countries often resort to subsidizing alcohol in order to keep people happy," Petrov explains. My impression of the Soviet alcohol po

"Governments in Communist countries often resort to subsidizing alcohol in order to keep people happy," Petrov explains. My impression of the Soviet alcohol policy was actually the other way around - alcohol was tightly regulated and sold at high markups, which (maybe not surprisingly) was a barrier to actual attempts to reduce alcoholism, since the state budget was so dependent on the sales.