From The Corner:
Re: True Believers [Mark Krikorian]
Andrew and Roman are right, of course, that communism really did serve as a substitute religion in the Soviet Union (remember also "Lenin Lived, Lenin Lives, Lenin Will Live!"). And I agree that this faith died, probably in the 1970s, but that's the point — Christianity died in Europe and communism, after it killed Christianity in Russia, itself died, probably in the 1970s, leaving people believing in nothing and sapping the Soviet state of what legitimacy it had (other than the fading memory of winning the "Great Patriotic War"). In other words, the fall of the Soviet Union didn't create a spiritual void in the hearts of Russians — it was the other way around.
As for vodka, the Reds themselves saw in the 1980s that it was becoming an increasingly serious social problem — remember that the first "reformist" initiative that Gorbachev undertook was to limit the amount of vodka a person could buy at any one time at the government liquor stores.
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