Dear authors of Hitler Hipster,
I refer to your cartoon broseph-stalin (http://hipsterhitler.com/comics/broseph-stalin/), which I believe was authored around October 2011, judging by the image file URL.
You may not be aware of it, but there is a surprising level of accuracy. Granted it is not beer, but vodka that is in question. In particular there are two articles (across two volumes) by A. Krasikov published in the "Samizdat Register", a compilation of the famous underground newsletter in the Soviet Union. In these articles, A. Krasikov elucidates how official statistics were categorically altered to hide the fact that alcoholic beverages were "Commodity Number One", as the articles are entitled.
"Of what people drink", Krasikov notes from the Narodnoye Khozyaistvo SSR v 1972, "only tea is named, though this article occupies no great place in the expenditure - considerably less than one percent... All other beverages, from kvass to vodka, are merged in ... 'Other Foodstuffs', which represented 32 percent of expenditure.
Krasikov, through a very conservative reconstruction of previous yearbooks, notes how alcoholic beverages were increasingly merged to hide the extent of consumption. Over-estimating the consumption of non-alcoholic beverages at every extent of the equation, it is concluded that the "expenditure on alcohol came ... to 15 percent of the total... On no other commodity does the Soviet people spend 26 or 27 milliards every year."
By way of comparison 16 milliard is spent on clothing and underwear, 14 milliard on meat and sausages, and a mere 2 milliard on printed material (books, newspapers, textbooks etc).
Broseph Stalin would be proud. The plan has succeeded.
Yours sincerely,
--
Lev Lafayette, mobile: 0432 255 208
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