NEWSLETTER

THE VICE GUIDE TO RUSSIA

PART 2: B -Ё

Vodka

(V)—VODKA

Nearly every young Russian you meet, particularly the chicks, will tell you that they can’t stand vodka and they never drink it. They’ll insist that they only drink Tanqueray or Johnnie Walker Black. They are lying. They drink vodka by the shitload; it’s just that they’re kind of embarrassed to admit it to foreigners because they think it makes them look like a cliché.

The best vodka now is Russkii Standart Platinum. We’ve hung out with minigarchs who prefer this brand, which is owned by a semigarch named Rustam Tariko. So if you must order vodka, order Russkii Standart and you’ll look like you know what you’re doing.

Remember one more thing about vodka: Russians don’t put caps back on open bottles. If you open a bottle with anyone—friend, colleague, business partner, landlord, cop—you MUST finish it.

Gogol

(G)—GOGOL

The reason why Russians rule world literature is Nikolai Gogol. He was Russia’s first great prose writer. Dostoevsky wrote that “all Russian literature came out of Gogol’s Overcoat,” referring to one of his most famous stories. If you don’t give a shit about Dostoevsky, then just know that Mark E. Smith is also a big Gogol fan.

You should read Gogol not just to become a Renaissance Guy, but because it is the best way to make sense of Russia. His seminal novel Dead Souls is a mind-blowing, hilarious book about the grotesquerie, corruption, slavishness, and cruelty of Russian life. The book will seem caricatured and surreal, even cartoonish, to the uninitiated Western reader. But once said reader spends a little time in Russia, he will realize that the novel is not grotesque and cartoonish, but a perfect mirror of Russian life. Gogol was deeply fucked-up from writing Dead Souls, which is one of those rare works of lit in which there is not a single redeeming character. After spending nearly ten years working on a sequel, he threw the entire manuscript into a fire, refused all food, and died nine days later. So long, funny man.



(D)—DYEVUSHKA

Speaking of souls, the word for soul in Russian is dusha. You’ll hear a lot about the “mysterious Russian soul” that’s supposed to make them deeper than us. You know, like Winston Churchill’s overused line about how Russia is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” which we regard as the “Free Bird” of op-ed clichés about Russia.

Forget all this “Russian soul” guff and focus on the more important D—dyevushka. It means “girl.” One of the most cruelly kept secrets of the Cold War was that Russia has the hottest, willingest-to-do-fucking-anythingest girls on earth.



(E)—EGYPT

If you want to meet Russians where they really party, your best bet is to see them on vacation in Egypt.

Since Russians are openly prejudiced against both dark-skinned people and each other, and since they view vacations as a time to drink and fuck at levels that make even their wildest weekends at home seem like Christian retreats, we recommend Egypt as the ideal way to mainline concentrated Russianness.



(Yo)—YOLKA

A yolka is a Christmas tree. Except that Russians don’t celebrate Christmas on December 25th, but rather according to their old, fucked-up calendar, which puts it on January 7th. So Russians put their yolkas and presents out for New Year’s.

And December 31st isn’t their only New Year’s celebration either. Since they still kind of respect their old calendar, they celebrate “Old New Year” on January 13th as well.

In fact, the entire period in Russia from December 31st through January 14th is such a blowout of alcohol poisoning, rape, and accidental fires that last year the government decreed a ten-day-straight official holiday from January 1st through 10th. They had to.

MARK AMES

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