In Russia, rates of alcohol consumption and homicide are among the highest in the world, and already-high levels increased dramatically after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Rates of both, however, vary greatly among Russia’s 89 regions.

We took advantage of newly available vital statistics and socioeconomic data to examine the regional covariation of drinking and lethal violence. Log-log models were employed to estimate the impact of alcohol consumption on regional homicide rates, controlling for structural factors thought to influence the spatial distribution of homicide rates. Results revealed a positive and significant relationship between alcohol consumption and homicide, with a 1% increase in regional consumption of alcohol associated with an approximately 0.25% increase in homicide rates.

In Russia, higher regional rates of alcohol consumption are associated with higher rates of homicide.

We examined the covariation of aggregate alcohol consumption and rates of homicide in Russia. Rates of both alcohol consumption and lethal violence in the country are among the highest in the world. Although the social, political, and economic changes of the 1990s led to increased rates of alcohol consumption in Russia, a high level of alcohol use has been a perennial problem in the country. The same is true of violence: already-high homicide rates were exacerbated by the shocks of the 1990s.1

Many scholars agree that the Russian public health crisis of the 1990s was due largely to the massive social and economic changes in the country.2 Figure 1 shows the annual rates of alcohol use and homicide from 1965 to 1996. These statistics demonstrate similar trends during this time. Furthermore, alcohol-related deaths and deaths from external causes (including violence) were the leading causes of the fluctuation of mortality rates in Russia during the 1990s.3 It is generally accepted in the literature that policy and structural factors are partially responsible for the changing rates of alcohol consumption in Russia and that these changes have likely had an impact on overall and violent mortality rates.2,4–6

Aside from this temporal perspective, there may also be a cross-sectional component to the relationship. That is, although levels of both alcohol consumption and homicides rose after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the increase was not uniform in either case, and there is tremendous variation throughout the nation.1,7 Furthermore, Walberg et al.6 showed that higher levels of alcohol consumption in a region are associated with a decline in life expectancy. McKee8(p824) argued that “collectively, this evidence suggests the importance of alcohol in explaining the Russian mortality crisis,” and the main hypothesis we tested is that regional variation in the level of aggregate alcohol consumption is also important in explaining the regional differences in homicide.