Bullough appears to believe that, of all Russia's leaders, only Gorbachev was seriously interested in combatting alcoholism. Even as an account of compulsive drinking, the book has its blind spots. There are many accounts of modern Russian society – by Geoffrey Hosking, Caroline Humphrey and Alena Ledeneva, among others (none of them mentioned by Bullough) – that address the problems of anomie and lack of trust in a less melodramatic and more sophisticated way. If The Last Man in Russia were only a philippic in this style, it would hardly merit further attention. 'The Russian nation is shrivelling away from within,' Bullough claims. But the prosperous capital cannot salvage the country from the spiritual malaise that makes people drink. Only Moscow, boom-time city, 'sucking up' resources from all over the country, offsets the general picture.

He blames drink for the demographic and psychological collapse of the Russian nation, for the empty and rotting settlements that scatter the country, the catastrophic rates of accidental death, and the dismal record of life expectancy and infant mortality.

As Richard Turbervile put it in 1568, 'Drinke is their whole desire, the pot is all their pride, / The sobrest head doth once a day stand needfull of a guide.' Oliver Bullough's The Last Man in Russia gives the old moral expostulations a modern twist. T hat the Russians are 'giuen much to drunkenesse' has been a cliche of western accounts of their country since the early modern era.

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