Tell Me What You Drink and I Will Tell You Who You Are: Does the Structure of Alcohol Consumption of Russians Depends on the Social Class?

Over the past three decades, both the volume of alcohol consumption and the preferences of alcoholic beverages among Russians have changed, for example, scientists highlight the trend of the transition from the Northern model of alcohol consumption to the Central European. In connection with the various changes taking place in Russian society since the beginning of the collapse of USSR, the relationship between social class and the choice of alcohol can be questioned. In general, the topic of alcohol consumed by Russians is quite relevant, but the role of the social class as an engine for choosing drinks is not considered in modern research. In this regard, the purpose of our work is to analyze the relationship between two main parameters: the structure of alcohol consumption and the social class of Russians. The goal will be achieved by using the consolidated database of RLMS HSE, which collects all the surveys of individuals from 1994 to 2018. The first part of the study consists of analyzing the situation with alcohol consumption based on descriptive statistics, constructing a social class variable and a typology of alcohol consumption models. In second part we can find out how the relationship between the type of alcohol consumption and the social class of Russians changed from 1994 to 2018. Last step in this part is to compare the strength of influence on the choice of alcohol drinks of a social class and other socio-demographic characteristics during the period that we highlighted. The main result of our study is that P. Bourdieu’s concept of lifestyle is all relevant for the period under study, but along with it, in recent years there has been a development of elements of the concept of postmodern society, when economic characteristics lose their role compared to others, and consumer practices become combined and fragmented.