I must admit: I never thought about the Russian culture in general, so I can't talk about it as a whole. I can, however, and would love to talk about the aspects of it, like drinking, and form a fuller picture through such talks.

Drinking in Russia is not as straightforward as one might think, as is drinking itself.

There are quite a few people who never drink at all, much like in every other country.

There are people who drink a bit - a few 0.5L glass bottles of weak beer, for example - most often as an excuse to keep company - much like people who go out on dates at restaurants and bars don't do it for food or drinks. It's not uncommon to have a few young men to sit on a bench, drink beer and talk about stuff, without insulting or assaulting anybody. They're just having some go-out time. They can, however, be very loud when they get deeply drunk. Ever since the public drinking ban took place a few months ago, this kind of thing became less common, even though people can continue to drink publically if the bottles are inside the tall brown packages every American would instantly recognize.

There are people somewhere in between, who enjoy drinking themselves to sleep a form of relaxation or escapism, which is never chronic nor addicting.

There are, of course, alcoholics - those who consume alcoholic drinks as an addiction, as their way of coping with reality. Those were frowned upon in the Soviet times, and I believe that the same frown have transfered to the modern Russia, mostly through the beliefs of the older citizens.

Then, there's the famous holiday drinking. Consuming alcohol as a way of celebration is an ancient tradition of Slavic people; considering that Rurik, the first duke of Kievan Rus', came from somewhere up north (Scandinavia, to be more precise), I would imagine that there may be some correlation with the fact that vikingers (those whom people traditionally call "vikings", even though "viking" was a conquesting travel, in which vikingers partook) were famous for their celebratory drinking as well, though this is only a speculation of mine.

When you arrive at a usual Russian holiday celebration - usually held at dachas* or at someone's home, with the whole family and some friends invited - you will always seem an alarming amount of food and drinks, most of which is left over for quite a few days. Drinking at such celebrations is not mandatory, but not drinking is often seen as refusing to salute for the cause of celebration, and the more important the cause, the more frowned upon not drinking might be seen be older Russians. Of those who drink, younger adults would more often err on the side of less, imbibing both less drinks and the drinks of less alcohol percentage; older adults, however, might prefer to go straight for vodka, which I'm sure you recognize, because stronger drinking might be associated with the virility of the man drinking - women rarely drink lots of vodka, and most of those women are either homeless or alcoholics.

I'm not a person who drinks alcohol, and there's some aspect of drinking that bothers me more than adults drinking: it's children and teenagers drinking. Most detestable is to make children of ages around 10 drink "just a little bit" because "it's tradition" or, idiotically, "why wouldn't you?" (some terrible parents do and make their children do things solely to impress others - an alarmingly common behavior; "why wouldn't you?" is most often used to manipulate people into such behavior). Naturally, children get used to it, but, concerned as I am, I've never heard of children who got into alcoholism that way.

More terrible is when children get into drinking without their parents knowing - or knowing and not caring about it - often with high-schoolers joining them in on this, I'm sure, very bonding and glorious practice. It is then when minors drink without what's called in Russia "learning to drink", when they simply imbibe alcoholic drinks to get themselves drunk and pass out, without dwelling into the undoubtably wonderful state of euphoria and lack of inhibitions. Terrible practice, but far too common than one would hope.

You may be pleased to know after that that most adults do know how to drink. Vodka is consumed with shots rather than whole glasses (which is a feature of an alcoholic) and "eaten after" (that is, with small piece of food - a salty pickle or a piece of bread - consumed immediately afterwards to decrease amount of alcohol consumed from the drink). Drinking beer mostly means drinking low-percentage beer, because most of those who drink have either children to take care of or jobs to do the next day, so hangover is never a desired result... unless you're talking about big, three-day-long weekends during holidays, in which case many might very well go for it.

I hope this answers your question in full. If you have any else - shoot, and I'll do my best to shed some light on it.

* Dachas [DAH-chah] are houses usually outside of the city, where people can also build banyas [BAH-njah] - small steaming-hot relaxation and washing houses - and hold sads [SAHD] or ogorods [oh-goh-ROHD, most often pronounced as ah-gah-ROHD], which are gardens of fruits, vegetables and/or berries. Often dacha-houses are not very big and are two stories high or higher, equipped with a petsch - a brick construction that serves as both an oven and a heater for the whole house - and lacking internal toilet room, which exists as a separate building outside, to not let the excrements pollute the air.