World Notes Soviet Union

When West German Social Democratic Leader Willy Brandt arrived in Moscow in late May, the reception was, well, arid. The former Chancellor's delegation was sobered to discover that at banquets, once-free-flowing vodka had been replaced by fruit juice and mineral water. Remarked a member of Brandt's party: "We should have brought our own vodka." The dry state of affairs is the result of Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's campaign against drunkenness. He has raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 and banned alcohol at official functions.

The temperance movement has even reached that most bibulous of regions, Georgia, where no meal is complete without wine. A group of foreign journalists in Tbilisi was recently toasted with fruit juice, to the disgust of a local official who declared the ban "an insult to the tradition of Georgian hospitality." The new rules appear to be having some effect. With police now on the lookout for drunks, plumbers and carpenters seem less ready to insist on vodka as payment "under the table," which is where they often ended up by midday. "Now they're sober all day," says one Muscovite. "But after lunch, they get terribly cranky."