Pavel Krusanov.
Hard-drinking Russians holla back at the “blue book” cherished by adherents of Alcoholics Anonymous, authored by the semianonymous father of all twelve-steppers, Bill W. The Moscow Times reports on a new anthology whose title, Sinyaya Kniga Alkogolika, translates to The Blue Book of the Alcoholic in English: “Put together by the St. Petersburg writer Pavel Krusanov, the book does not exclusively preach the benefits of sobriety, and its name comes from the affectionate term sinyak, or ‘blue person,’ used to describe a lush.” Contributing writer Sergei Korovin comments: “There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don’t consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.” In one story that appears in the book, a man walking with two small children past a pair of drinkers hurries the tots along, saying: “Look, the daddies feel hot, and they’re having a drink of water.” In another, a mother promises to buy her son trousers and shoes. He asks for more rubles than these items would normally cost, not telling her that he plans to spend the extra on a binge. Krusanov refers to his own drinking bouts as “going on reconnaissance.”