On the night Nazi Germany surrendered, the Soviet Union celebrated so hard it drank the entire country dry — there was not a single bottle of vodka left in Moscow by morning.
On May 9, 1945, at 1:10 a.m., Soviet radio announced Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender to the USSR. Rather than wait for daylight, citizens poured into the streets immediately — still in their pajamas in many cases — to celebrate the end of nearly four years of the most devastating war in human history. The Soviet Union had lost an estimated 27 million people in the conflict.
The celebrations that erupted across the Soviet Union that night were unlike anything the country had ever seen. Strangers embraced in the streets, soldiers were hoisted on shoulders, and the drinking began almost immediately. The scale of the collective relief — and the collective thirst — was staggering.
By the time Joseph Stalin finally addressed the nation 22 hours after the initial announcement, Russia had accomplished something that seemed almost physically impossible: it had drunk itself completely dry. As one foreign correspondent reported simply: 'There was no vodka in Moscow on May 10. We drank it all.'
The shortage was total and nationwide — not a single bottle reportedly remained available across Moscow, and the situation was similar in cities across the country. For a nation where vodka was deeply embedded in culture, tradition, and daily life, running out entirely was an almost mythological feat — a testament to the depth of a nation's relief after enduring years of unimaginable suffering.
The morning of May 10 brought what observers described as a nationwide hangover of historic proportions — though virtually every account of it describes it as entirely worth it. It remains one of history's most human footnotes to one of its most catastrophic events: a country so shattered, so exhausted, and so desperately relieved that it collectively drank itself into oblivion in a single night.