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While in Moscow, I went to the store around 11:30pm to buy some beer, and the cashier checked her watch and said no.

Why am I not allowed to buy alcohol at the store after 11pm in Russia?

JoErNanO
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kemicofa ghost
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    Come to Norway - here you're not allowed to buy beer in shops after 20:00 on weekdays and 18:00 on Saturdays. As for strong-beer, wine and liquor; these are only sold at the state-owned Vinmonopolet (Wine-monopoly) which closes at 17:00 on weekdays and 15:00 at Saturdays. One of many things done to reduce excessive drinking - price (form taxes) is another. – Baard Kopperud Sep 07 '16 at 16:15
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    @BaardKopperud Kazakhstan is another country which managed to surprise me: I wanted to buy a botte as a part of a birthday present and had to wait until afternoon because apparently alcohol is not sold there in the morning. – Dmitry Grigoryev Sep 07 '16 at 16:31
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    It's because Russia is free-er country than, for example, Canada. Here you typically cannot buy liquor after around 9 p.m. and on Sundays and Holidays (using the province of BC as an example). This is simply because your government-run liquor store are closed. I haven't heard of any 24/7 store in Canada that is licensed to sell liquor; Google comes up with nothing. – Kaz Sep 07 '16 at 19:06
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    @Kaz about 20 years ago, while touring Canada in a car, we kept buying alcohol even around midnight - in petrol stations. Albeit the strongest there was fortified wine (about 20% abv) – Aleks G Sep 07 '16 at 19:27
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    There are cities and entire counties in the US where it is illegal to sell alcohol and illegal to bring in more than a certain volume. – AbraCadaver Sep 07 '16 at 20:35
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    This is law - there is no "why". Or properly speaking the "why" is: Because legislators decided so. – Nobody Sep 07 '16 at 21:34
  • @AbraCadaver. Moreover, you can't sell Coors east of the Mississippi. That's bootleggin'. – Kaz Sep 07 '16 at 22:41
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    @Nobody And why did they decide so? It seems unlikely that they were just yanking 145 million people's chains. – David Richerby Sep 08 '16 at 07:24
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    @DavidRicherby the "why" question does not belong to this forum. That question would be like asking why one should drive on the right side in the USA. The fact that Russia is "exotic" to most of the audience would not make that a "travel" question. The OP question could be on-topic if understood as "Was I denied alcohol because I was a foreigner" or even "Does it apply to all of Russia". – SJuan76 Sep 08 '16 at 08:35
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    Here in Italy, supermarket and other general purpose stores (e.g. motorway service stations) cannot sell alcohol after midnight. The idea behind this is to stop people from driving to the supermarket at night, buying a bunch of beers, getting wasted at the park and then driving back home.

    It doesn't really make that much sense when one can just go to a bar and keep buying alcohol all night long, but laws are rarely completely logical.

     – Demonblack Sep 08 '16 at 09:21
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    @SJuan76 I agree that the "why" question is off-topic. But what does that have to do with my comment? User Nobody claimed that laws are passed for no reason; I was pointing out that this is false. – David Richerby Sep 08 '16 at 09:36
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a question about a country's political and legal decisions, not a question about travel. – David Richerby Sep 08 '16 at 09:37
  • @DavidRicherby "And why did they decide so? It seems unlikely that they were just yanking 145 million people's chains." You are an idealist, I see. I cannot share your optimism. – Nobody Sep 08 '16 at 09:59
  • Adding @BaardKopperud to my "People not to follow their advice" list – mgarciaisaia Sep 08 '16 at 21:26
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    The "why" question is not off-topic. Just as an example out of many possible ones, if I ask "Why in country X it's illegal to eat animal Y ?", to a traveler the answer "Because the law says so" is useless to say the least, while the answer "Because the majority of the population considers animal Y sacred" is extremely useful, f.ex. it might keep the traveler from publicly showing disrespect or worse for the sacred animal, which is very advisable to those traveling there. – SantiBailors Sep 09 '16 at 11:07
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    Typically only large chain store abide by this rule. Most 'milkbars' or convenience stores do not really care. Look for signs named 'продукты' (literally 'products'), you're bound to find a store that will happily sell alcohol to you, regardless of the time. – Rob Jul 28 '17 at 06:10

3 Answers3

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It's a law that's designed to reduce public drunkenness / alcoholism, especially at night when you don't want loud, rowdy and sometimes violent drunk people in the streets. Sometimes vendors try to circumvent these laws by selling e.g. a very expensive plastic cup that comes with a free can of beer when you buy it : ), but there have been crackdowns on such things, I don't know how the current situation is and I suspect it varies from city to city (and I've seen that in some places the locals who are prone to drinking know very well how to still get alcohol after the cut-off time). By the way, if you think that not selling alcohol after 11 is strange, check out the "no alcohol on the 1st day of the month" law in Mongolia!

See e.g. this site (in Russian) which talks about the restriction on alcohol sales, including beer, from 11pm to 8am, Russia-wide, except for cafes/bars/restaurants and duty-free stores.

Neusser
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Eugene O
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    @RugDealer you can google some articles on the topic, e.g. this one. And as noted, selling restriction times may differ as the law is enforced locally. E.g. in St. Petersburg you can't buy alcohol from 22 to 11 as opposed to 23-8 in Moscow. – Vilmar Sep 07 '16 at 14:28
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    @pnuts Indeed. Until recently there were similar laws in the UK banning the sale of alcohol after 11pm, even in licensed premises. They were relaxed only in 2005. – Bob Tway Sep 07 '16 at 14:59
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    This is also true in some US states- for example, a convenience store may have ice-cold beer sitting in the cooler, but if it's one minute after 1AM and you're in Ohio you're out of luck (actually they probably cut off a bit earlier so they don't get fined for the sake of a couple minutes). – Spehro Pefhany Sep 07 '16 at 15:44
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    @MattThrower Similar laws still exist in Scotland, where alcohol can only be sold between 10am and 10pm. The change was not a UK-wide one. – Periata Breatta Sep 08 '16 at 17:36
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Rules regarding alcohol production, sales and consumption are governed by Federal law N 171-ФЗ. Chapter II article 16 paragraph 5 says:

  1. Не допускается розничная продажа алкогольной продукции с 23 часов до 8 часов по местному времени, за исключением розничной продажи алкогольной продукции, осуществляемой организациями [...] услуг общественного питания, а также розничной продажи алкогольной продукции, осуществляемой магазинами беспошлинной торговли.

Basically, only public catering facilities (like restaurants and bars) and duty-free shops can legally sell alcohol in Russia between 11pm and 8am. Note that in many regions restaurants and bars are only allowed to serve you alcohol to be consumed on site and are specifically forbidden to sell closed bottles.

Karlson
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Dmitry Grigoryev
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    Just highlighted an exception so if someone really wants to get drunk... – Karlson Sep 07 '16 at 16:07
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    For those that don't speak Russian, a Google translation: It is not allowed retail sales of alcoholic beverages from 23 pm to 8 pm local time, with the exception of retail sale of alcoholic beverages undertaken by organizations, private (peasant) farms, individual entrepreneurs, recognized agricultural producers, and retail sale of beer and beer drinks, cider Poirot, mead carried out by individual entrepreneurs in the provision of such organizations (peasant) farms and individual entrepreneurs catering services as well as retail sales of alcoholic beverages exercised the duty-free shops. – Johnny Sep 07 '16 at 16:15
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    @Johnny I wonder where Google translate took the 8 pm from. It's literally "8 hours" in the text, meaning 8 in the morning. – Dmitry Grigoryev Sep 07 '16 at 17:05
  • Good question, not speaking russian myself, I have no idea. Bing also says that "часов" can be translated to "PM" (though "hours" is their preferred translation). They give an example of "Снег пошел в 5 часов." translated to "It started snowing at five pm" – Johnny Sep 07 '16 at 19:21
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    @Johnny Likely "часов" then means "hour" and what they are literally saying is "It started snowing at hour five." (and that it's pm is maybe implicit and if it was am they would say something like "in the morning"). But just an idea, don't speak Russian either... That pm/am thing is really an English thing, in German and French no equivalent exists. – Nobody Sep 07 '16 at 21:40
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    @Johnny I guess, statistically the expression "at five" is often followed by "pm" in English and by the word "hour" in Russian, so online translators assume "hour"="pm". A few years ago, Google translate was consistently translating "Made in USA" by the equivalent of "Made in %countryname%" in that county's national language. – Dmitry Grigoryev Sep 07 '16 at 22:28
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    @DmitryGrigoryev: Pitfalls of statistical machine translation. Blame the damn statistics! – hippietrail Sep 08 '16 at 03:40
  • I'd have absolutely loved to see this answer truncated after the last cyrillic character! Leaving it for us English-speakers to work out the obvious implied answer "because it's the law, and laws don't always make sense". (I once got a ticket for rolling past a USA stop line at about a tenth of walking pace until I could actually see the oncoming traffic. Cop said I should have stopped, moved forwards a yard, and stopped again.) – nigel222 Sep 08 '16 at 10:53
  • @nigel222 There's a non-obvious piece of information I wanted to share about restaurants being forbidden to sell unopened bottles, but the essence of the answer is exactly that: "It's the law, deal with it." – Dmitry Grigoryev Sep 08 '16 at 13:35
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Such laws are common around the world, not just Russia.

There are two dominant reasons for this.

The Russian Government is very concerned about alcoholism (Reference Article) and has passed laws restricting the sale to combat this.

Also, Blue Laws, as term used in the US, and also very common in other western countries, may be in effect locally. More here: Blue Laws

The reasons and traditions behind them might be different, but the effect is the same.

Either way, you can't buy beer after 11pm because it's against the law.

If you want to know the specific reason for the law where you are*, apart from the national statute, you can ask some of the locals. But expect many, especially younger, to not know. This definitely the case here in the US.

*In the US Blue Laws can and do change by State, County or City.

DTRT
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    There's no reference to Russia in that wiki you link to, could you back up your claim that it's the law in Russia not to sell after 11pm ? – blackbird Sep 07 '16 at 13:37
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    The link is an explanation of Blue Laws in general. – DTRT Sep 07 '16 at 13:45
  • (+1) Even if it does not reference Russia specifically, I feel this provides useful background to address the question "why". But is it really what's going here? The article is about Sunday and religious motivations, not about evenings. – Relaxed Sep 07 '16 at 13:56
  • I said there are two primary reasons, Blue Laws on Sunday and cutoff times to control behavior. – DTRT Sep 07 '16 at 14:12
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    Explanation for Russia is more practical and than religious background of Blue Laws. – Karlson Sep 07 '16 at 14:18
  • Blue laws would require shops to close altogether rather than simply forbid alcohol sales. Also, in Russia you're still free to buy alcohol in bars anytime. – Dmitry Grigoryev Sep 07 '16 at 15:11
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    No, not in the US. Grocery and convenience stores remain open, just cannot sell alcohol. Technically, 'bars' can stay open too, just not selling Alcohol. – DTRT Sep 07 '16 at 15:18
  • @Johns-305 that wiki article is unclear then. Do you get to see theatre performances and horse races? – Dmitry Grigoryev Sep 07 '16 at 15:24
  • It's not unclear, it just can't cover every municipality in the US and Canada. It's just an explanation of Blue Laws, not a catalog. – DTRT Sep 07 '16 at 16:29