In World War II, each Red Army soldier received a daily ration that included 100 grams of vodka. The liquor was so indispensable to the troops that during the winter months of the battle of Stalingrad when supply boats could not cross the Volga, bottles of vodka had to be parachuted down. For Lieutenant Ivan Bezditko, nicknamed Ivan The Terrible after the 16th century Russian Tsar, 100 grams was simply not enough. To quench his raging thirst for liquor, when men from his artillery battalion died, Ivan The Terrible would report that they were still ‘present and accounted for’ so that when their liquor rations arrived, he would take them all.