[P1_aka_P1]

Nicely done GD, nicely done indeed, you speak for all crew, everywhere in the world this night.  Bravo.

It is hard to know what would be an appropriate way to bid farewell to a Russian aircrew:-

MOSCOW, Sept. 7— Maksim Bykovsky, a graduate student and businessman, rose slowly to his feet, a full glass of vodka in his hand. It was time for the third toast -- to the dead, he thought, but wasn't sure. He'd had a bit too much to drink already, and the party in his apartment here was just getting under way.

Confusion is common on the complicated etiquette of how to drink and toast in Russia. In the military, it is traditional to drink the third toast to those who've died in war -- unless it's the second toast.

Even the duty officer of the Defense Ministry wasn't sure, and had to call back. "It's the third," he finally said, no doubt after profound research. But there is no disagreement among soldiers that the next toast -- the fourth -- is to the hope that no one will ever drink the previous toast for those around the table.

The next 10 toasts are often reserved, at least among soldiers, to women. This intelligence leads to the main conclusion: that Russians drink to get drunk, and it's only when drunk -- in vodka veritas -- that any Russian really trusts another. But on the way there, toasts are used for many purposes, from the sentimental to the political, and they are often a mechanism for the kind of pointed truth-telling normally avoided in social or business conversations.

There is little confusion about the rules for first and second toasts. It is considered uncivilized to start drinking without a first toast, which is a kind of blessing or sacrament. The second follows quickly. In a well-known Cossack expression, "Between the first and second toasts, a bullet should not pass." The bureaucrats have their own version: "Between the first and second, you shouldn't squeeze a finger" (theirs are normally quite thick).

In the old days, the first toast was always "To Stalin!" -- even at a child's birthday party. Other than personality cults, Communism produced a bizarre collection of strange and lifeless toasts, like a favorite one of the Komsomol or Young Communists: "To the success of the scheduled tasks!"

Among close friends, the first toast may be brief and informal -- as simple as "Budem zdorovy!" -- "Let's be healthy!" -- or even just "Budem!" or, in dire cases, "Boum!" The last is used toward the end of a drinking bout, when it is difficult to articulate anything else.

At a wake, the first toast is raised to the dead person, and glasses must never be clinked.
At birthdays, the first toast is to the health of the celebrator; the second to that of the parents.

At weddings, similarly, the first toast is to the newlyweds, the next to their parents. But then begins the special Russian combination of collective, forced hilarity, common around the twin topics of liquor and love, that still carries a kind of totalitarian flavor.

When the guests drink from their glasses, traditionally the supersweet domestic champagne (still known and sold as Sovetskoye Shampanskoye), there are always one or two who will shout: "It's bitter, make it sweeter!" Suddenly there is a rhythmic chorus, like a chant at a soccer match, of "Gorko! Gorko! Gorko!" -- "Bitter! Bitter! Bitter!"

The poor newlyweds can stop the chant only by initiating a long kiss, during which relatives and friends (even the bride's mother) count in unison: "One, two, three," and so on. The longer the kiss, the greater the applause. A mediocre effort will produce another shout of "Gorko! Gorko!" and force a repetition of the entire humiliating performance.
Sometimes, after numerous repetitions, the couple may be spared by the tamada, a Georgian title for the toastmaster, a semi-dictator who is supposed to know the social intricacies and keep the party, and the vodka, flowing.

Soldiers, bored in peacetime, must often drink without any occasion. Officers in small provincial garrisons commonly catch a cockroach, rarely a difficult task in Russia, and chase it along the table, prompting two quick toasts: "S priyezdom!" or "Happy arrival!" and "S otyezdom!" or "Happy journey!" New Yorkers may practice this at home.

"There is still a manhood thing attached to it all," said Thomas R. Pickering, the American Ambassador here, who long ago discovered that the key qualification for his job is the ability to eat and drink anything. In his many official banquets all over vast, vodka-sodden Russia, he has found that among his hosts, "the worst of them want to get falling-down stone drunk, while the best of them want to get happy, loose and seriously emotional -- peeling away the layers of convention and protection."

But he understands that toasts, especially at official gatherings, are a way to get political points across. After the social graces, warm words and touch of humor, "there is always time for a message." In return, he says, "there's always full equal time for a response and more."

When Westerners appear to be holding back, Russians will shout: "Do dna!" -- "To the bottom!" or bottom's up. Russians, fearing to be more incapacitated than others around the table (the sober one was regarded as a likely stoolpigeon), have a complicated series of fines for those who arrive late. Normally the penalty involves drinking, do dna, the largest available glass, vessel or urn, filled with vodka.

If "do dna" is feared, the toast to remember is equally simple: "Na pososhok!" -- basically one for the road, from the word posokh, for walking stick or staff. It is another Cossack toast, and it is considered extremely bad manners to offer any more toasts or require any more drinking once a guest has uttered it. But it is also extremely bad manners to utter it too soon.

Confusion or no; I shall raise a silent toast tonight, to honour all aircrew.  Godspeed.

Requiescat in pace.