The Russian word for vodka is водка, and the dimunitive is водочка. So when when he offers you a bit of vodka, a Russian might say «Не хочешь водочки?» Vodka is so associated with Russian culture that doubtless we will blog on the subject many times.

There are many jokes about Russians and vodka. Here is a representative one:

The Russians have an amusing tradition of making rhymes about all sorts of things. I remember in 1986 when I first went to Russia, Gorbachev raised the price of vodka in order to dissuade Russians from drinking excessively. (In this he was following the example of the short-lived Andropov.) I remember my buddy Алёша quoting the following to me:

By "the same thing they did in Poland," they meant the uprising by Solidarity.

The Russians have a thousand stories about the power of vodka. One of them is that vodka foot baths can help eliminate foot odor. The MythBusters tested this hypothesis, and to my great surprise pronounced it true. Mind you, they were washing the feet in vodka, not drinking it. There have been a couple episodes where they explore other vodka stories as well.