Soviet medical authorities only acknowledged four “official” kinds of alcohol-related deaths: alcohol poisoning, chronic alcoholism, cirrhosis of the liver, and alcoholic psychosis. Nevertheless, the bottle also caused a host of other complications, including life-threatening heart conditions, most notably cardiomyopathy (weakening of the heart muscle), thrombosis (clotting), and arrhythmia (irregular heartbeats). Soviet authorities conducted numerous formal studies on alcohol-related deaths that showed that many deceased Russians had damaged hearts—a fact alluded to in this poster.