Russians say that foreigners associate their country mainly with bears, balalaika and vodka. The likelihood of a close encounter with a bear in modern Russia is negligibly low, and the sounds of the traditional folk drum can be picked up by foreign guests at most from the loudspeakers at a Christmas market. The third stereotype is still very much alive. Vodka is undoubtedly part of Russian everyday life and the source of many of the problems that have long plagued the world’s largest country. Russia officially records around 50 000 alcohol poisonings a year, and the World Health Organisation has calculated that as many as a fifth of all deaths in the country are linked in one way or another to excessive drinking. This includes all kinds of diseases, road accidents, suicides and violent crimes, among others.
Today, as the production and sale of vodka is strictly regulated, many Russians drown their worries in homemade brandy, which they call “samogon”, and even in products that are not intended for drinking, but are much cheaper than a bottle of vodka. A few years ago, for example, the Russian public was shocked by the deaths of 62 people in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, who died after drinking a scented bath preparation allegedly containing ethanol.
Politicians say that the consequences of alcohol misuse present the country with major challenges in many areas. Some doctors call it more simply a demographic catastrophe. Russian men in particular are being hit, lagging behind Iraqis and Bangladeshis in life expectancy. The country has therefore been working hard for several years to convert the proverbial Russian love of alcohol into a love of sport and a healthy lifestyle.
Vladimir Putin, who does not drink, does not smoke, trains judo and is the opposite of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, who was a tennis enthusiast but is remembered for some of his other qualities, also sets an example. The fight against alcoholism has been going on for a long time and, although the situation has undoubtedly improved in recent years, the ultimate goal – a sober and healthy Russia – still seems a long way off.
Probably no country has seen as many anti-alcohol campaigns as Russia. The last of its kind failed ignominiously during perestroika. Russia is also special, however, because it has known periods in its history when the country has fought against – sobriety. Vodka is more than an alcoholic drink in Russia.
History and legend
When it comes to excessive drinking and the negative consequences that follow, Russians are certainly world leaders today, but it was not always so. Spirits came to Russian soil relatively late, only in the 15th century. Before that, the Eastern Slavs relied mainly on drinks with a very low alcohol content, such as beer, wine or yeast, a golden-brown and slightly carbonated drink made from fermented black bread that can still be found in Russia today.
Alcoholism in the modern sense of the word was virtually non-existent before the advent of spirits. The stereotype that Russians have been drunkards since the beginning of time, and that it is even part of their genetic make-up, is not true. Doctors and scientists fighting alcoholism in Russia often refer to this historical fact.
Those who believe that the vodka battle is pointless and a foregone conclusion like to cite a legend that dates back to Kievan Rus’, the first state formation of the Eastern Slavs. The country was then ruled by Prince Vladimir the Great, who made history by adopting Orthodoxy as the state religion in 988, thus setting the cultural and political course of Russia for all time. His decision to convert to Christianity was mainly based on political considerations, but legend tells a slightly different story.
He was to invite representatives of the various monotheistic religions to the court and listen to their debates on which god would be most suitable for his pagan subjects. He quickly rejected Judaism because the Jews were a landless people. He listened to the discourses of Muslim scholars with greater interest, especially when they told him about polygamy and the carnal pleasures awaiting the righteous in paradise.
Vladimir, also known in Latin as fornicator maximus, or the great adulterer, lost interest in Islam the moment he learned that Muslims were not allowed to drink alcohol. “Russians like to drink, they can’t do without it”, he is reported to have said. The statesman’s decision was taken and Russia became a Christian country. The legend may have no basis in reality, but it is a telling enough example of how ingrained among Russians is the belief that their identity is fatally linked to alcohol.
The beginning of an intertwined story
For the next five centuries, the Russians, as I said, enjoyed mainly beer, yeast and wine, which, like the new religion, came from Byzantium. In the 14th century, vinaigrette, or aqua vitae, came from Italy and was mixed with water in a ratio of 1 to 20, but it never became particularly popular. It was only when the Russians took matters into their own hands and started to brew their own brandy that the drink that foreigners today most often associate with their country was born.
Vodka was then called bread wine because it was made from wheat. It was first used as a medicine and various herbs were added. It would be difficult for a modern Russian to recognise it, as it was quite different in taste, alcohol content and colour from its present-day version. Russians would probably also find it difficult to admit that vodka was not their invention. They were beaten to the punch by the Poles, who had conquered the spirit before them.
Nevertheless, vodka soon became Russia’s national drink and then an important fiscal tool in the hands of the state. In the second half of the 15th century, Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, established a state monopoly on the production and sale of alcohol. The penalty for illegal distilling or brewing was the chopping off of hands. The law forbade the lower classes to drink alcohol at home or in the open air.
The state granted feudal lords and clergy the right to open taverns, making them the only place where alcohol could be legally dispensed. A share of the profits went to the state. The people drank, the privileged classes earned, the state’s account was filled and the circle was complete. This was the first chapter in the intertwined story of the Russian state and alcohol, which has been repeated many times in different variations.
Vodka was initially popular mainly at the Russian court, as was also written about by Sigismund von Herberstein, the famous Habsburg diplomat born in Vipava, who served in Moscow for many years and was considered one of Europe’s best experts on Russia.
In his Moscow Notes we can read that “Muscovites are great masters when it comes to forcing guests to drink under the pretext of toasts of all kinds. When the toasts run out, there is always someone who stands up and raises a glass to the health of the Grand Duke. Then no one dares to stay with a full goblet in his hand.” A modern Russian would probably already recognise in these lines a peculiar ritual that has survived to the present day.
Vodka soon went from being a drink of protocol to a drink of the masses, and the state realised that alcohol could also be an effective means of manipulating the masses. Ivan the Terrible is said to have declared that “a drunken people is more manageable”.
It is no wonder that it was during his reign, in the second half of the 16th century, that more of the aforementioned taverns, now called kabàk, appeared all over Russia. The word is probably of Tatar origin and has survived in Russian to the present day. Semi-state-owned by the privileged classes and serving no food, pubs stood in every small town and ordinary Russians spent more and more time in them. Some historians are convinced that it was with the advent of the kabaks that Russia’s morbid attitude to alcohol began.
Distinguishing …
The people were indeed more manageable, and the state was able to use the taxes it collected from vodka sales to finance increasingly frequent campaigns of conquest, but there was also a downside to this policy. By the early 18th century, when Peter the Great ruled the country, drunkenness was so widespread that in some regions the economy suffered.
Reports came in from the Urals that production had to be stopped in some factories because most workers were going to work drunk. The way in which factory owners fought drunkenness was both innovative and cruel.
The drunken worker had a medal hung around his neck, the shape of which resembled Russia’s highest state decoration, the Order of St Andrew the First-Begotten. The Ural medal differed from this prestigious award in that it did not say “for services to the Fatherland” but “for drunkenness”, it was not made of gold but of cast iron, and it weighed almost eight kilogrammes.
The tsar liked the idea of the Ural merchants so much that in 1714 he introduced the punishment of wearing medals throughout the country for people who caused trouble by drunkenness. Russians laughingly say that Peter the Great invented the greatest state decoration in history. But a delinquent who was caught abusing alcohol was not laughing, as he had to wear a heavy piece of iron around his neck and receive reproachful stares until he took a church oath never to touch a drink again. At best, his medal was taken off after a week.
… and punishment
It is also interesting that the anti-alcohol campaign was launched by the Tsar, who has made no secret of the fact that he himself is a big drinker. What is more, at Peter the Great’s court, binge drinking was a desirable and encouraged activity, and a high tolerance of alcohol was a respected virtue.
In addition to the disgraceful medal, the Tsar introduced another punishment, not for the people, but for the representatives of the highest classes who helped him run the country. When he called an important meeting, he expected all those invited to be punctual as well as wise. Latecomers were given a “punishment glass”, which was actually a litre jug of wine to be drunk by the glass.
His punitive policy was considered by some contemporaries to be benevolent, as the latecomer quickly reached the psycho-physical state of the other participants in the meeting and was thus able to follow the discussion more easily, at the expense of the punitive glass.
Unfortunately, we do not have precise data on how successful the first anti-alcohol campaign in Russian history was. Russia later became a world power and a modern European country, thanks to Peter the Great, but binge drinking was still widespread and the state budget was still largely dependent on vodka sales.
The State has therefore constantly tried to maintain a delicate balance between the volume of alcohol sold, which was one of its main sources of funding, and the negative consequences of drunkenness. The people therefore had to drink – but not too much. But not too much.
Fight against sobriety
In the middle of the 19th century, an absurd situation arose, in a purely Russian spirit, where the state had to fight even against sobriety. In some regions, peasants began to give up alcohol en masse. They did not do this out of religious or moral convictions, quite the opposite. They stopped drinking in protest against the high price of alcohol.
If a farmer wanted a glass of vodka, he had to go to a kabak, because the state persecuted home distilleries. The kabak owners, who leased the right to sell alcohol from the state, succumbed to greed and charged for vodka like the finest French champagne, because of their monopoly position.
In the village of Karamyshevo, 200 kilometres south of St Petersburg, a case was recorded where all 1800 villagers decided at once not to drink alcohol for a year. To attract customers back, the owners of the kabaks even started offering them vodka for free, but the farmers were not swayed by their desperate attempt. The delicate alcohol balance was in danger and the state budget was suffering.
The Treasury first intervened in rural areas, ordering local authorities to fight the “sober movement” by all means, but the order had the opposite effect. The protests spread more and more, covering 15 governorates. More than 260 kabaks were destroyed by sober but angry peasants and in some cases even the army had to intervene. Some 11,000 protesters were deported to camps and the state finally won this battle of sobriety.
At virtually the same time, in the western part of the empire, in what is now Lithuania, so-called “temperance societies” began to appear, bringing together people who were giving up alcohol, but for very different reasons than the Russian peasants. The leader of the movement was Matiejus Valančius, a Lithuanian bishop who managed to attract almost a million people to his societies.
The Lithuanians’ resilience was a mixture of spiritual motives, resistance to Russification and a desire for greater autonomy. As almost 80% of the population gave up vodka, the inflow of alcohol roubles into the budget dried up almost completely. In St Petersburg, they were very worried, as some of the western governorates were on the verge of bankruptcy. In 1863, the state banned all temperance societies and court-martialled its most ardent members.
Old habits and new approaches
The country has realised that high vodka prices can have very dangerous consequences. At the end of the 19th century, the Treasury introduced excise duties on alcohol, following the example of developed European countries. The old system of leasing the right to sell vodka to kabak owners for a small sum of money and then selling it at exorbitant prices was over. The new law allowed private production of spirits, but producers could only sell their products to the state, which reinforced its monopoly.
The reform has achieved its purpose, as alcohol roubles are once again regularly flowing into the state coffers. In 1913, revenues from the sale of alcohol accounted for a quarter of total budget revenues.
The reform was initiated by Finance Minister Sergei Witte, who was not only concerned about filling the budget, but also had to fight against drunkenness. Russia was industrialising rapidly at the turn of the 19th century, and alcoholism, once confined to the countryside, was spreading to Russia’s cities and working class.
The Minister had the difficult task of getting people off vodka without causing a revolt or a hole in the budget. In the fight against drunkenness, Witte took a very different approach from Peter the Great. The state no longer punished and shamed people, but tried to convince them that life could be fun and enjoyable without alcohol.
The Ministry of Finance took on an educational role and started to set up “people’s sobriety societies” to promote healthy lifestyles. Clean and tidy tea rooms appeared where people could read the newspapers, play chess and have a bite to eat. These were the first taverns in Russia that did not serve alcohol.
In addition, the Ministry of Finance started selling special stamps that people could exchange for a meal in state canteens and other restaurants that did not serve alcohol. They were very cheap and had an unexpected socially responsible touch. The wealthier townspeople distributed them en masse to the poor, as they were assured that the stamps would not turn into vodka. Social assistance in the form of stamps was so successful that in some places it continued until the 1920s.
The state has spent a lot of money to discourage people from binge drinking. Money which, ironically, it has also been getting at the expense of binge drinking. Theatres, libraries, cultural centres and even amusement parks have sprung up all over Russia. Folk sobriety societies organised lectures, training courses and various outdoor events to lure people out of the pubs.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the campaign was a success. In 1863, the average Russian drank fifteen litres of vodka; in 1913, just three litres. Minister Witte had obviously managed to square the circle, because the budget was full and the popular masses were calm and just the right amount of sober.
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Dry Law
The following year, World War I broke out and the alcohol policy that had worked successfully for two decades changed completely. As early as July 1914, the country temporarily imposed a total ban on the sale of spirits. In the following months, anti-alcohol legislation became even more stringent. In August, beer and wine were added to the banned list, and in September the ban was extended indefinitely.
Tsar Nicholas II also played an important role in the design of alcohol policy, making an unwise decision that later earned him the wrath of his already furious and war-weary subjects.
The “dry law”, as the Russians call the ban on alcohol sales, was not the same for everyone. In the larger cities, there were special taverns where the ordinary Russian could not enter and where, thanks to a special decree of the Tsar, the nobility could still enjoy vodka, champagne and cognac.
The Tsar’s unfortunate gesture was later exploited by the Bolsheviks, who promised the people, among other things, that under the new regime, all people would “drink like noblemen”. When they came to power a few years later, Lenin and his comrades did indeed sweep away the state system and virtually dismantled the entire state structure, but they forgot the promise of vodka for all.
It took the Bolsheviks several years to formulate a new alcohol policy, as by 1922 civil war was raging. Throughout this time, the old Tsarist dry law was in force, prohibiting the production and sale of alcohol. The Bolsheviks tightened it further, but compared to the brutality of the new regime, five years in prison for illegal distilling seemed a relatively light sentence.
Only after they had succeeded in consolidating their power did they start producing alcoholic beverages. The first Soviet vodka appeared in 1923, and with it alcoholism returned.
Homo sovieticus
When Lenin died the following year, the average citizen of the Soviet Union was still drinking less than the average citizen of Tsarist Russia. Five years of dry law helped to reduce alcohol consumption significantly, but with the arrival of the new authorities, drunkenness slowly increased with each passing year. Although the state had a monopoly over quite all areas of social and political life, illicit distilling was rampant in the countryside.
In the eyes of the state leadership, drunkenness was a vestige of capitalism that had to be eradicated. The drunken worker was late for work, caused problems in the workers’ collective and fell short of the norm. Excessive drinking lowered work efficiency and hindered the building of communism. In the bright future, there will be no place for bad men and drunkards; the new Soviet man must be virtuous and honest. Thus, at the end of the 1920s, the first of many Soviet anti-alcohol campaigns with a re-educational function was launched.
The state decided at the time that the most effective way to fight alcoholism was through public shaming. In 1927, so-called black boxes began appearing in factory yards to pay the wages of workers caught drunk. They were made in the shape of a vodka bottle and plastered with slogans about the indecency of drunkenness.
The transfers were paid a day late, so they had to walk to the cash desk while being looked at with disapproving stares from their colleagues. To avoid having to queue at the black box, offenders were even willing to give up a large part of their salary. The measure was a great success and many factories proudly reported dramatic improvements in labour discipline.
Children against vodka
In 1928, the Alcoholism Control Society was founded with 250,000 members. Its most important project was the organisation of demonstrations, which took place in more than 100 Soviet cities. They were different because they involved children. Pioneers held posters with various slogans warning their fathers about the dangers of excessive drinking. “We want sober parents!”, “Dad, stop drinking and give money to Mum!” and even “Shoot all drunks!”
Yuri Larin, the head of the association, justified the exploitation of children for propaganda purposes by explaining that the average Moscow family of four drank 65 litres of vodka a year and that this gave children first-hand knowledge of the consequences of alcoholism.
The Kremlin was well aware that the budget depended heavily on alcohol roubles. Stalin explained that the state had only two ways to finance its needs – slavery in the form of foreign capital or money from the sale of vodka to its own people. “If it is necessary to get dirty with mud for the victory of the proletariat, we will take this extreme measure too,” he declared.
He planned to replace the mud or vodka sooner or later with other, more acceptable sources of funding. It must be admitted that the Bolsheviks were the first to try to break the centuries-old tradition of alcohol dependency of the state budget. Vodka, at least declaratively, was no longer a fiscal asset.
Half measure
Yet it has been one of the main sources of social and health problems in the country. While alcohol consumption gradually declined in the rotten West after the Second World War, it rose slowly but steadily in the Soviet Union.
Some Russian historians argue that the Soviet authorities deliberately intoxicated their people, because sober people would surely have seen through the delusions of communism and overthrown the bloody regime. In reality, the Party knew that alcoholism was an obstacle to a bright future, but did not know how to remove it. We can accuse the Soviet leadership of many things, but we certainly cannot accuse it of passivity in the fight against vodka.
In 1958, when Nikita Khrushchev was in the Kremlin, alcoholism was so widespread that the country had to impose a partial ban on the sale of spirits. Vodka could no longer be bought near factories, hospitals and schools. For the first time in Soviet history, a ban on the sale of alcohol to minors came into force.
While access to vodka has decreased, alcoholism has not. The State did not have the courage to reintroduce the “dry law” after more than thirty years, opting instead for a much milder measure that ultimately failed to deliver the desired results.
Beer vs vodka
The Party leadership had another ace up its sleeve in the fight against alcoholism. It was clear to them that Soviet people liked to drink. That vodka is much more harmful than beer or wine, too. The solution offered itself. The Soviet man had to be persuaded, cajoled or, in the last resort, coerced into exchanging raw Russian vodka for a more cultured drink.
In 1972, vodka began to be pushed off the shelves and off the bar. What’s more, overnight, all footage of booze disappeared from films. Only one type of vodka remained on sale, and it was a third more expensive than its predecessors. In its place were yeast, wine, various liqueurs and beer, which was officially classified as a non-alcoholic drink. Incidentally, beer was listed as an alcoholic beverage in Russia in 2011. Before that, it was a foodstuff.
As vodka became more expensive, people started to turn to beer more often. The hoppy drink became so popular that many restaurants and canteens turned into pubs. Soviet man did not forget his first love, however, as he also added small amounts of vodka to his beer mug. In this way, with little money, he achieved the same effect as in the old days, only the hangover was supposedly worse. Even today in Russia, you can still hear it said that “beer without vodka is money thrown away”.
The inventive Soviets soon discovered that this simple folk cocktail goes particularly well in a traditional Russian banya, where the steam and heat make one quickly intoxicated. At that time, the number of visitors to the banya increased so much that the authorities had to raise the entrance fee from ten to eighty kopeks. The campaign against vodka was a complete fiasco and did even more harm than good in the short term.
The last act
In the fight against alcohol, the country has once again come up short. The reports on the consequences of alcoholism that were delivered to the desks of party officials revealed a very grim picture. In 1980, 47 per cent of all deaths were related to excessive drinking.
The average Soviet family spent about 10% of its budget on alcohol, compared to less than 2% in the US. Nine out of ten violent crimes were committed under the influence of alcohol. The state has tried to tackle the consequences of alcoholism, but has never got to the root cause of the Russian man’s fondness for vodka.
The latest act in the country’s centuries-long struggle with vodka took place when Mikhail Gorbachev led the Soviet Union. When he became General Secretary of the Party in March 1985, the country was in the worst economic crisis since the end of the Second World War, and the leadership was preoccupied only with how to bring the Soviet economy out of its coma. The Kremlin believed that the stagnation was also due to a decline in moral values in society. This was a clear consequence of the record amounts of vodka drunk.
Gorbachev in fact continued the work of his predecessors, except that his campaign was more radical. This time, the target of the campaign was all alcoholic beverages. For example, the state cut down a third of all vineyards and closed most pubs and wine bars. The production of all alcoholic beverages virtually came to a standstill.
This time, the authorities tried to displace vodka with vitamins. The shelves in the shops were buzzing with bottles of tomato, apple and all sorts of other juices, which the more enterprising citizens processed into fruit puree, which was then used to make brandy. Illegal brandy led to a national shortage of sugar, which was the second most sought-after product in the shops. All products containing sugar or alcohol became scarce, from cologne and sweets to toothpaste.
The price of a bottle of vodka jumped from four roubles to nine, and it could only be bought in a few shops, which were open only five hours a day. There were always queues for kilometres in front of them, and the impatience of some meant that the militia often had to intervene.
Drinking was banned at weddings, party meetings and public places in general. Alcohol was allowed at funerals, but a special licence had to be obtained. Such measures made Gorbachev, to put it mildly, rather unpopular. The Soviet man did not want to give up an old habit at any cost.
Despite widespread dissatisfaction, the campaign was relatively successful in the short term. Half a million more children were born in 1986 than in previous years. Life expectancy rose and crime fell by more than a quarter.
But Gorbachev, nicknamed the Mineral Secretary by his people, had to admit defeat after only two years and cancel all anti-alcohol measures, because he had hit an old Russian problem – without the alcohol roubles, the state budget was deprived of too much of its revenue. So alcohol production was restarted, but this did not save either the budget or the country.
Just a few years later, the cradle of communism was shattered into fifteen pieces. Boris Yeltsin abolished the state monopoly on alcohol in 1992. In democratic Russia, the state was no longer engaged in re-educating, prohibiting and shaming the population. From then on, the Russian man was left alone in his struggle with vodka.
