Vodka Politics (20 page)

Such regulations reinforced the traditional overconsumption on festivals and holidays, often with tragic consequences. “In the
Carnaval
before…
Lent
, they give themselves over to all manner of debauchery and luxury, and in the last week they drink as if they were never to drink more,” wrote Englishman Samuel
Collins, personal physician to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, in 1671. Beyond being the source of drunken quarrels, fistfights and murders, Collins explains how

Some of these going home drunk, if not attended with a sober companion, fall asleep upon the Snow (a sad cold bed) and there they are frozen to death. If any of their acquaintance chance to pass by, though they see them like to perish, yet will they not assist them, to avoid the trouble of examination if they should die in their hands: For those of the
zemsky precaus
[department of urban and police matters] will extort something out of every bodies purse, who comes to their Office. ’Tis a sad sight to see a dozen people brought upright in a Sledge frozen to death, some have their arms eaten off by Dogs, others their faces, and others have nothing left but Bones: Two or three hundred have been brought after this manner in the time of Lent. By this you may see the sad consequence of drunkenness, the Epidemick distemper not only of
Russia
, but of
England
also.”
³⁶

Unfortunately, this traditional drinking culture has proven to be quite durable. The Dutch diplomat Balthazar Coyet, who visited Moscow in 1676 wrote: “We saw only the scandalous behavior of debauchees, glorified by the thronging crowd for their proficiency in drunkenness.”
³⁷
Two hundred years later the future editor of
the Times
of London, Sir D. Mackenzie Wallace, similarly observed: “As a whole, a village fête in Russia is one of the most saddening spectacles I have ever witnessed. It affords a new proof—where, alas! no new proof was required—that… the people do not know how to enjoy themselves in a harmless, rational way, and seek a refuge in intoxication, so that the sight of a popular holiday may make us regret that life has any holidays at all.”
³⁸

While drinking was largely a male activity, the traditional drinking culture also ensnared women and children, who often drank alongside their men. Describing a typical village celebration, Adam Olearius wrote: “After they got drunk, the men struck their wives for the pleasure of it, and then proceeded to tipple with them again. Finally the women, sitting astride their sleeping husbands, drank to each other until they toppled over alongside them and slept. One may easily imagine the peril to honor and modesty, and its frequent ruin, under such conditions of life.”
³⁹

Vodka was even central to the “circling dances” of young peasant girls during village festivals. Children sang folk songs ranging from the fantastic to the satirical: some spun stories of witches and vampires while others (disturbingly) glorified the infidelity of particular villagers, wife-beating, and the vodka that helped perpetuate it all. Envision a band of pre-teen girls—dressed in their Sunday
best—entering the traditional drunken banquet as Olearius described and performing an homage to vodka. They stumble about—imitating the drunken women of the village—singing gaily as they dance.

Vodka delicious I drank, I drank

Not in a cup or a glass, but a bucketful I drank…

I cling to the posts of the door.

Oh, doorpost, hold me up, the drunken woman, the tipsy rogue.
⁴⁰

Shocking as this may seem to our modern sensibilities, children were not spared from alcohol within the communal drinking culture. “One can hardly fail to be surprised when a child who cannot yet walk or talk reaches out for vodka, asks for some with gestures, is given some, and then drinks it with pleasure,” describes a Yaroslavl parish priest in the nineteenth century. “A four- or five-year old will already drink a full glass.…And even a young unmarried girl does not find it shameful on occasion, for example during work parties [
pomoch
’], to drink a good glass of vodka and another of beer.”
⁴¹
Socialized from such a young age into a community that not only tolerates, but actively encourages, drunkenness—is it any wonder that such practices endure for generations?

Touring Russia’s rural provinces, nineteenth-century agrarian reformer Andrei Zablotsky-Desyatovsky recalled the lamentable—but typical—use of religious holidays as a pretext for getting inebriated. Upon entering a village, he found nothing but drinking and debauchery.

“What are you celebrating, and why are you so drunk?” he asked one of the peasants.

“What do you mean? Today is the Assumption of the Mother of God,” one drunk replied, adding wryly: “perhaps you have heard of her?”

“But the day of the Assumption was yesterday!”

“So? You’ve got to drink for three days,” claimed the peasant.

“Why three days?” Zablotsky-Desyatovsky shot back. “Did the Mother of God command that?”

“Of course she did. Our Holy Mother knows how we peasants love to drink!”
⁴²

While the ritual-based traditional drinking culture led to bouts of extreme intoxication, the oversight of a tight-knit community helped prevent chronic, day-in, day-out alcoholism. “It must also be said,” as one nineteenth-century parish priest from Yaroslavl suggested, “that in spite of their inclination towards drunkenness, there are extremely few or even no drunkards. Even the most hardened drinker will return home at midnight, or early in the morning, sleep, sober himself up with
kvas
, and work as hard as ever until the next Sunday.”
⁴³

The traditional drinking culture can be seen even today throughout Russia, especially around holidays. During the thirteen days between Christmas
(December 25) and Orthodox Christmas (January 7), many Russians engage in a two-week bender. Consequently, the first week of January in Russia is always marked by a dramatic spike in alcohol poisonings, crimes, highway accidents, murders, and all manner of alcohol-related mortality.
⁴⁴
According to Russia’s foremost alcohol researcher, Aleksandr Nemtsov, Russia’s annual vodka “marathon” is a more dire threat than terrorism—annually killing over two thousand inhabitants of Moscow alone. Some have even suggested that a modern “cult of Bacchus” has supplanted traditional Orthodox Christianity as the basis for religion and social interaction. “Once, when people wished each other well, they prayed for you—now, they drink to you.” One’s friendships are measured by how much you’ve drunk together, and even when you die, your friends will carry you to the grave, drinking on your behalf.
⁴⁵

These are the roots of the uniquely Russian tradition of
zapoi
—a period lasting days or even weeks dedicated to continuous overintoxication, which may or may not correspond with a religious holiday. During a visit to Russia in the 1850s, Baron von Haxthausen described it in the following terms: “The Great Russians do not drink constantly, nor daily, and many of them not at all for months, nor will they take brandy even when offered to them; but times and temptations occur when, if they taste a drop, a perfect rage for it seizes them [
zapoi
]: they will then drink continuously for days, nay weeks, and squander all they possess, to their last farthing. On these occasions arises the great profit of the
kabak
.”
⁴⁶

E
ARLY
S
OVIET
P
ROPAGANDA
P
OSTER
. “Away with Church Celebrations!” depicts two drunken workers leaving a church festival. Side panels show the disastrous consequences of holiday drinking, from fights and hooliganism to family destitution and getting run over by public transportation. Source: Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University

New Drinks, New Drinking Patterns

These destructive elements are deeply rooted in a Russian traditional drinking culture that predated vodka. The arrival of vodka and the tsar’s taverns not only wedded those practices to a drink of unmatched potency but also introduced “modern” social relations, economic conflicts, and individual drinking customs that proved to be even more destructive.

As in other countries, once introduced, the tavern quickly became the center of village life, with traditional, communal celebrations even taking place within its walls. But the tavern was open every day, not just on holidays and feast days. It was an especially powerful temptation for village artisans and workers: paid in cash, they could more easily pay for booze than could peasants reaping grains in kind. These, then, became Russia’s first “modern” alcoholics: men who drank regularly and individually rather than strictly according to the communal calendar.

For those accustomed to traditional patterns, finding dozens of inebriates holed up in a dank village tavern in the middle of a workday was difficult to comprehend. In the 1850s, the Russian traveler Protasyev was so struck by it that he barged into taverns and bluntly asked the drunkards there why they drank.

“The temptation is huge. I myself am not glad that I drink, but what can I do?” answered one man, who professed that life would be better without taverns. “The vodka seems to beg me to drink it. Sometimes, I do not want to go into the tavern, but I go onto my front steps and it’s there, right there, as if beckoning to me. I go in, and once I am in no good can come of it.”
⁴⁷

The combination of these two distinct drinking cultures—one ancient, one modern—was even reflected in different characterizations of the drinkers themselves. Adjectives like
temperate
or
sober
normally denote someone who does not drink at all. “But in Russia,” as nineteenth-century observers noted, the “sober” label applies to “one who only gets drunk upon the festivals of the Church,”in other words, to one who adhered to the traditional drinking culture, not the modern.
⁴⁸

In economists’ terms, the demand for alcohol in the traditional drinking culture was inelastic—limited only by regular communal rituals. In the modern culture, demand was elastic—limited only by the peasant’s ability to pay. Consequently, the state stood to profit far more from the modern, individualistic drinking culture, which in turn worsened the negative social and health consequences of widespread intoxication.
⁴⁹
Vodka, the tavern, and the individualistic drinking culture also created the modern alcoholic. While close-knit communal drinking resulted its share of embarrassing, alcohol-fueled escapades, oversight by the community at least discouraged the type of chronic alcoholism engendered by the modern drinking culture. “At a single blow vodka destroyed social, cultural, moral and ideological taboos,” even our old friend Pokhlebkin claimed. “In this respect it acted like an atomic explosion in the stagnant calm of patriarchal feudalism.”
⁵⁰
Indeed.

The arrival of vodka, the tsar’s
kabak
, and the tavern keeper changed everything. Instead of weaker fermented beverages, people now drank the more potent vodka. Instead of drinking within the community, now peasants escaped whenever to the tavern to drink away their last dime, often leading their families to destitution. What’s more, the welding of the new, individualistic drinking culture to the traditional, communal one irreversibly changed the relationship between state and society: tearing peasants away from their communities and tethering them to the state with a bond of alcohol that proved to be more durable than even serfdom. In this way, it broke the economic self-sufficiency of the traditional Russian village.
⁵¹

At the same time, the tavern also exacerbated feudal class divisions. For one, it wasn’t the peasantry, but the local gentry, landowners who had the resources (raw materials, labor, and imperial permission), to conduct large-scale distillation on their estates. So, it was the regional landlords who provided the vodka to the local tax farmers and village taverns. Meanwhile, these wealthy elites could afford to drink at home—enjoying more expensive, higher quality imported wines stored in their well-apportioned wine cellars—rather than patronize the village tavern and mingle with artisans, tradesmen, and peasants who dwelt in the taverns—the veritable drug dens of imperial Russia. The culture of tavern drinking thus accentuated class distinctions between rich and poor in Russia, while the liquor trade itself made the rich richer and the poor poorer.
⁵²