Vodka Politics (55 page)

Why I’m Glad I’m Not Gorbachev

Another Western misconception about Gorbachev is that
Time
magazine’s “Man of the Decade” was somehow a closet democrat—a “mole” who rose to the heights of the Communist Party only to institute political reforms like
perestroika
(economic restructuring),
glasnost
(openness), and
demokratizatsiya
(democratization) for the sake of liberty and freedom.

Gorbachev was indeed an ambitious reformer, but his primary focus was economic rather than political. He did not want to destroy communism; he wanted it to work better. Appreciating his reign in terms of vodka politics clarifies these momentous changes and suggests that even the commonly accepted timeline for reform needs to be reappraised accordingly.

The conventional wisdom is that Gorbachev unveiled his radical
perestroika
reforms at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in the spring of 1986—one short year after coming to power. The openness of
glasnost
—with greater freedom of speech and the relaxation of censorship—followed shortly thereafter. Then in 1987 came the multi-candidate elections and liberalization of
demokratizatsiya
, which weakened the coercive capacity of the state and eased the Soviet Union into Trotsky’s famed “dustbin of history.”

Rushing to dissect these momentous undertakings, most accounts mention only in passing that—just like his mentor, Andropov—Gorbachev’s very first initiative was an all-out war on alcohol. Given the centrality of vodka to Russian statecraft, Gorbachev’s wide-ranging (and ultimately disastrous) anti-alcohol campaign was more than a footnote to history: it was a dramatic and fundamental break with the legacies of the past that had a huge impact on subsequent political reforms the fate of the Soviet Union itself.

May 17, 1985: six short weeks after Gorbachev assumed power, the front page of
Pravda
announced a sweeping campaign against alcohol. “The population is not being instilled with a spirit of sobriety and is insufficiently informed about the harm the use of alcoholic beverages causes to the health of the present, and especially future generations,”
²⁸
the mouthpiece of the party boldly declared. The ensuing Measures to Overcome Drunkenness and Alcoholism began by ramping up anti-alcohol propaganda. As in the past, these conventional tactics addressed only the symptoms of societal alcoholism rather than the disease. In admitting the failure of previous campaigns under Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Andropov, it was clear that Gorbachev would go further… much further. A national temperance society was created. Recreational outlets and medical treatment facilities—both voluntary and compulsory—were expanded. Alcohol sales were dramatically restricted and production slashed. “This is one problem that I will get the better of,” the energetic new general secretary privately declared.
²⁹

This was the most comprehensive anti-alcohol movement since the Society for the Struggle against Alcoholism (OBSA) of Nikolai Bukharin and Yury Larin in the 1920s (
chapter 15
). Like the OBSA of old, the Kremlin decreed a new All-Union Voluntary Society for the Struggle for Temperance. Even the OBSA’s monthly journal,
Trezvost i kultura
(
Sobriety and Culture
) was dusted off and published under the exact same name. Within months it had over six hundred thousand subscribers, and the Temperance Society magically enrolled over fourteen million “voluntary” members in four hundred and fifty thousand branches in factories, collective farms, schools, and other facilities. The Society’s charge of promoting workplace sobriety, rooting out home brewing, and ensuring compliance with anti-alcohol regulations were likewise reminiscent of the OBSA of the 1920s.
³⁰

At the time, Swedish economist Anders Åslund noted a certain neo-Stalinism in Gorbachev’s battles, describing the war against alcohol as “a full-fledged disciplinary campaign of the old style, staged with impressive stamina.”
³¹
But it was not just the state-sanctioned organizations, the swelling of their ranks through “cattle-drive techniques of recruitment,”
³²
or even the ubiquitous propaganda that were reminiscent of the past—it was demanding sobriety by dramatically restricting vodka itself.

Under no circumstances could vodka be sold to minors under age twenty-one. Alcohol was prohibited near schools, hospitals, public transport, sports arenas, and rehabilitation centers. The number of retail alcohol outlets was slashed, as were their hours. To reduce workplace alcoholism, liquor could be bought only after 2:00 p.m. Liquor stores closed at 7:00 p.m. and all weekend, leading to long lines and disgruntled customers.

The state manufacture of vodkas, liqueurs, and wines was dramatically reduced. Prices were jacked up too. To sop up the rubles not spent on vodka
and encourage healthier lifestyles, fruits, juices, jams—as well as sporting goods, athletic facilities, and artist supplies—were expanded. Laws against home brewing were strengthened: the manufacture or possession of
samogon
or distilling equipment could earn a three hundred ruble fine or two years in a labor camp.
³³

In a final throwback to the 1920s movement to create a “new Soviet man,” Communist Party members were expected to be paragons of sobriety. Alcoholism became grounds for many—especially older—communists to be purged from the ranks. “The demands of the the Party are unequivocal,” stated
Pravda
in no uncertain terms. “The calling of a Communist, and all the more so of an executive, is incompatible with this vice.”
³⁴
As in the 1920s, Party members who fell victim to vodka were shamed publicly, as the details of their drunken offenses were published for all to see.
³⁵

The most famous victim of the anti-alcohol housecleaning was Gorbachev’s heavy-drinking former rival, Grigory Romanov. Just weeks after losing the top job, Romanov again disgraced himself publicly—this time getting sauced at the March 1985 Hungarian Party Congress. During the first week of the anti-alcohol campaign Romanov was dismissed while away on vacation. “I let him know quite bluntly that there was no place for him in the leadership,” Gorbachev recalled. “He did not like this, but there was nothing he could say to change things.” With his career effectively over, Romanov quietly wept.
³⁶

While using alcoholism as a pretext for purging undesirables harkened back to the Stalinist past, other moves were far more novel: official receptions at local and regional governments, Soviet embassies abroad, and even in the Kremlin itself were bone dry, much to the dismay of communist officials and visiting dignitaries. Still, the temperate Gorbachev led his anti-alcohol crusade by example—for the first time suggesting that not even the party elite was above the law.

Perhaps the most dramatic break with the autocratic past was through
glasnost
. Rather than a synonym for Western-style freedoms of speech, thought, or conscience,
glasnost
simply denotes “openness” or “frankness” in discussing public affairs. It wasn’t freedom for freedom’s sake but rather constructive criticism to supplement economic reforms. The thinking was: How could we fix the economy if people are too afraid to talk about what ails it?

Historians generally date
glasnost
from Gorbachev’s symbolic telephone call to dissident Andrei Sakharov in 1986. Sakharov, the famous (and dry) dissident, and his wife Elena Bonner, had been under close KGB surveillance in the closed city of Nizhny Novgorod—then known as Gorky—on the Volga following their public protests against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. By telling the famed dissidents that they were permitted to return to Moscow, Gorbachev “conveyed to reformers and liberals not only that this regime would deal with opponents differently than had previous regimes, but also that the great physicist had been right all along.”
³⁷

Yet even before such symbolic gestures,
glasnost
had already begun in earnest with the open publication of long-suppressed social statistics—a move that dissident Mikhail Baitalsky would certainly have applauded, were he still alive. In January 1986 the reports on the previous year’s progress toward fulfilling the five-year plan acknowledged—for the first time—that alcoholic beverages were indeed sold in the Soviet Union. The official economic forecasts followed suit.
³⁸

More importantly, the first Gorbachev-era issue of the Goskomstat statistical abstract for 1985 (released in August 1986) saw the return of thirty pages of long-suppressed social and economic data, including those that reflected poorly on Soviet progress. Figures on life expectancy at birth—64 for men and 73 for women—meant that Soviets were still dying on average ten years younger than their counterparts in the industrialized West. The controversial infant mortality figures also also published—26 per 1,000 was slightly less than the estimates provided by Western demographers like Murray Feshbach and Christopher Davis but still confirmed the Soviets’ deteriorating health and welfare. Later volumes not only acknowledged the existence of a “second economy” in the Soviet Union; they attempted to measure it. Subsequent publications released hard figures on crime, abortions, suicides, and executions that had not been seen since the 1920s.
³⁹
Openly publishing such troubling statistical data was an open admission of the difficult reality that Gorbachev and his reformers faced.

Perhaps most shockingly, the 1985 abstract finally revealed alcohol sales figures, which showed that alcoholic beverages constituted a full quarter of all retail trade in the Soviet Union. “The figures made it clear,” wrote Stephen White in his comprehensive history of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign, “for the first time so far as official statistics were concerned, that the output of vodka and other hard liquors had more than trebled between 1940 and 1980.”
⁴⁰
Between 1962 and 1982, alcohol consumption increased 5.6 percent per person
per year
.
⁴¹
This was a bombshell wrapped in numbers. Not only did the official figures confirm worst-case estimates by Soviet dissidents like Mikhail Baitalsky and Western economists like Vladimir Treml—it exceeded them.

This statistical
glasnost
was a boon to anyone looking to understand Soviet social challenges—and it was painting an ugly picture of vodka and the decline of the Soviet economy. The costs of alcohol to Soviet productivity reached fifteen to twenty percent of all economic output. With new public surveys suggesting that twenty-five percent of Soviet factory workers regularly came to work already having a drink or two of vodka, it is clear why Gorbachev’s first reform to jumpstart the moribund economy was to confront alcohol.
⁴²

Most historians consider the economic restructuring of
perestroika
and the openness of
glasnost
as two sides of the same coin. But if we are to really appreciate Gorbachev’s reforms, we need a different metaphor. His approach can better be thought of as a three-legged stool of
perestroika, glasnost
, and the anti-alcohol
campaign. Each element was reinforced by the others and strengthened by them in turn.

Indeed, if
glasnost
was the frank and constructive dialogue about confronting the ills of the Soviet system,
glasnost
did not begin with the symbolic phone call to Sakharov—it began with the earlier truth telling about alcohol and public health. The open acknowledgment of these problems distinguished the Gorbachev regime from all predecessors. For Gorbachev,
glasnost
was necessary to show his fellow countrymen—and indeed the rest of the world—the scope of the problems to be confronted through
perestroika
. And since releasing such information was necessary to bolster support for his anti-alcohol policy, vodka and
glasnost
were inexorably intertwined.

It did not end there. When it comes to
glasnost
about state finances, historians point to the importance of Gorbachev’s speech at the June 1987 Plenum of the Central Committee. “Take for instance the state budget,” Gorbachev argued. “From the outside, everything looks in order—incomes cover expenses. But how is that achieved?”

Gorbachev then enumerated the “sick elements” in the Soviet budget that began with commodity number one: vodka. “Of course, nothing can justify increasing the production and sale of wine and vodka. But while state income from the sale of alcoholic beverages in the eighth five-year plan comprised only 67 billion rubles, by the eleventh five-year plan, it exceeded 169 billion.”
⁴³
Glasnost
was vital in coming clean about the Soviet Union’s problems—and that meant first coming clean about vodka politics.

Who Is To Blame?

“Tell us about the most furious row you witnessed at the Politburo.”

Before the KGB inexplicably expelled him from Russia in 1989, this was
Sunday Times
correspondent Angus Roxburgh’s standard question as he interviewed over one hundred of the most senior Soviet elites. The typical reply was a lighthearted chuckle followed by, “Oh, there were so many of them, so many.…”

“Most Politburo members were willing to part with only one or two of their secrets,” Roxburgh wrote, “though almost all of them jumped at the chance to expose what appears to have been the most divisive issue in the early years of
perestroika
, the ill-fated attempt to stamp out alcoholism.”
⁴⁴
The decision to begin such historic reforms by confronting Russia’s autocratic vodka politics says a lot about the dynamics of political reform as well as the crucial wet/dry divisions within the Soviet elite.