“Those who smoke and drink vodka help the state more. (…) It’s extra money for social projects: the development of social assistance, the birth rate incentive.” These were the words of Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin in 2010, responsible for resolving the worrying Russian deficit. Certainly, encouraging fellow citizens to become drunk in solidarity seems particularly unwelcome in a country already suffering from high mortality linked to alcohol… But this declaration is also the concession of a harsh historical lesson, which Russian leaders and politicians have learned to their cost.
It was at the end of the Middle Ages that vodka appeared on the territory. A product from the rural world, grain elixir is preferred to water that is generally contaminated with bacteria and a vector of disease. From the 16the century, the tsars monopolized its production and marketing, in order to subject the population to their will. Tsar from 1682 to 1721, then emperor until his death in 1725, Peter Ier the Great, for example, obliges the indebted drunkards of the royal taverns (kabaky) to enlist in the army to pay their bill.
Faced with the significant profits it generated – around 200 million rubles annually in the 1850s – the production of “small water” was gradually regulated, with a uniform alcohol level set at 40% at the end of the 19th century.e century. A legend maintains that it was the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleïev, author of the famous periodic table of the elements, who was at the origin of this standardization. Vodka is more than ever part of the Russian social fabric, serving as currency, adding to festivities and sealing trade agreements. The distilled alcohol industry alone contributed a third of the Russian Empire’s revenue.
The dry crusade of the last tsar of Russia
But this addiction has a price. Aware of the harm that vodka causes to his fellow citizens, Emperor Nicholas II banned its consumption in 1914. “We cannot make our fiscal prosperity dependent on the destruction of the spiritual and economic capacities of many of our subjects”he argues. The last tsar of Russia undoubtedly remembers the disastrous Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, during which the drunken imperial troops were finished off with a bayonet by the Japanese…
“I think we should not follow the example of capitalist countries in putting vodka and other alcoholic drinks on the market.”
In the immediate future, Nicholas II’s prohibition had positive effects: health improved, crime decreased. There is even a lack of corpses in medical schools, where anatomists train their clumsy scalpels. In the medium term, however, the ban exacerbates tensions. Surplus grain is diverted to make alcohol, leading to bread shortages. The thirstiest are turning to dangerous alternatives: samogon contraband, perfumes, industrial solvents, pharmacy elixirs.
To the discontent of the Russian population, faced with famine and poverty, is added that of a part of the ruling class, deprived of the income it earns from the taxation of alcohol. When the Bolshevik revolution ignited the streets of Moscow and Petrograd (formerly Saint Petersburg) in 1917, the troops of Nicholas II, unpaid, joined the rioters. The tsarist regime collapses.
Having come to power, the Bolshevik revolutionaries preferred to abstain from vodka, starting with Lenin and Leon Trotsky, aware that the drink widened the gap between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. “I think we should not follow the example of capitalist countries by putting vodka and other alcoholic drinks on the market because, even if they are profitable, they will return us to capitalism and will not allow us to move forward on the communist path”urged Lenin, during a Bolshevik political conference in May 1921.
Alas, his successor will be more pragmatic. From 1925, Joseph Stalin relaunched this lucrative industry to finance the rapid modernization of the USSR. Under his mandate, vodka flows freely and not only in the drunken evenings he organizes with a few colleagues from the Politburo. The “Red Tsar” knows that alcohol softens the morals of his population, making them more docile and manipulable.
One last one for the road
After timid attempts at prohibition initiated by Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964), Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982), then Yuri Andropov (1982-1984) during the second half of the 20the century, Mikhail Gorbachev tried it in his turn in 1985. The problem was pressing: a sixth of the Russian population – or 40 million people – was then considered alcoholic and alcohol consumption had doubled in forty years. Implementing several radical measures, the Soviet leader faced a sudden backlash when state revenues collapsed and the population began to drink antifreeze for lack of anything better. In 1988, the project was abandoned.
Since Mikhail Gorbachev’s abortive attempt, no major reform has come to curb vodka consumption in Russia. Aware that the national liquor is anchored in the daily life of the population, Russian leaders today prefer to turn a blind eye and silently pocket the tax revenues it generates. And this, even if Russian male life expectancy peaks at 68 years (that of women is around 79 years), almost eleven years less than the European Union average for men.
