Until the mid 1500s, village taverns were retail outlets for breweries located on the lords’ estate or in a nearby monastery. These korchmas offered traditional fermented drinks like beer, mead, and kvas—a low-alcohol drink made from black or rye bread. By the early sixteenth century, many taverns began adding vodka to their menus as just another drink option. This early vodka production was primitive and small-scale—distilling just enough for the local estate or tavern.16
It quickly became clear that this early “burnt wine” (goryachee vino) or “bread wine” (khlebnoe vino) was a very lucrative business. The technology to distill vodka was basic and cheap.17 All that was needed was a simple still: a stove to heat a fermented mash and buckets to collect the concentrated alcohol as it condensed. The ingredients were plentiful: water from a local river or spring and rye or wheat from the local fields—which would be harvested at little cost to the landlord by his indentured peasants. And at the end of the day, the final product could be sold back to the peasants at a price that was tens or hundreds of times the cost of the raw materials. Advances in industrial rectification from the nineteenth century through today has made contemporary vodka, in the words of alcohol historian Boris Rodionov, “the most primitive and the cheapest (in terms of production costs) drink in the world”—certainly something to remember the next time you consider buying any bottle of top-shelf vodka for more than $10.18
TRADITIONAL RUSSIAN STILL. It had a stove for heating the fermented mash (on left) and a funnel for the cooling and condensing of the alcohol, which was collected in a bucket (right). Riga, Neures Œkonomisches Repertorium für Liesland: 1814. Author’s personal collection.
Back in the sixteenth century, Muscovy was undergoing an agricultural revolution, adopting a three-field system of crop rotation that dramatically raised yields. What was a landowner to do with all that excess grain? He could send it to market—but with so much supply, prices were low, and the cost of transporting wagonloads of grain to market was high. A better option was to distill it into vodka, the price of which was high while the cost of transporting it was low: one horse-drawn cart could easily transport the vodka distilled from mountains of grain. Plus, unlike fermented beer or mead, vodka never spoils, so it is a constant store of value—a value that can be easily measured, divided, and sold by volume. For all of these reasons, vodka was the perfect mechanism for both commerce and extracting resources. For all of the doubt cast on Vilyam Pokhlebkin’s efforts to date vodka’s origins from this period, his resulting interpretation is astute, claiming that “if vodka had never existed, it would have been necessary to invent it, not from any need for a new drink but as the ideal vehicle for indirect taxation.”19 And indeed it didn’t take long for the young Russian state to also appreciate vodka’s tremendous revenue potential.
If vodka does not immediately pop to mind as the quintessential symbol of Russia, the iconic visage of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square probably does. With its many colorful onion domes, the cathedral was ordered built by Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the 1552 conquest of the rival Khanate of Kazan on the Volga River. During the siege, which ended with the wanton slaughter of the population of Kazan, Ivan was impressed by the government-run taverns the Tatars called kabak. Upon his return to Moscow, he decreed that Russia too should have a system of government-run kabaks, outlawing the privately run korchmas so that all profits from the liquor trade were funneled directly into Ivan’s treasury.20
These kabaks were described by English ambassador Giles Fletcher the Elder, who was dispatched to Russia in 1588 by Queen Elizabeth I. His resulting treatise, Of the Russe Common Wealth (1591), underscored the growing importance of the liquor trade to the tsar’s finances and the burdens it placed on the peasantry.
In every great towne of his Realme he hath a Caback or drinking house, where is sold aquavitæ (which they cal Russewine) mead, beere, &c. Out of these hee receiveth rent that amounteth to a great summe of money. Some yeeld 800, some 900, some a 1000 some 2000 or 3000. rubbels a yere. Wherein besides the base, and dishononourable means to encrease his treasurie, many foule faultes are committed. The poore labouring man, and artificer, manie times spendeth all from his wife and children. Some use to lay in twentie, thirtie, fourtie rubbels, or more into the Caback, and vowe themselves to the pot, till all that be spent. And this (as he will say) for the honour of Hospodare, or the Emperour. You shall have manie there that have drunk all away to the verie skinne, and so walk naked (whom they call Naga.) While they are in the Caback, none may call them foorth whatsoever cause there be, because he hindereth the Emperours revenue.21
Over the following century, the might of the autocratic Russian state was built upon a pillar of vodka. In order to maintain a steady flow of revenues, the government waged a clandestine war to root out illegal stills and taverns. The same Law Code of 1649 that codified serfdom also outlawed the purchase and sale of vodka outside of the kabak under penalty of torture—which could include lashings with the knout, singeing by fire, or the strappado: tying the victim’s hands behind their backs and hoisting them in the air by a rope attached to the wrists, dislocating the arms and causing excruciating pain.22 Three years later, the government imposed a total monopoly by outlawing all private commercial distillation. When the German scholar-ambassador Adam Olearius visited Russia in the 1630s, he claimed that there were more than a thousand government-run taverns throughout the land and that these taverns brought the government “an extraordinary amount of money, since the Russians know no restraint in drinking vodka.” Consequently, Olearius concluded that the Russians “are more addicted to drunkenness than any nation in the world.”23 His firsthand run-ins with Russian peasants at the tsar’s taverns are particularly illuminating.
While we were there, taverns and pothouses were everywhere, and anyone who cared to could go in and sit and drink his fill. The common people would bring all their earnings into the tavern and sit there until, having emptied their purses, they gave away their clothing, and even their nightshirts, to the keeper, and then went home as naked as they had come into the world. When, in 1643, I stopped at the Lübeck house in Novgorod, I saw such besotted and naked brethren come out of the nearby tavern, some bareheaded, some barefooted, and others only in their nightshirts. One of them had drunk away his cloak and emerged from the tavern in his nightshirt; when he met a friend who was on his way to the same tavern, he went in again. Several hours later he came out without his nightshirt, wearing only a pair of under-drawers. I had him called to ask what had become of his nightshirt, who had stolen it? He answered with the customary “Fuck your mother,” that it was the tavern keeper, and that the drawers might as well go where the cloak and nightshirt had gone. With that, he returned to the tavern, and later came out entirely naked. Taking a handful of dog fennel that grew near the tavern, he held it over his private parts, and went home singing gaily.24
This hardly sounds like the popular image of the kindly, hospitable bartender, always happy to lend a sympathetic ear to his customers. No. If anything, the tavern owner was the villain of the traditional Russian village: the cold and unscrupulous defender of state finance above all else.
Tavern keepers were the main interface between the state and Russian society, and it was clear which side they were on. In fact, they were not known as tavern keepers but, rather, as tselovalniki—“kissers.” They swore allegiance to the tsar by kissing the Orthodox cross—vowing to honestly serve the emperor by keeping the liquor flowing into the peasants’ mouths and money flowing out of their pockets. The Russian tselovalnik was the shameless instrument of a predatory state. He would never tell a customer to leave unless the peasant had no more money and nothing of value left to pawn. Even according to government regulations in 1659, the tavern keeper could not so much as refuse a habitual drunkard—lest the revenue stream be diminished.25
Since their highly lucrative positions depended on delivering more and more money to the provincial government and national ministries, the ent
ire tavern administration deliberately pushed the more potent distilled vodka over traditional fermented beers and meads because the profit margins were so much greater. While other feudal institutions like serfdom and direct taxation funneled the productive capacity of the peasantry into wealth for the state, they could not match the sheer revenue-generating capacity of vodka. Vodka had to be paid for in cash, which required the peasants to earn the money necessary to drink. Even when the tavern keeper let their customers pawn their belongings or drink on credit, the money paid to the government still had to be in cash. In this way, the tavern became the primary mechanism through which the Russian state exploited its own society. Within a generation of the introduction of vodka and the tsar’s kabaks, the traditionally self-sufficient Russian village was gone, replaced by a system dominated by the state, gentry, and merchants that both propagated and profited from the misery of the peasantry and that integrated even isolated, far-flung communities into the autocratic system.26
While over the longue durée the system’s promotion of drunkenness and corruption proved detrimental, the more immediate consequences were positive for the imperial state. As the treasury filled, the state’s capacity for both extraction and defense grew. It permitted Russia to not only accumulate the largest territory on earth but also to effectively broadcast its power over even the most sparsely populated territories without a massive government bureaucracy. And as both the state’s boundaries and its capacity grew—as we shall see in later chapters—so to did its ability to raise, finance, and control the largest army in the world.
The Old Style Of Russian Drinking
Once vodka became ensconced as the cornerstone of Russian statecraft, untold generations of Russians would pay the cost—not just the retail cost of billions of bottles of liquor, but also the staggering social, health, and demographic consequences of an autocracy that promotes dependence on alcohol. One consequence of this fundamental tenet of vodka politics is that even today Russian drinking culture is marked by dangerous binges and overconsumption of vodka. To come to terms with the effects of this deadly binge-drinking culture, it is not enough simply to ask why Russians die from drinking; in the words of leading health researcher Martin McKee, we need to ask: “Why do they drink? What do they drink? Why, when they drink to the extent that they do, do they fall down, and why does no one pick them up?”27
So, how do Russians drink today, and how have those drinking patterns evolved over time? Returning to the imperial era, we may envision a lowly drunken peasant, daily stumbling to the village tavern to drink up his last kopeck, neglecting his family who live in squalor in some dilapidated, dimly lit hut. This stereotype may resonate with anyone who has spent time drinking in bars in Russia today, but we cannot simply project Russia’s modern drinking culture backward in time. As it turns out, before vodka, the location, timing, quantity, and even ceremonies associated with drinking were dramatically different. The subsequent transformation of even the style of alcohol consumption can be attributed to vodka politics.
Before vodka, the lightly alcoholic “liquid bread” kvas was the day-to-day drink for most Russians, while mead and imported wine were reserved for wealthy lords and boyars. By the fourteenth century, beer had made inroads as the most common alcoholic beverage, as the Russian word pivo—originally meaning “drink” in general—came to apply to beer in particular. These early hopped brews were so strong that even fifteenth-century Venetian explorer Iosaphat Barbaro described the native Russian drinks “as stupefying and intoxicating as wine.”28
Beer and mead were primarily for special occasions: celebrating births and deaths, marriages and christenings, church festivals and feasts. In addition to paying duties on the hops and grains, brewing also required the permission of the grand prince for an exemption from government restrictions aimed at limiting widespread drunkenness.
“They are great drunkards and are exceedingly boastful of it, disdaining those who do not drink,” wrote Venetian diplomat Ambrogio Contarini, who was received by Grand Prince Ivan III (“the Great”) in 1476. “They have no wines, but use a drink from honey which they make from hop leaves. This drink is not at all bad, particularly if it is old. However, their sovereign does not allow everyone to prepare it freely, because, if they were free to do so, they would be drunk every day and would kill one another like beasts.”29
On such occasions Russian peasants did drink to excess, but the number of calendar days when drinking was possible were very few. On most days, peasants were preoccupied with the draining work of tilling, plowing, or harvesting the fields. Drunkenness was a luxury most subsistence farmers could not regularly afford.30
Overindulgence was especially problematic during the Christmas–Epiphany season. Such drunken, and even pagan, debauchery was denounced by an Orthodox Church Council of 1551—the same assembly charged with providing moral guidance to Ivan the Terrible and his boyars. The council’s Stoglav—or Hundred Chapters—repeatedly condemns celebrations that promote “deeds loathsome to God, [where] there is defilement of young men and debauchery of the girls”: ironic in that the council’s proclamations were actually overseen by the head defiler and debaucher, Ivan the Terrible. The church elders denounced both the peasants’ alcohol-fueled bacchanals that “do anger the Lord God” and the lack of concern, guidance, and punishment from local priests and judges.
“Piti podobaet ne vo p’ianstvo, no v veselie” concluded the council: it is proper to drink to the point of gladness, but not of drunkenness. The Stoglav counseled the tsar to end such pagan practices and to punish those priests implicit in them.31 Yet the traditions continued.
Long before there even were tsars, the traditional Muscovite drinking culture was characterized by long periods of sobriety punctuated by occasional drunkenness. Drinking was a social ritual and often a religious one as well. Alcohol historian Boris Segal even suggests that the Orthodox Church deliberately incorporated alcohol into their religious celebrations in order to wean the peasantry from their heathen traditions, in which alcohol likewise played a communal role.32 Whether pagan or Christian, drinking was not done alone, but rather in groups—either in the home, among friends, or with the entire community—in sharp contrast to the drinking houses that came later.
Even before there were taverns, attempts were made to control drinking through moral suasion and economic regulation. The quasi-official sixteenth-century moral codex known as the Domostroi, or Domestic Order, outlined the elites’ household, familial, moral, and civil obligations regarding alcohol. “When you are invited to a wedding,” it says,
do not drink yourself to the point of inebriation and do not remain seated until late, because in inebriation and lengthy sitting are quarrels, brawls and shedding of blood. I do not say that you should not drink at all! No. I do say that you should not get drunk. I do not disparage God’s gifts, but I do berate those who drink without self-control.33
The Domostroi also offered practical advice about the new science of distilling, suggesting that its aristocratic readers “Distill vodka yourself” and “Never leave it unguarded. If you are otherwise occupied, have someone trustworthy take your place.”34 Even early on both vodka’s potency and profitability were evident. In confronting this new technology, the grand princes’ regulations on gentry brewing were extended to the more potent distillates. The Mogilev statute of 1561 stipulates that “every burgher is free to keep mead and beer for his own use, but not for sale. With the knowledge of the tax collector he can distill spirits for his son’s or daughter’s wedding and for caroling. In addition to this the burghers can distill spirits five times a year: at Christmas, in Cheesefare week, on Easter, Trinity Sunday and autumnal St. Nicholas Day [December 6]; they cannot, however, use more than four chetverts of malt each time for the spirits.”35
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 debauc
hery 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
Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State Page 13