“You don’t have to read the newspapers, listen to the radio, watch TV, or know anything about high-level intrigues to deduce that the powers-that-be long ago ceased to care about the well-being of the people,” explained the dean of Russian alcohol studies, Dr. Aleksandr Nemtsov, in his exhaustive Contemporary History of Alcohol in Russia. “You only need to remember these three numbers: 58.5, 13.5, and 16.5”: 58.5 years: the depths to which average Russian male life expectancy had dropped; 13.5: how many years earlier Russian men were going to the grave than Russian women—the largest gap in the world—largely thanks to massive vodka consumption; and 16.5: the number of years earlier Russian men were dying than their counterparts in Europe. “With just these three numbers, you can easily infer the seriousness of the consequences of Russian drinking. We are forced to confront the reality that the alcohol situation in the country is catastrophic, and the government has done almost nothing about it.”23
Though frustrated, President Medvedev seemed content to watch Russian healthcare limp through the global financial crisis with little more than band-aid solutions. But he took a decidedly more aggressive approach to Russia’s vodka problem beginning in the summer of 2009. At his seaside retreat outside of Sochi, Medvedev declared that he was “astonished to find out that we now drink more than we did in the 1990s, although those were very tough times.” And when it came to assessing Putin’s policies: “I believe no changes have taken place, really.” The new president concluded simply that “nothing has helped.”24
Heralding the first concerted effort to address vodka politics since Mikhail Gorbachev’s ill-fated anti-alcohol campaign, Medvedev declared: “Alcoholism in our country is a national disaster.” Casting vodka as a threat to national security, the president spouted a series of telling statistics, beginning with (an arguably inflated) per capita consumption of eighteen liters of pure alcohol per year: more than double the maximum deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization. “When you convert that into vodka bottles, it is simply mind-boggling,” Medvedev said. “This is approximately 50 bottles of vodka, for each resident of the country, including infants. These are monstrous figures.” The government’s own Public Chamber declared that alcohol was involved in eighty percent of murders and forty percent of suicides and that, directly or indirectly, alcohol abuse was killing a half-million Russians every year. Separately, an extensive study published in the acclaimed British medical journal The Lancet that same summer was even more eye-opening: alcohol caused more than half of all deaths of working-age Russians (ages 15–54), making it the greatest contributor to Russia’s mortality crisis.25
Unlike Putin’s jokes about not becoming “another Ligachev,” Medvedev actually praised the Gorbachev-era anti-alcohol campaign. “It is fact rather than speculation that the period saw unprecedented demographic growth in our country,” he told his advisory State Council. “We must think about a system of measures, including restrictive ones”—though he rightfully warned against the “idiotic bans and mistakes, which fueled a legitimate indignation among the population.”26
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (right) chairs the first meeting on alcohol abuse and anti-alcohol measures at the Bocharov Ruchei presidential residence in Sochi on August, 12, 2009. Associated Press, RIA-Novosti/Dmitry Astakhov.
Gorbachev himself approved of Medvedev’s long overdue initiative. “We are destroying ourselves, and then we will look for those who destroyed our country, for those who made us drink,” declared the former Soviet president. “The situation is such that we must take control.”27 Yet while polls suggested that sixty-five percent of Russians approved of a renewed anti-liquor push, many dismissed it as quixotic folly. “It’s impossible. He doesn’t stand a chance,” one drinker told the Los Angeles Times. As under Gorbachev’s campaign, “the Russian man will always be drinking. Russians don’t surrender.”28
Although Medvedev was wary of repeating the disasters of Gorbachev’s campaign, many of the goals and tactics in his initiative were strikingly similar. Just as in 1985, the ministry of health and state-run television launched a propaganda campaign against heavy drinking, promoting “a healthy lifestyle among the citizens of Russia.” Also as in 1985, the Kremlin instituted stiff penalties for retailers who sold to minors, restricted sales hours, and raised the minimum price of a bottle of vodka—first to three dollars and increasing incrementally thereafter. And as in 1985, Medvedev’s initiative was kicked off with wildly ambitious, long-term goals: cutting alcohol consumption in half within ten years and raising life expectancy to age seventy-five by 2025.29
Still, this was hardly your father’s anti-alcohol campaign. Rather than merely circulating pamphlets and posters, the dangers of drinking were articulated by famous celebrities in well-produced public service announcements. Russia’s burgeoning online community was abuzz with humorous viral videos from the health ministry, which quickly racked up millions of views on YouTube. The most famous portrayed a mangy, computer-animated squirrel or belka—which is also Russian slang for delirium tremens. The drunken, paranoid squirrel climbs the walls, breaks into song, talks of shooting imaginary kudyapliks, and describes how his friend murdered his wife in an alcoholic stupor, believing her to be the devil. “Drinking tonight?” the squirrel asks, the question looming. “Well then maybe I’ll be coming to visit you.”
(Astonishingly, an entrepreneurial vodka maker quickly capitalized on the Internet buzz by creating a sarcastic new line of vodkas called Belochka: Ya prishla! (The Squirrel: I Have Arrived!). “Belochka is a truly Russian spirit of self-irony that helps people overcome difficulties by laughter,” the product’s website claims. “If you have no sense of humor this vodka is not for you.”)30
Other policies were far less playful: dropping the legal blood alcohol level for drunk driving to 0.0; encouraging healthful, moderate consumption of wine over more potent and destructive vodka; expanding control over sales at kiosks and other retail outlets; limiting the size of canned cocktails, requiring health warnings on alcoholic drinks, including the fruity “alcopops” that entice younger drinkers; and—yes—even “moving the legal drinking age up from zero,” as comedian Seth Meyers joked on Saturday Night Live.31 Yet by far the most important break from past campaigns is that each reform has been introduced incrementally, allowing for adjustment and evaluation of the policies. Much to their credit, Medvedev’s Kremlin eschewed the autocratic excesses and “shock troop” mentality that popular habits can easily be made to conform to the government’s wishes. Unlike the dramatic prohibition of the Great War, or the hastily implemented restrictions of the Gorbachev era, Medvedev apparently understands that changing popular habits could only be done gradually, not instantaneously. Such small steps are unquestionably a good start, but the lack of any effort to treat alcoholism as a disease—which would require expensive investments in the country’s creaking medical infrastructure and serious commitment to rehabilitation programs—calls into question whether the Kremlin is genuinely intent on reducing drinking, especially knowing what that means for state revenues and entrenched vodka interests.
Still, by the time Medvedev handed the presidency back to Putin in 2012, the anti-alcohol campaign had quietly produced marked improvements in Russian health. Per capita consumption of all types of alcohol had dropped from eighteen liters per capita to fifteen. Suicides, homicides, and—most tellingly—alcohol-poisoning deaths occurred less frequently. In 2011, “only” eleven thousand seven hundred Russians died from alcohol poisoning, quite a drop from the average of thirty-six thousand per year during Putin’s eight years (2000–2008) but still some fifty times higher than in Europe and North America. Already by 2011, combined life expectancy for both men and women surpassed seventy years (64.3 for men, 76.1 for women) for the first time since 1986, during Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign.32
Dramatic demographic improvements also were the hallmark of the Gorbachev campaign—at least before crafty bootleggers and moonshiners eroded the progress. Similarly,
sneaky entrepreneurs have circumvented Medvedev’s anti-alcohol regulations. Even where nighttime sales are banned, companies have popped up that will deliver liquor to your door even in the dead of night—instead of buying the vodka, the customer extends the courier a loan, getting the courier’s booze as collateral. As one such courier in Novosibirsk explained to Vedomosti, it is always possible to give back the collateral for a refund, “but he had never heard of anyone actually doing that.”
Similar schemes have emerged across Russia. In Moscow you can join a local “social organization” for a set fee and receive a complimentary bottle of booze as a welcoming gift. Other companies will sell you (overpriced) trinkets and souvenirs accompanied by a “free” bottle of vodka. Still other online sites circumvent sales restrictions by having the customer sign a brief contract to “rent” booze. The contract expires the following day at 8 a.m.33
At the end of 2011 the health ministry warned that, despite meaningful progress, the new rules were “often not followed,” with problematic implications for health. While alcohol poisonings were down, the gap in life expectancy—the most telling indicator of dangerous patterns of alcohol consumption—was still the highest in the world, with Russian men dying twelve years before their widows. Kids were drinking earlier and earlier, with seventy-seven percent of all underaged teenagers (15–17) regularly drinking vodka—upwards of ninety percent in rural areas. Even with the anti-alcohol campaign in full swing, 2.5 million Russians applied for alcoholism treatment in 2010. Another 28 million people claimed they either “misuse alcohol” or are “addicted” to it.34 In other words, there are more alcoholics in Russia than there are Texans in Texas.
More worrisome are recent indicators suggesting that the anti-alcohol movement may be losing momentum. Particularly telling are the statistics on accidental alcohol poisonings, which fell a whopping thirty-two percent from 2009 to 2010—reflecting the first full year of the alcohol restrictions. The year 2011 added an additional 18.8 percent drop. By contrast, preliminary figures from 2013 suggest only a 1.4 percent yearly decrease in accidental alcohol poisonings. Similarly, slowing rates of improvement in all manner of alcohol-related mortality suggests diminishing returns to public health from the sobriety initiative.35
Moreover, market watchers have sounded the alarm over the additional thirty-three percent increase on vodka excise taxes imposed on January 1, 2013. The tax hike has brought more rubles into the treasury, but has decimated legal vodka producers, who have seen their output drop by more than a third from just the year before. And while legal vodka production is plummeting, after a few years of declining, per-capita vodka consumption is actually back on the rise as bootleggers, smugglers, and black-marketers bribe corrupt regulators to look the other way while their cheaper wares and dangerous alcohol surrogates flood the market—and all predictably to the detriment of public health.36
Taken together, these are troubling signs, as it has been the same pattern—overly strident alcohol restrictions combined with institutionalized corruption that lead to an explosion of unregulated, underground vodka and deadly surrogates that erode benefits to public health—that has ultimately doomed every previous attempt to rein-in vodka. Whether the Kremlin maintains a flexible approach and a focus on improving public health, or whether it succumbs to the ghosts of vodka history, only time will tell.
The Other Side of the Coin
Despite Russia’s history of revolutionary upheavals, if there is one constant across the past five centuries it is that public well-being is almost never the Kremlin’s foremost concern, especially when the greater good clashes with the financial needs of the state or those well-connected to it. Consequently, there have only been two kinds of anti-alcohol campaigns in Russian history. The most common is the half-hearted, populist overture to improving health and economic productivity, which invariably is eroded by the insatiable desire to maximize vodka profits. The other kind—as we have seen in the cases of Nicholas II and Gorbachev—zealously sacrificed state finance in the interest of social health only to blow a massive hole in the budget, thereby hastening the demise of both the tsarist and Soviet empires.37 In either case, the outcome has been the same: failure (though of a far more spectacular variety in the latter case). So when leaders talk of putting the people before of the bottle, they are met with skepticism, if not outright trepidation. Would Medvedev’s efforts fare any better?
There is reason for optimism that current efforts won’t be of the disastrous, second variety. Unlike Nicholas’s dry law, Russia is not embroiled in a debilitating war, and unlike the collapse in world oil prices under Gorbachev, the treasury is flush thanks to the high world price of oil and gas. The massive rents from these exports—and Putin’s low, workable flat tax—mean that the present-day Russian Federation isn’t nearly as reliant on alcohol to make ends meet. Instead of making up one quarter to one-third of all state revenues as in the tsarist and Soviet eras, vodka’s contribution to the federal budget is now only two to four percent (in addition to contributions to the regional governments).38 Eschewing autocratic, shock-troop methods in favor of incrementally ratcheting up restrictions also bodes well for avoiding the worst-case scenario.
If the regime-implosion scenario isn’t likely, all that remains is the halfhearted, temporary concession. As mentioned, there have been some troubling signs suggesting this possible outcome. But if these turn out to be just bumps in the road, could Medvedev actually have initiated the first truly successful sobriety campaign in all of Russian history, and finally buried Russia’s long tradition of autocratic vodka politics?
Early on, there was certainly room for hope. From praising Gorbachev’s anti-drink crusade to putting Russia’s “traditional vices of bribery, larceny, sloth and drunkenness” in the crosshairs through his Russia, Forward! manifesto, Medvedev certainly “talked the talk.” The incremental restrictions and willingness to bread with the usual vodka-soaked banquets and high-level intrigues that marked Russian politics from Ivan the Terrible to Boris Yeltsin made it look like he could also “walk the walk.”39
Still, the core dynamics of Russian vodka politics are tenacious. While vodka’s relative budgetary importance has waned, selling liquor to Russians is still very easy money, making the vodka trade a breeding ground for institutionalized corruption. Indeed, it seems that the temptation of trillions of rubles in alcohol revenues has proven too strong for the Kremlin and state-backed entrepreneurs—especially in the midst of a global economic crisis that transformed Russia’s budget surpluses into a debt of some seven percent of GDP. In assessing the new anti-alcohol initiative, “It’s not clear what the goal is,” claimed Renaissance Capital analyst Natalya Zagvozdina in 2009, “to decrease alcohol consumption or to raise money for the budget.”40
That summer, while his protégé Medvedev was drumming up support for an epic showdown with alcohol, Prime Minister Putin and his cabinet were noticeably subdued. “We [Russians] should drink less,” was his most energetic statement on the matter. Putin critics, including former chess grandmaster-turned-dissident Garry Kasparov, suggested that his frigid response was business related: heavily invested in Rosspirtprom, Putin’s friend and former judo partner Arkady Rotenberg stood to lose millions from slashing vodka. Indeed, this was one of the most damning accusations of corruption against Putin in a widely circulated exposé titled simply Putin. Corruption. “Why would Putin raise taxes on his friends’ business?” asked the report’s authors, including opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov. “The lower the price, the higher the sales. And so, while people across this vast country are drinking themselves to death—it is simply not considered a problem for this government.”41
A necessary corollary is that, if the state were to raise taxes on vodka (either in the name of public health or state finance), it’d also likely find a way to protect the business interests of the well-connected members of the ruling sistema. It seems that is precisely what it has done.
In 2008, t
he Kremlin formed Rosalkogolregulirovanie (RAR), a new government bureaucracy ostensibly meant to streamline oversight and control over the vodka market. But instead of the usual bluster about promoting public health, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov—whom Putin had personally entrusted with the new vodka authority—has focused almost exclusively on revenues being lost to the black market. Just like Arkady Rotenberg and Vasily Anisimov—the billionaires controlling the national champion company Rosspirtprom—Zubkov also had ties to Putin’s elite judo club Yawara-Neva, as member of its board of trustees and chair of its audit committee. What’s more, Zubkov was also a long-time board member of Rosspirtprom itself—one of the companies RAR was now in charge of regulating. Ignoring any conflict of interests, many of the RAR executives simply emigrated with Zubkov from Rosspirtprom. And perhaps not surprisingly, these omnipotent government regulators have been selectively wielding their licensing power primarily to rebuild Rosspirtprom’s market share at the expense of domestic and foreign competitors, with reducing public drunkenness a mere afterthought.42
Of course, the protection of these vested interests in vodka works at cross-purposes to the promotion of public health and wellbeing. If the farce of RAR wasn’t enough, these misplaced priorities are evident even among others tabbed with promoting the public good. Take, for instance, pronouncements by Putin’s Minister of Health and Social Development, Tatyana Golikova, who has focused on alcohol and the plight of Russia’s youth. And with good reason: with more than half of all recent high school graduates projected to die before they reach retirement age, the children truly are Russia’s demographic future.43 Yet inexplicably, instead of targeting vodka—the potent tipple that comprises the vast majority of the Russian alcohol market—she instead took aim at beer. “Some 33% of young men and 20% of females drink alcohol, including beer, every day or in a day, while regular beer drinkers account for 76% of the population.” This was an unusual tactic, since it is common knowledge among health experts that distilled spirits like vodka have a far more damaging impact on health than fermented wines and beers.44
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