Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State

Home > Fantasy > Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State > Page 58
Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State Page 58

by Mark Lawrence


  16. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), 121.

  17. David Christian, “The Black and the Gold Seals: Popular Protest against the Liquor Trade on the Eve of Emancipation,” in Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921, ed. Esther Kingston-Mann and Jeffrey Burds (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 273–77.

  18. Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (New York: Praeger, 1956), 33.

  19. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 5. In Russian history see Allen C. Lynch, How Russia Is Not Ruled: Reflections on Russian Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 7–8, 18–21; Tim McDaniel, The Agony of the Russian Idea (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 14.

  20. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House, 1975).

  21. Alexander Barmine, One Who Survived: The Life Story of a Russian under the Soviets (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945), 214. At the conclusion of World War II, Stalin seized the extensive film catalogue once owned by Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Beyond domestic films, Stalin particularly enjoyed westerns, detective and gangster films, and anything with Charlie Chaplin. Svetlana Allilueva, Only One Year, trans. Paul Chavchavadze (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 389.

  22. Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 94–95; Neya Zorkaya, The Illustrated History of Soviet Cinema (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1991), 109.

  23. Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 64.

  24. J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum, Midnight Movies (New York: Da Capo, 1991), 231.

  25. Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 179.

  26. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 18.

  27. Joan Neuberger, Ivan the Terrible: The Film Companion (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 22; Maureen Perrie, The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 176. The award was a surprise, as the Stalin Prize committee had previously excluded Eisenstein’s film from consideration. The prize had instead been awarded at Stalin’s personal insistence. Leonid Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” in Stalinism and Soviet Cinema, ed. Richard Taylor and D. W. Spring (London: Routledge, 1993), 126; Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Macmillan, 2003), 497. On Eisenstein’s premonitions see Richard Taylor, “Eisenstein, Sergei,” FilmReference.com, http://www.filmreference.com/Directors-Du-Fr/Eisenstein-Sergei.html.

  28. Herbert Marshall, Masters of the Soviet Cinema: Crippled Creative Biographies (London: Routledge, 1983), 9; Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” 122.

  29. Mikhail Romm, Besedy o kino (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964), 91. See also Marshall, Masters of the Soviet Cinema, 229.

  30. Perrie, The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia, 177.

  31. Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” 123.

  32. Leonid K. Kozlov, “‘Ten’ Groznogo i khudozhnik,” Kinovedcheskie zapiski 15 (1992): 38; Figes, Natasha’s Dance, 497.

  33. Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” 127.

  34. Marshall, Masters of the Soviet Cinema, 221; Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him (New York: Random House, 2005), 433; David Sillito, “Hamlet: The Play Stalin Hated,” BBC, April 22, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17770170 (accessed April 22, 2012).

  35. Romm, Besedy o kino, 91.

  36. Richard Taylor, “Sergei Eisenstein: The Life and Times of a Boy from Riga,” in The Montage Principle: Eisenstein in New Cultural and Critical Contexts, ed. Jean Antoine-Dunne and Paula Quigley (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 40–41; Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 197; Grigorii Mar’yamov, Kremlevskii tsenzor: Stalin smotrit kino (Moscow: Konfederatsiya soyuzov kinomatografistov ‘Kinotsentr’, 1992), 84–91; an English transcript can be found at http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv3n2/ivant.htm. For Eisenstein’s remark see Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” 129.

  37. On Eisenstein’s note taking see Taylor, “Sergei Eisenstein: The Life and Times of a Boy from Riga,” 40. On not altering the film see Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” 248 n91.

  38. Rostislav N. Yurenev, ed., Eizenshtein v vospominaniyakh sovremennikov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1974), 283.

  39. Kozlov, “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan,” 130.

  40. Robert Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 312; Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen, 466–67.

  41. Albert J. LaValley and Barry P. Scherr, Eisenstein at 100: A Reconsideration (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 117, 42–43.

  42. Sergey Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009), 135, 225. On Khrushchev see also Steve LeVine, The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea (New York: Random House, 2007), 51.

  43. Paul R. Bennett, Russian Negotiating Strategy: Analytic Case Studies from Salt and Start (Commack, N.Y.: Nova, 1997), 64–65; James Humes, Nixon’s Ten Commandments of Leadership and Negotiation (New York: Touchstone, 1998), 49. On Brezhnev’s alcoholism see Donald Trelford, “A Walk in the Woods with Gromyko,” Observer, April 2, 1989; Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, We All Lost the Cold War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 478.

  44. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995), 373.

  45. Ibid., 281–82.

  46. Aleksandr Nemtsov, Alkogol’naya istoriya Rossii: noveishii period (Moscow: URSS, 2009), 66. On Kto kogo? see Christopher Read, Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Routledge, 2005), 248.

  Chapter 3

  1. Stephen Graham, Ivan the Terrible: Life of Ivan IV of Russia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1933), 4.

  2. Arthur Voyce, The Moscow Kremlin: Its History, Architecture, and Art Treasures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), 19; Graham, Ivan the Terrible, 5.

  3. Nathan Haskell Dole, Young Folks’ History of Russia (New York: Saalfield Publishing Co., 1903), 271. See also R. E. F. Smith and David Christian, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

  4. Dole, Young Folks’ History of Russia, 271. Also see Freiherr Sigmund von Herberstein, Description of Moscow and Muscovy: 1557 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1969), 65.

  5. H. Sutherland Edwards, “Food and Drink,” in Russia as Seen and Described by Famous Writers, ed. Esther Singleton (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1906), 260–61; James Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 86.

  6. Dole, Young Folks’ History of Russia, 271.

  7. M. P. Alekseev, “Zapadnoevropeiskie slovarnye materialy v drevnerusskikh azbukovnikakh XVI–XVII vekov,” in Akademiku Viktoru Vladimirovichu Vinogradovu k ego shestidesyatiletiyu: sbornik statei, ed. Akademiya nauk SSSR (Moscow: Izdatel’svto akademii nauk SSSR, 1956), 41; cited in Billington, Icon and the Axe, 86. On the importance of foreign accounts to medieval Russian history see Vasilii O. Klyuchevskii, Skazanie inostrantsev o moskovskom gosudarstve (Moscow: Universitetskoi Tipografiya Katkov i Ko., 1866); August Ludwig von Schlözer, Nestor: Ruskiia lietopisi na drevleslavenskom iazykie, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaya Tipografiya, 1816), 2:295–96.

  8. As with later visitors to Moscow, the Russian leader not only received toasts; he also doled them out. Von Herberstein recounted the grand prince’s toasts to Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, proclaiming that “you shall drain it too and all the others afterwards in token of our affectio
n for our brother Maximilian etc., and you shall tell him what you have seen.” Von Herberstein, Description of Moscow and Muscovy: 1557, 67.

  9. Ibid., 66–67.

  10. Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980–1584, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 364–69.

  11. By all accounts it was the thirteen-year-old prince Ivan himself who had the boyar Andrei Shuisky eaten alive by wild dogs. Ibid., 370; Henri Troyat, Ivan the Terrible (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984), 16.

  12. This was from the opening of the Stoglav Council of 1551. Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 16, 27. See also: J. L. I. Fennell, ed., Prince A. M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 19.

  13. Isabel de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible: First Tsar of Russia (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005), 360; Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 106.

  14. Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 16. On Ivan’s inebriate youth see James Graham, Vessels of Rage, Engines of Power: The Secret History of Alcoholism (Lexington, Va.: Aculeus, 1993), 165.

  15. Kazemir Valishevskii, Ivan Groznyi, 1530–1584 (Moscow: Obshchestvennaya pol’za, 1912), 142–43. There is much debate over the origins of the word tsar. Some suggest that it is of Tatar origins while most associate its use in the slavic languages as being derived from Caesar—laying claim to both the rank of emperor and a deep, rich imperial tradition.

  16. Sergei F. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, trans. Joseph Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International, 1974), 104; de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, 148, 361.

  17. Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 133.

  18. Fennell, Prince A. M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV and The Correspondence between Prince A. M. Kurbsky and Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, 1564–1579 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).

  19. Fennell, Prince A. M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, 163–65.

  20. Ibid., 165.

  21. Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 193.

  22. Ibid., 134.

  23. de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, 148.

  24. Fennell, Prince A. M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, 181.

  25. Ibid., 291.

  26. Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671–1725 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 38.

  27. George Backer, The Deadly Parallel: Stalin and Ivan the Terrible (New York: Random House, 1950). See in particular Alexander Yanov, The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian History, trans. Stephen Dunn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 59–60.

  28. Giles Fletcher, Of the Russe Common wealth: 1591, facsimile ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), 43–44. See also chapters 6 and 7 herein.

  29. Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 106. Indeed, from afar, Prince Kurbsky’s denunciations more frequently were addressed to Ivan’s henchmen for their nefarious influence rather than on the tsar himself. de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, 148. See for instance: Fennell, Prince A. M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, 131, 57, 65.

  30. Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 169.

  31. Graham, Vessels of Rage, 165; Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, 36, 108; Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 123–34, 220; Richard Hellie, “In Search of Ivan the Terrible,” in S. F. Platonov’s Ivan the Terrible, ed. Joseph Wieczynski (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International, 1974), xx, xxvi–xxvii; de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, 178–83; Robert Nisbet Bain, Slavonic Europe: A Political History of Poland and Russia from 1447 to 1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 121.

  32. Platonov, Ivan the Terrible, 128;. Troyat, Ivan the Terrible, 222.

  33. Graham, Ivan the Terrible, 296.

  34. Caroline Brooke, Moscow: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 15.

  35. Martin, Medieval Russia, 980–1584, 365–66.

  36. Graham, Ivan the Terrible, 314. There is some discrepancy as to the actual events of Ivan’s death: original accounts end with the calling of physicians, and “in the mean, he was strangled and stark dead.” Whether he had been physically strangled or was choking or otherwise not breathing is unclear. de Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, 352–58.

  37. Fennell, Prince A. M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, 289.

  Chapter 4

  1. Samuel Collins, The Present State of Russia, in a Letter to a Friend at London; Written by an Eminent Person Residing at the Great Czars Court at Mosco for the Space of Nine Years (London: John Winter, 1671), 63–64. On the tavern revolts of 1648 see chapter 5.

  2. Lindsey Hughes, Peter the Great: A Biography (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 12; Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 118.

  3. Joseph T. Fuhrmann, Tsar Alexis, His Reign and His Russia (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International, 1981), 195.

  4. Eugene Schuyler, Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia: A Study of Historical Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890), 14.

  5. Philip Longworth, Alexis, Tsar of All the Russias (London: Secker & Warburg, 1984), 219.

  6. Hughes, Peter the Great, 11.

  7. Early foreign travelers often referred to what we now know as vodka as brandy—the closest type of distilled spirits with which they previously were familiar. Schuyler, Peter the Great, 57.

  8. Ibid., 59.

  9. Lindsey Hughes, Sophia: Regent of Russia, 1657–1704 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), 68–69. See also ibid., 58. Schuyler, Peter the Great, 68; Lindsey Hughes, “Sophia Alekseyevna and the Moscow Rebellion of 1682,” Slavonic and East European Review 63, no. 4 (1985): 536.

  10. Hughes, Sophia, 231–37.

  11. Schuyler, Peter the Great, 325–29. Jakob von Staehlin presents anecdotes concerning the streltsy’s alcohol-fueled attempts to assassinate Tsar Peter in Original Anecdotes of Peter the Great: Collected from the Conversation of Several Persons of Distinction at Petersburgh and Moscow (London: J. Murray, 1788), 31–32.

  12. John Barrow, The Life of Peter the Great (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo & Co., 1883), 96; Dmitrii N. Borodin, Kabak i ego proshloe (St. Petersburg: Vilenchik, 1910), 45, cited in Boris Segal, Russian Drinking: Use and Abuse of Alcohol in Pre-Revolutionary Russia (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1987), 72.

  13. Literally translated as “new Transfiguration,” the residence was not located far from where the Moscow Lokomotiv soccer stadium stands today. Ernest A. Zitser, The Transfigured Kingdom: Sacred Parody and Charismatic Authority at the Court of Peter the Great (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004), 4.

  14. Philip John von Strahlenberg, An Historico-Geographical Description of the North and Eastern Parts of Europe and Asia; but More Particularly of Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary (London: J. Brotherton, J. Hazard, W. Meadows, T. Cox, T. Astley, S. Austen, L. Gilliver, and C. Corbet, 1738), 238; Paul Bushkovitch, Peter the Great: The Struggle for Power, 1671–1725 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 194. In Russian, nemetskii has the double meaning of both “German” and “foreign,” so the nemetskaya sloboda were not exclusively populated by Germans, but by foreigners of many varieties.

  15. Robert Nisbet Bain, Slavonic Europe: A Political History of Poland and Russia from 1447 to 1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 324.

 

‹ Prev