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

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by Mark Lawrence


  46. Leo Tolstoy, What Is to Be Done? and “Life” (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1899), 60 (follow on to page 64).

  47. Arguing how the state and the bourgeois class have conspired to invent “torpedoes, appliances for the use of the spirit-monopoly, and for privies.” Tolstoy complains, “but our spinning-wheel, peasant-woman’s loom, village plough, hatchet, flail, rake, and the yoke and bucket, are still the same that they were in the times of Rurik” back in the ninth century. Leo Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do? trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1925), 295–96.

  48. Henri Troyat, Tolstoy (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 378. See also Stepun, “Religious Tragedy of Tolstoy,” 162.

  49. Stepun, “Religious Tragedy of Tolstoy,” 164; Anna A. Tavis, “Authority and Its Discontents in Tolstoy and Joyce,” in Leo Tolstoy, ed. Harold Bloom (Broomall, Pa.: Chelsea House, 2003), 67.

  50. Tavis, “Authority and Its Discontents in Tolstoy and Joyce,” 66.

  51. Quoted in: Herlihy, Alcoholic Empire, 111–12.

  52. Leo Tolstoy, “Letter to A. M. Kuzminskii, November 13–15, 1896,” in Polnoe sobranie sochenenii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1954), 69:205–6; quoted in Herlihy, Alcoholic Empire, 15.

  53. Troyat, Tolstoy, 567.

  54. William Nickell, The Death of Tolstoy: Russia on the Eve, Astapovo Station, 1910 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2010), 75.

  55. Jan Kucharzewski, The Origins of Modern Russia (New York: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, 1948), 162; Julio Alvarez del Vayo, The March of Socialism (London: Cape, 1974), 114.

  56. Ivan S. Turgenev, Virgin Soil, trans. T. S. Perry (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1877), 70–71. For an updated version see the New York Review of Books Classics edition (translated by Constance Garnett), 2000, 84. Some translate it as “brandy”; others, as “drink.”

  57. Turgenev, Virgin Soil, 240.

  58. Here again I use the 1877 translation (ibid., 232–33), replacing “brandy” for “vodka,” as is consistent with later translations. Turgenev, Virgin Soil, 266 (2000 edition).

  59. Turgenev, Virgin Soil, 252.

  60. Ibid., 254–55.

  61. Ibid.

  62. Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 130.

  63. Sue Mahan and Pamala L. Griset, Terrorism in Perspective, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2009), 40–41.

  64. Philip Pomer, Lenin’s Brother: The Origins of the October Revolution (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 127–28. Also noteworthy is the extent to which revolutionaries used smuggled vodka to bribe or dope prison guards upon their arrival in Siberian exile. Helen Rappaport, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 195, 75–76.

  65. See Pomer, Lenin’s Brother; Adam B. Ulam, Prophets and Conspirators in Prerevolutionary Russia (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1998), 392–93; Peter Julicher, Renegades, Rebels and Rogues under the Tsars (Jefferson, N.C.: MacFarland & Co., 2003), 222–23.

  66. Burleigh, Earthly Powers, 280; Michael R. Katz and William G. Wagner, “Introduction: Chernyshevsky, What Is to Be Done? and the Russian Intelligentsia,” in What Is to Be Done? ed. Nikolai G. Chernyshevskii (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 32; quoted in N. Valentinov, “Chernyshevskii i Lenin,” Novyi zhurnal, no. 27 (1951): 193–94.

  67. Vladimir I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?” in Essential Works of Lenin (New York: Bantam Books, 1966). See also Lars T. Lih, Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (Leiden: E. J Brill, 2006). For Lenin on Chernyshevsky see, for instance, Vladimir I. Lenin, “‘The Peasant Reform’ and the Proletarian-Peasant Revolution,” in Collected Works, vol. 17: December 1910–April 1912 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1963), 122–24; Valentinov, “Chernyshevskii i Lenin.”

  68. Rakhmetov famously even went so far as to sleep on a bed of nails so as to better endure torture by the state. Drozd, Chernyshevskii’s What Is to Be Done?: A Reevaluation, 113–40.

  69. Vladimir I. Lenin, “Socialism and Religion,” in Collected Works, vol. 10: November 1905–June 1906 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1962), 83–84. The original appeared in Novaya zhizn’, no. 28, Dec. 3, 1905. On Lenin’s personal drinking habits see Rappaport, Conspirator, 195, 75–76; Robert Hatch McNeal, Bride of the Revolution: Krupskaya and Lenin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), 76. See also James D. Young, Socialism since 1889: A Biographical History (London: Pinter, 1988), 102. On Lenin and Krupskaya’s temperate drinking habits when hosting the more intemperate Stalin see Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 88–89.

  70. Stephen Colbert, “The Red Lending Menace,” The Colbert Report, Oct. 7, 2008, http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/187342/october-07-2008/the-red-lending-menace (accessed March 2, 2012).

  71. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin, trans. Bernard Isaacs (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 40.

  72. Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” in Collected Works, vol. 3: The Development of Capitalism in Russia (Moscow Progress Publishers, 1960), 290–91. The original appeared in Vladimir I. Lenin, Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii (St. Petersburg: Tipolitografiya A. Leiferta, 1899). For Lenin on alcohol and domestic violence see Christopher Read, Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: Routledge, 2005), 38.

  73. “Liquor Monopoly,” in Bol’shaia sovetsakaia entsiklopediia, ed. A. M. Prokhorov (New York: MacMillan, Inc., 1974), 248; citing Vladimir I. Lenin, “Duma i utverzhdenie byudzheta,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, tom 15: Fevral’-iyun’ 1907 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1961); the original appeared in Nashe ekho, no. 2, March 27, 1907.

  74. Vladimir I. Lenin, “To the Rural Poor,” in Collected Works, vol 6: January 1902–August 1903 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1961), 400–401; originally published in Vladimir I. Lenin, K derevenskoi bednote: Ob’yasnenie dlya krest’yan, chego khotyat sotsial’demokraty (Geneva: Tipografiya ligi russkoi revolyutsionnoi sotsial’demokratii, 1903).

  75. Vladimir I. Lenin, “The Serf-Owners at Work,” in Collected Works, vol. 5: May 1901–February 1902 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1961), 95; originally published in Iskra, no. 8, Sept. 10, 1901.

  76. Vladimir I. Lenin, “Casual Notes,” in Collected Works, vol. 4: 1898–April 1901 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), 407–8; originally published in Zarya no. 1, April 1901.

  77. Pravda, March 15, 1913; Vladimir I. Lenin, “Spare Cash,” in Collected Works, vol. 18: April 1912–March 1913 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1963), 601–2.

  78. Vladimir I. Lenin, “Lessons of the Moscow Uprising,” in Collected Works, vol. 11: June 1906–January 1907 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1962), 174; the original appeared in Proletary No. 2, Aug. 29, 1906.

  79. Vladimir I. Lenin, “Beat—But Not to Death!” in Collected Works, vol. 4: 1898-April 1901 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960); the original, “Bei, no ne do smerti,” was published in the inaugural edition of Zarya, April 1901. See also Lih, Lenin Rediscovered, 206.

  80. Ivan V. Strel’chuk, Alkogolizm i bor’ba s nim (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1954), 13. See also Clara Zetkin, “My Recollections of Lenin,” in On the Emancipation of Women, ed. Vladimir I. Lenin (London: Pluto, 2003), 102–3.

  Chapter 11

  1. Nikolai G. Chernyshevskii, “Otkupnaya sistema (Sovremennik, 1858),” in Izbrannye ekonomichesie proizvedeniya, tom 1 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1948), 670–72. On statecraft and European war making see Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011), 389; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990–1990 (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1990), 74. See also Aleksandr E. Levintov, “Voina i vodka v Rossii,” in: Alkogol’ v Rossii: Materialy tret’ei mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (Ivanovo, 26–27 oktyabrya 2012), ed. Mikhail V. Teplyanskii (Ivanovo: Filial
RGGU v g. Ivanovo, 2012), 12–19.

  2. Nathan Haskell Dole, Young Folks’ History of Russia (New York: Saalfield Publishing Co., 1903), 256.

  3. Sergei M. Soloviev, History of Russia, vol. 9: The Age of Vasily III (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International, 1976), 55; Dole, Young Folks’ History of Russia, 250. The establishment of the sixteenth-century Naloi (meaning “fill up”) garrison, where the emperor’s soldiers were fed beer and mead, likewise bears mention. See Freiherr Sigmund von Herberstein, Description of Moscow and Muscovy: 1557 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1969), 20.

  4. This observation draws from Bruno S. Frey and Heinz Buhofer, “Prisoners and Property Rights,” Journal of Law and Economics 31, no. 1 (1988).

  5. Margaret Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42.

  6. Georg Brandes, Impressions of Russia, trans. Samuel C. Eastman (Boston: C. J. Peters & Son, 1889), 210–11. Little wonder that mercenary desertion was high. William C. Fuller Jr., “The Imperial Army,” in The Cambridge History of Russia, vol. 2: Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, ed. Dominic Lieven (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 532–33.

  7. Isser Woloch, “Napoleonic Conscription: State Power and Civil Society,” Past & Present 111 (1986).

  8. Fuller, “Imperial Army,” 537.

  9. Ibid., 533; George Snow, “Alcoholism in the Russian Military: The Public Sphere and the Temperance Discourse, 1883–1917,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 45, no. 3 (1997): 419–21.

  10. Richard A. Gabriel, The New Red Legions: An Attitudinal Portrait of the Soviet Soldier (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1980), 153.

  11. Hannibal Evans Lloyd, Alexander I: Emperor of Russia; or, a Sketch of His Life, and of the Most Important Events of His Reign (London: Treuttel & Würtz, 1826), 91, 95.

  12. P. S. White and H. R. Pleasants, The War of Four Thousand Years (Philadelphia: Griffith & Simon, 1846), 183.

  13. Aleksandr Nikishin and Petr Nechitailov, Vodka i Napoleon (Moscow: Dom russkoi vodki, 2008); Owen Connelly, Blundering to Glory: Napoleon’s Military Campaigns (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 172.

  14. Consider Tolstoy’s description in War and Peace, trans. Nathan Haskell Dole, 4 vols. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1889), 3:382.

  15. Adam Zamoyski, Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 300; Mary Platt Parmele, A Short History of Russia (Flint, Mich: Bay View Reading Circle, 1899), 182; Alfred Rambaud, Russia, 2 vols. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1902), 2:186; Walter K. Kelly, History of Russia, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, 2 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 1:185–86.

  16. August Fournier, Napoleon I: A Biography, 2 vols. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1911), 207–8. Petrovsky Palace is today located on Leningradskoe shosse, near Dinamo Stadium and the Khodynka Fields.

  17. Napoleon Bonaparte, Memoirs of the History of France during the Reign of Napoleon: Historical Miscellanies, vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn & Co., 1823), 101.

  18. Tolstoy, War and Peace, 383. Tolstoy was suspicious of arson conspiracies since an unintentional ignition was also likely given the circumstances.

  19. Fournier, Napoleon I: A Biography, 207–8. See also Zamoyski, Moscow 1812, 302. See also Letter of the Abbe Surrugues, curate of the parish of St. Louis in Moscow, quoted in Gaspard(?) Gourgaud, Napoleon and the Grand Army in Russia; or a Critical Examination of Count Philip De Segur’s Work (Philadelphia: Anthony Finley, 1825), 169.

  20. Quoted in Zamoyski, Moscow 1812, 302. Similarly, see C. Joyneville, Life and Times of Alexander I: Emperor of All the Russias, 3 vols. (London: Tinsley Brothers), 2:199.

  21. Eugène Labaume, Relation complète de la campagne de Russie, en 1812, 5th ed. (Paris: Rey et Gravier, 1816), 226–27; Louis Florimond Fantin des Odoards, Journal du général Fantin des Odoards (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1895), 337.

  22. Labaume, Relation complète de la campagne de Russie, en 1812, 240–42; Gourgaud, Napoleon and the Grand Army in Russia, 273, 313–14, 29; “The French Retreat from Moscow,” The Living Age 95, no. 7 (1867): 475.

  23. Gourgaud, Napoleon and the Grand Army in Russia, 160–61.

  24. Fournier, Napoleon I: A Biography, 209.

  25. Stephan Talty, The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon’s Greatest Army (New York: Three Rivers, 2009), 67–69.

  26. Joyneville, Life and Times of Alexander I, 233–34.

  27. J. M. Buckley, The Midnight Sun, the Tsar and the Nihilist (Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1886), 215–16.

  28. Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and Other Religious Writings (New York: Penguin Classics, 1987), 23; cited in Patricia Herlihy, The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 61.

  29. A. N. Wilson, Tolstoy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 117.

  30. Robert A. Hodasevich, A Voice from within the Walls of Sebastopol: A Narrative of the Campaign in the Crimea, and of the Events of the Siege (London: John Murray, 1856), 57. On Menshikov and his ladies see Orlando Figes, The Crimean War: A History (New York: Macmillan, 2011), 206.

  31. Hodasevich, Voice from within the Walls of Sebastopol, 57; Robert B. Edgerton, Death or Glory: The Legacy of the Crimean War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1999), 60. The charka was officially 1/100 of a vedro (bucket) or about 3.3 ounces. See also Dominic Lieven, Russia against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace (New York: Penguin, 2010), note 11.

  32. Hodasevich, Voice from within the Walls of Sebastopol, 57.

  33. Ibid., 86, 90.

  34. Edgerton, Death or Glory, 84–85; Figes, Crimean War, 210, 16.

  35. Figes, Crimean War, 218.

  36. Edgerton, Death or Glory, 86.

  37. William Simpson, “Within Sebastopol during the Siege,” The English Illustrated Magazine, vol. 17 (April to September 1897): 302; Hodasevich, Voice from within the Walls of Sebastopol, 2. For vodka and corruption as an epidemic problem in the tsarist military see John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Army under Nicholas I: 1825–1855 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1965), 194, 212–27.

  38. Hodasevich, Voice from within the Walls of Sebastopol, 98–99; Figes, Crimean War, 234.

  39. Hodasevich, Voice from within the Walls of Sebastopol, 99.

  40. Ibid., 239, also 122, 184; Figes, Crimean War, 255; Edgerton, Death or Glory, 236; Leo Tolstoy, Sebastopol, trans. Frank D. Millet (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887), 58–66, 191–97. On foreign perceptions see Lady Frances Verney, “Rural Life in Russia,” in Russia as Seen and Described by Famous Writers, ed. Esther Singleton (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1906), 247.

  41. Robert H. G. Thomas, The Russian Army of the Crimean War, 1854–56 (Oxford: Osprey, 1991), 3.

  42. Henry Tyrrell, The History of the War with Russia: Giving Full Details of the Operations of the Allied Armies, 2 vols. (London: London Printing & Publishing Co., 1855), 2:197–98. On the drinking of the French and British see also Figes, Crimean War, 181, 396; Edgerton, Death or Glory, 227–28, 236–277.

  43. Tyrrell, History of the War with Russia, 198.

  44. Herlihy, Alcoholic Empire, 57. See also William Steveni, The Russian Army from Within (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1914), 44–45.

 

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