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

by Mark Lawrence

  36. Steinberg and Khrustalëv, Fall of the Romanovs, 6–8; Anna Viroubova, Memories of the Russian Court (London: Macmillan, 1923), 127.

  37. GARF, f. 601 (Imperator Nikolai II), op. 1, d. 991, l.1–2. See also Johnson, Liquor Problem in Russia, 194; Stephen P. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 296. See also A. S. Rappoport, Home Life in Russia (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 94; Ernest Barron Gordon, Russian Prohibition (Westerville, Ohio: American Issue, 1916), 41, 56; George Thomas Marye, Nearing the End in Imperial Russia (Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co., 1929), 38.

  38. Denis Garstin, Friendly Russia (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1915), 215–16.

  39. GARF, f. 671 (v. kn. Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov—mladschii), op. 1, d. 47, 1.1 On policy influence of noble alcohol interests see Walter G. Moss, A History of Russia, vol. 1: To 1917 (Boston: McGraw Hill, 1997), 300–302. On entrenched financial interests preventing radical change see Dmitrii N. Borodin, “Vinnaya monopoliya,” Trudy kommissii po voprosu ob alkogolizm: Zhurnaly zasedanii i doklady III (1899): 173; Mikhail N. Nizhegorodtsev, “Alkogolizm i bor’ba s nim,” Zhurnal russkago obshchestva okhraneniya narodnago zdraviya 8 (1909) Bernard Pares, Russia and Reform (London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1907), 146–48, 420–23; M. Bogolepoff, “Public Finance,” in Russia: Its Trade and Commerce, ed. Arthur Raffalovich (London: P. S. King & Son, 1918), 27; Alexis Raffalovich, “Some Effects of the War on the Economic Life of Russia,” Economic Journal 27, no. 105 (1917): 105. On drinking in elite restaurants see Rowland Smith, “Despatch from His Majesty’s Ambassador at Petrograd, Enclosing a Memorandum on the Subject of the Temperance Measures Adopted in Russia since the Outbreak of the European War,” in House of Commons: Accounts and Papers, 1914–1916 (London: Harrison & Sons, 1915), 154–55.

  40. Bark, “Memoirs,” chap. 10, pp. 29–30.

  41. Murray, Drink and the War from the Patriotic Point of View, 16–17. See also Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” 146–52; John Newton, Alcohol and the War: The Example of Russia (London: Richard J. James, 1915), 10–11.

  42. Russkoe slovo (Moscow), Oct. 7, 1914; reprinted in Johnson, Liquor Problem in Russia, 200. The same wording is found in the report of the tsar’s council of ministers of the following day, September 13 (old style)/September 29, 1914 (new style): “No. 137. Osobyi zhurnal soveta ministrov. 13 sentyabrya 1914 goda: Ob usloviyakh svedeniya gosudarstvennoi rospisi dokhodov i raskhodov na 1915 god”; in Osobye zhurnaly Soveta Ministrov Rossiiskoi Imperii. 1909–1917 gg./1914 god, (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006), 364. See also W. Arthur McKee, “Sukhoi zakon v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny: Prichiny, kontseptsiya i posledstviya vvedeniya sukhogo zakona v Rossii: 1914–1917 gg.,” in Rossiya i pervaya mirovaya voina (Materialy mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo kollokviuma) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo ‘Dmitrii Bulanin’, 1999), 152–53.

  43. Zaionchkovskii, Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie, 52.

  44. From the text of a letter, written in English, dated Nov. 20, 1883, a young Tsarevich Nicholas refers to Konstantin as “dearest uncle Costy”; otherwise he refers to him as Kostya in correspondence. GARF, f. 660 (V. Kn. Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov), op. 2, d. 195, l.1.

  45. See Konstantin’s letters to the tsar on behalf of the VTSKhT: GARF, f. 601 (Imperator Nikolai II), op. 1, d. 1268, l.179–180, 184. See also GARF, f. 579 (Pavel N. Milyukov), op. 1, d. 2571, l.1–4; Herlihy, Alcoholic Empire, 120.

  46. Johnson, Liquor Problem in Russia, 166–67.

  47. Charlotte Zeepvat, The Camera and the Tsars: The Romanov Family in Photographs (Stroud, U.K.: Sutton, 2004); GARF, f. 660, op. 1, d. 65.

  48. John Curtis Perry and Konstantin Pleshakov, The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 124.

  49. Nicholas II Romanov, Dnevniki imperatora Nikolaya II (Moscow: Orbita, 1991), 489; Letter from Konstantin Konstantinovich to Tsar Nicholas II: GARF, f. 601 (Imperator Nikolai II), op. 1, d. 1268, l.182–183.

  50. GARF, f. 601, op. 1, d. 262, l.22–26. See also Almedingen, Unbroken Unity, 87.

  51. Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 779–80. Given the proximity, time, and similarity of execution, it is widely thought that the murderers in both instances were the same. See Great Britain Foreign Office, A Collection of Reports on Bolshevism in Russia (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1919), 26.

  Chapter 13

  1. Based on archival materials: f. 6996 (Ministerstvo Finansov Vremennogo Pravitel’stva), op. 1, d. 345, l.28, Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (GARF) (State archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow.

  2. Bark’s authoritative accounts are reprinted in Ernest Barron Gordon, Russian Prohibition (Westerville, Ohio: American Issue, 1916), 11; William Johnson, The Liquor Problem in Russia (Westerville, Ohio: American Issue, 1915), 213, as well as throughout Anglo-American temperance periodicals.

  3. John Newton, Alcohol and the War: The Example of Russia (London: Richard J. James, 1915), 5.

  4. Alfred Knox, With the Russian Army, 1914–1917, 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1921), 1:39.

  5. Peter L. Bark, “Memoirs,” Sir Peter Bark Papers, Leeds Russian Archive, Special Collections, Leeds University Library (n/d), chap. 9, p. 21.

  6. Letter from General Alexei Andreevich Polivanov to William E. Johnson, September 26, 1915, William E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson papers, Special Collections #180, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown.

  7. GARF, f. 102, (Departament politsii, 4-oe deloproizvodstvo), op. 1914, d. 138, “Obezporyadkakh zapisnykh nishnikh chinov prizvannykh na voinu,” l.24–120. Similarly see V. L. Telitsyn, “Pervaya mirovaya i pervach,” in Veselie Rusi, XX vek: Gradus noveishei rossiiskoi istorii ot “p’yanogo byudzheta” do “sukhogo zakona,” ed. Vladislav B. Aksenov (Moscow: Probel-2000, 2007), 122–27.

  8. GARF, f. 102, op. 1914, d. 138, l.35–38.

  9. GARF, f. 102, op. 1914, d. 138, l.100–105. Joshua Sanborn finds similar coverage in the Russian State Historical Archives (RGIA), f. 1292, op. 1, d. 1729; cited in Joshua A. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 31.

  10. Joshua A. Sanborn, “The Mobilization of 1914 and the Question of the Russian Nation: A Reexamination,” Slavic Review 59, no. 2 (2000): 277.

  11. GARF, f. 102, op. 1914, d. 138, l.116.

  12. Quoted in Marc Ferro, Nicholas II: Last of the Tsars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 71.

  13. Sanborn, Drafting the Russian Nation, 30–32, 214; Vladimir I. Gurko, Features and Figures of the Past: Government and Opinion in the Reign of Nicholas II, trans. Laura Matveev (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1939), 537.

  14. Francis B. Reeves, Russia Then and Now: 1892–1917 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1917), 110.

  15. GARF, f. 579, op. 1, d. 2598, l. 1; GARF, f. 579, op. 1, d. 2549, l.1–2. See also Stephen P. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 296; A. S. Rappoport, Home Life in Russia (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 94.

  16. Bark, “Memoirs,” chap. 10, pp. 1–2, 8–16; Sergei G. Belyaev, P.L. Bark i finansovaya politika Rossii, 1914–1917 gg. (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo S.-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 2002), 162–64. See also Alexander M. Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” in Russian Public Finance during the War, ed. Alexander M. Michelson, Paul Apostol, and Michael Bernatzky (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1928), 146–52.

  17. Bark, “Memoirs,” chap. 10, pp. 16, 21–22.

  18. See, for instance, the report of A. Shingarev of the Finance Ministry on “War, Temperance and Finances” in GARF, f. 579, op. 1, d. 2547, 1.1.

  19. Mikhail P. Ironshnikov, Lyudmila A. Protsai, and Yuri B. Shelayev, The Sunset of the Romanov Dynasty (Moscow: Terra, 1992), 192; Bernard Pares, The Fall of the Russian Monarchy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939), 459–71; Tsuyoshi
Hasegawa, The February Revolution: Petrograd, 1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 503–7.

  20. Of the voluminous theoretical literature on revolutions see Jack Goldstone, “Toward a Fourth Generation of Revolutionary Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001); Eric Selbin, “Revolution in the Real World: Bringing Agency Back In,” in Theorizing Revolutions, ed. John Foran (London: Routledge, 1997); Theda Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

  21. See, for instance, Arthur Mendel, “On Interpreting the Fate of Imperial Russia,” in Russia under the Last Tsar, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969); Mark von Hagen, “The Russian Empire,” in After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building, ed. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997).

  22. Kate Transchel, Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 70.

  23. GARF, f. 601, (Imperator Nikolai II), op. 1, d. 991, l.1–2. On the flood of media support for prohibition see Gordon, Russian Prohibition, 41; Robert Hercod, La prohibition de l’alcool en Russie (Westerville, Ohio: American Issue, 1919), 5.

  24. D. N. Voronov, O samogone (Moscow, 1929), 6; cited in Transchel, Under the Influence, 70. On moonshine, surrogates, and poisonings see: GARF, f. 1779, op. 1, d. 716, l. 1b, 41; Andrei M. Anfimov, Rossiiskaia derevnia v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny: 1914–fevral’ 1917 G. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo sotsial’no-ekonomicheskoi literatury, 1962), 243; V. Bekhterev, “Russia without Vodka,” in The Soul of Russia, ed. Winifred Stephens (London: Macmillan, 1916), 273; Ol’ga A. Chagadaeva, “‘Sukhoi zakon’ v rossiiskoi imperii v gody pervoid mirovoi voiny (po materialam Moskvy i Petrograda),” in: Alkogol’ v Rossii: Materialy vtoroi mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (Ivanovo, 28–29 oktyabrya 2011), ed. Nikolai V. Dem’yanenko (Ivanovo: Filial RGGU vg. Ivanovo, 2011), 83–4; David Christian, “Prohibition in Russia 1914–1925,” Australian Slavonic and East European Studies 9, no. 2 (1995): 102; Mikhail Friedman, “The Drink Question in Russia,” in Russia: Its Trade and Commerce, ed. Arthur Raffalovich (London: P. S. King & Son, 1918), 439, 47; Hasegawa, February Revolution, 201.

  25. Doreen Stanford, Siberian Odyssey (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964), 31.

  26. J. Y. Simpson, The Self-Discovery of Russia (London: Constable & Co., 1916), 84.

  27. Dmitry Shlapentokh, “Drunkenness in the Context of Political Culture: The Case of Russian Revolutions,” International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 14, no. 8 (1994): 38. See also Dmitry Shlapentokh, “Drunkenness and Anarchy in Russia: A Case of Political Culture,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 18, no. 4 (1991): 477.

  28. Shlapentokh, “Drunkenness and Anarchy in Russia,” 483. Ironically, in a battle with the Prussians in 1758, Russian forces allegedly lost a battle after drinking a large alcohol supply, leading to the capture of some twenty thousand soldiers. Boris Segal, Russian Drinking: Use and Abuse of Alcohol in Pre-Revolutionary Russia (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1987), 75.

  29. Dmitri P. Os’kin, Zapiski soldata (Moscow: Federatsiya, 1929), 274–76. See also Karen Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 101. More generally see “Soldatskie pis’ma v gody mirovoi voiny, s predisloviem O. Chaadaevoi,” Krasnyi arkhiv 4–5, no. 65–66 (1934): 118–63.

  30. Emile Vandervelde, Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1918), 131–32.

  31. GARF, f. 1779, op. 1, d. 705, l. 5; GARF, f. 1779, op. 2, d. 299, l.1–7; GARF, f. 6996 (Ministerstvo Finansov Vremennogo Pravitelistva, 1917), op. 1, d. 293, l.5, 6, 17, 28, 33–38; GARF, f. 6996, op. 1, d. 296, l.17; GARF, f. 6996, op. 1, d. 299, l.5; GARF, f. 6996, op. 1, d. 300, l.1–244

  32. Shlapentokh, “Drunkenness and Anarchy in Russia,” 482.

  33. The Russian Diary of an Englishman: Petrograd, 1915–1917 (New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1919), 15.

  34. W. Arthur McKee, “Taming the Green Serpent: Alcoholism, Autocracy, and Russian Society, 1881–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1997), 534.

  35. Allan Wildman, “The February Revolution in the Russian Army,” Soviet Studies 22, no. 1 (1970).

  36. GARF, f. 579 (Milyukov, Pavel Nikolaevich), op. 1, d. 2547 (Tezisy k dokladu A. I. Shingareva “Voina, trezvost’ i finansy”), l.1; for an English translation see Michael T. Florinsky, The End of the Russian Empire (New York: Collier Books, 1961), 44.

  37. W. Arthur McKee, “Sukhoi zakon v gody pervoi mirovoi voiny: Prichiny, kontseptsiya i posled-stviya vvedeniya sukhogo zakona v Rossii: 1914–1917 gg.,” in Rossiya i pervaya mirovaya voina (Materialy mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo kollokviuma) (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo ‘Dmitrii Bulanin’, 1999), 149; M. Bogolepoff, “Public Finance,” in Russia: Its Trade and Commerce, ed. Arthur Raffalovich (London: P. S. King & Son, 1918), 346; Olga Crisp, Studies in the Russian Economy before 1914 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1976), 27; Alexis Raffalovich, “Some Effects of the War on the Economic Life of Russia,” Economic Journal 27, no. 105 (1917). On the decrease in revenues see Alexander M. Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” in Russian Public Finance during the War, ed. Alexander M. Michelson, Paul Apostol, and Michael Bernatzky (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1928), 45; R. W. Davies, Development of the Soviet Budgetary System (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 65.

  38. Transchel, Under the Influence, 72. On contemporary alarms see Sergei N. Prokopovich, Voina i narodnoe khozyaistvo, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Tipografiya N.A. Sazonovoi, 1918), 115.

  39. GARF, f. 579 (Milyukov, Pavel Nikolaevich), op. 1, d. 2547 (Tezisy k dokladu A. I. Shingareva “Voina, trezvost’ i finansy”), 1.1

  40. See, for instance, Boris Bakhmeteff, “War and Finance in Russia,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 75 (1918): 192–98. On Bark’s (and Witte’s) public pronouncements belittling the financial impact of prohibition, see Marr Murray, Drink and the War from the Patriotic Point of View (London: Chapman & Hall, 1915), 16–17; Newton, Alcohol and the War, 10–11; Arthur Sherwell, The Russian Vodka Monopoly (London: S. King & Son, 1915), 7. On the continued faith in the solvency of the imperial treasury despite all evidence to the contrary see Peter L. Bark, “Doklad P. L. Barka Nikolayu II o rospisi dokhodov i raskhodov na 1917 god, s predisloviem B. A. Romanova,” Krasnyi arkhiv 26, no. 4 (1926); Bogolepoff, “Public Finance,” 348; Friedman, “The Drink Question in Russia,” 449; Stephen Graham, Russia in 1916 (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 120–25; D. N. Voronov, Zhizn’ derevni v dni trezvosti (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaya tipografiya, 1916). Some have cited the so-called accounting effect (bukhgalterskii effekt), whereby war expenditures were kept separate from the normal operating budget, as the root of the financial problem. “Finansovoe polozhenie Rossii pered oktyabr’skoi revolutsiei, s predisloviem B. A. Romanova,” Krasnyi arkhiv 25, no. 6 (1927): 4–5.

  41. Quoted in: Vladimir N. Kokovtsov, Out of My Past: The Memoirs of Count Kokovtsov, trans. Laura Matveev (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1935), 473.

  42. Bark, “Memoirs,” chap. 10, pp. 29–30.

  43. Aleksandr P. Pogrebinskii, Ocherki istorii finanasov dorevolyutsionnoi Rossii (XIX–XX vv.) (Moscow: Gosfinizdat, 1954), 126–28.

  44. Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” 35.

  45. See, for instance, GARF, f. 1779, op. 1, d. 705, l.5.

  46. On the Bukhov case see GARF, f. 6996, op. 1, d. 345, l.8, 28. For additional cases from Voronezh, Ekaterinoslav, Tomsk, and other gubernii see GARF, f. 6996, op. 1, d. 345, l.9–21 and 39–46.

  47. Anton M. Bol’shakov, Derevnya, 1917–1927 (Moscow: Rabotnik prosveshcheniya, 1927), 338.