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

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by Mark Lawrence


  34. Ed A. Hewett, “Perestroyka and the Congress of People’s Deputies,” in Milestones in Glasnost and Perestroyka, vol. 1: The Economy, ed. Ed A. Hewett and Victor H. Winston (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991), 318.

  35. Daniel Tarschys, “The Success of a Failure: Gorbachev’s Alcohol Policy, 1985–88,” Europe-Asia Studies 45, no. 1 (1993): 10. On budget estimates see Treml, “Drinking and Alcohol Abuse in the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s,” 131; Ofer, “Budget Deficit and Market Disequilibrium,” 280, 86, 306; Basile Kerblay, Gorbachev’s Russia (New York: Pantheon, 1989), 107.

  36. Gorbachev, Memoirs, 221.

  37. Krokodil No. 15 (1988); reproduced in White, Russia Goes Dry, 123; Nikolai Ryzhkov, Perestroika: Istoriya predatel’stv (Moscow: Novosti, 1992), 95. On the upsurge in homebrew see Marshall I. Goldman, What Went Wrong with Perestroika? (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 138; James H. Noren, “The Economic Crisis: Another Perspective,” in Milestones in Glasnost and Perestroyka, vol. 1: The Economy, ed. Ed A. Hewett and Victor H. Winston (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991), 379; Gertrude E. Schroeder, “‘Crisis’ in the Consumer Sector: A Comment,” in Milestones in Glasnost and Perestroyka, vol. 1: The Economy, ed. Ed A. Hewett and Victor H. Winston (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1991), 410.

  38. Cited in Vladimir Treml, “Alcohol in the Soviet Underground Economy,” Berkeley–Duke Occasional Papers on the Second Economy in the USSR No. 5 (1985): 12.

  39. Abel Aganbegyan, “Economic Reforms,” in Perestroika 1989, ed. Abel Aganbegyan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), 102. Similarly see Lev Ovrutsky, “Impasses of Sobering Up,” in Gorbachev & Glasnost’: Viewpoints from the Soviet Press, ed. Isaac J. Tarasulo (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1989), 201.

  40. Quoted in Arnold Beichman and Mikhail S. Bernstam, Andropov: New Challenge to the West (New York: Stein & Day, 1983), 3.

  41. Igor’ Urakov, Alkogol’: Lichnost‘ i zdorov’e (Moscow: Medistina, 1986), 7; Igor’ Bestuzhev-Lada, “Piteinye traditsii i ‘alkgol’nye tsivilizatsii’,” in Bezdna: P’yanstvo, narkomaniya, SPID, ed. Sergei Artyukhov (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1988), 25; “Veni, Vidi, Vodka,” 52; Dunaevskii and Styazhkin, Narkomanii i toksikomanii, 99–103.

  42. John Barron, Mig Pilot (New York: McGraw Hill, 1980), 97; Nomi Morris, “War on Soviet Alcoholism,” MacLean’s, Jan. 19, 1987, 48; Erofeev, Russkii apokalipsis, 13–14. On drug use see A. Mostovoi, “Kogda zatsvetaet mak…” Komsomol’skaya pravda, June 8, 1986, 2; E. Borodina, “Vovremya ostanovit’sya,” Moskovskaya pravda, June 12, 1986. See also John M. Kramer, “Drug Abuse in the USSR,” in Social Change and Social Issues in the Former USSR, ed. Walter Joyce (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 61.

  43. Erofeev, Russkii apokalipsis, 14. See also Gorbachev, Memoirs, 222.

  44. Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del SSSR, Prestupnost’ i pravonarusheniya 1990: Statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow: Finansy i statistika, 1991), 15. See also Vladimir Volkov, “Mnogolikoe chudovishche,” in Bezdna: P’yanstvo, narkomaniya, SPID, ed. Sergei Artyukhov (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1988), 62.

  45. Nikolai Shmelev, “Novye trevogi,” Novyi mir 4 (1988), 162–163; translated in Tarschys, “Success of a Failure,” 21; On Aganbegyan’s estimate see Aganbegyan, “Economic Reforms,” 102. See also György Dalos, Lebt wohl, Genossen! Der Untergang des sowjetischen Imperiums (Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2011), 58–59.

  46. Ruslan Khasbulatov, The Struggle for Russia: Power and Change in the Democratic Revolution (London: Routledge, 1993), 116.

  47. Segal, Drunken Society, xxi.

  48. Erofeev, Russkii apokalipsis, 15; Jane I. Dawson, Eco-Nationalism: Anti-Nuclear Activism and National Identity in Russia, Lithuania, and Ukraine (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996), 3–8; Zaslavsky, “Soviet Union,” 84–91; Aleksandr Nikishin, Vodka i Gorbachev (Moscow Vsya Rossiya, 2007), 213–14.

  49. Cited in Thomas de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War (New York: NYU Press, 2004), 17.

  50. Erofeev, Russkii Apokalipsis, 13; Aleksandr Konobov, “Vnosyatsya korrektivy,” Trud, Oct. 6, 1988, 2. Jeffrey Lamont, “Perestroika, Monopoly, Monoposony, and the Marketing of Moldovan Wine,” International Journal of Wine Making 5, nos. 2–3 (1993): 49. See also V. Vasilets, “Tsekh menyaet profil’,” Pravda, Aug. 1, 1985, 3; Aron, Yeltsin, 179; Pavel Palazchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of a Soviet Interpreter (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 29.

  51. Richard E. Ericson, “Soviet Economic Structure and the National Question,” in The Post-Soviet Nations: Perspectives on the Demise of the USSR, ed. Alexander J. Motyl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 260.

  52. Gorbachev, Memoirs, 221–22. Likewise see Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Fatal Half-Measures: The Culture of Democracy in the Soviet Union, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Little, Brown, 1991), 131–34.

  53. Paul Kengor, “Predicting the Soviet Collapse,” National Review Online, July 14, 2011, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/271828 (accessed Aug. 17, 2011).

  54. The original memo, “Why Is the World So Dangerous?,” from Herbert E. Meyer to the director of central intelligence, Nov. 30, 1983, can be found at http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000028820/DOC_0000028820.pdf (accessed Aug. 30, 2011).

  55. Ibid..

  56. Personal correspondence, Aug. 19, 2011.

  Chapter 19

  1. Lilia Shevtsova, Russia—Lost in Transition: The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007), 1, 5; Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 284–85, 293.

  2. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 632; Jonathan Steele, “Gennady Yanayev Obituary,” The Gaurdian, Sept. 26, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/26/gennady-yanayev-obituary-communist-gorbachev (accessed Oct. 11, 2011); Jerrold M. Post and Robert S. Robins, When Illness Strikes the Leader: The Dilemma of the Captive King (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 74; Dmitrii Yazov, “Interrogation of Defense Minister Dmitrii Yazov on August 22, 1991,” in Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August 1991 Coup, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell, Ann Cooper, and Gregory Freidin (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 58–59.

  3. Yazov, “Interrogation of Defense Minister Dmitrii Yazov on August 22, 1991,” 62; Gorbachev, Memoirs, 632; Nikolai Vorontsov, “Between Russia and the Soviet Union—With Notes on the USSR Council of Ministers Meeting of August 19, 1991,” in Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August 1991 Coup, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell, Ann Cooper, and Gregory Freidin (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 194. For Pavlov’s account see Valentin Pavlov, “Interrogation of Soviet Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, August 30, 1991,” in Russia at the Barricades, 64–65.

  4. Jonathan Aitken, Nazarbayev and the Making of Kazakhstan (New York: Continuum, 2009), 94–95; Aleksandr Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin: Ot rassveta do zakata (Moscow: Interbuk, 1997), 80–82.

  5. Aitken, Nazarbayev and the Making of Kazakhstan, 97–98.

  6. Aleksandr Lebedd’, Zaderzhavuobidno… (Krasnoyarsk: Chest’ i Rodina, 2004), 415. Curiously, this paragraph is completely omitted from the English translation: Alexander Lebed, My Life and My Country (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1997), 293. See also Conor O’Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991: The Last Day of the Soviet Union (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), 144; Daniel Treisman, The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 35–36.

  7. William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 358.

  8. Donald J. Raleigh, “A View from Saratov,” in Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August 1991 Coup, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell, Ann Cooper, and Gregory Freidin (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 136–37. On the general sobriety of the resistance see: Lauren G. Leighton, “Moscow: The Morning of August 21, 107, and Iain Elliot,
“Three Days in August: On-the-Spot Impressions,” 291, both in Russia at the Barricades: Eyewitness Accounts of the August 1991 Coup, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell, Ann Cooper, and Gregory Freidin (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1994). On the press conference see “The Press Conference of the State Committee for the State of Emergency, August 19, 1991,” in Russia at the Barricades, 49–50.

  9. Peter Vincent Pry, War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1999), 79–80; Post and Robins, When Illness Strikes, 74.

  10. Yazov, “Interrogation,” 61.

  11. David Remnick, Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia (New York: Random House, 1997), 27.

  12. Ibid., 3–4.

  13. Leon Aron, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 7–8; Timothy J. Colton, Yeltsin: A Life (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 35, 551 n. 69.

  14. Aron, Yeltsin, 112–13.

  15. Viktor Manyukhin, Pryzhok nazad: O El’tsine i o drugikh (Ekaterinburg: Pakrus, 2002), 177.

  16. Colton, Yeltsin, 88–89.

  17. Ibid., 117–18.

  18. Dimitri K. Simes, After the Collapse: Russia Seeks Its Place as a Great Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 51.

  19. Ibid., 51–52.

  20. Colton, Yeltsin, 310.

  21. Ibid., 310–13. Yuri M. Baturin et al., Epokha El’tsina: Ocherki politicheskoi istorii (Moscow: Vagrius, 2001), 515; Aleksandr Nikishin, Vodka i Gorbachev (Moscow Vsya Rossiya, 2007), 235; Remnick, Resurrection, 277, 328.

  22. See chapter 21, Aleksandr Nemtsov, “Tendentsii potrebleniya alkogolya i obuslovlennye alkogolem poteri zdorov’ya i zhizni v Rossii v 1946–1996 gg.,” in Alkogol‘ i zdorov’e naseleniya Rossii: 1900–2000, ed. Andrei K. Demin (Moscow: Rossiiskaya assotsiatsiya obshchestvennogo zdorov’ya, 1998), 101–5.

  23. Celestine Bohlen, “Yeltsin Deputy Calls Reforms ‘Economic Genocide’,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/09/world/yeltsin-deputy-calls-reforms-economic-genocide.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (accessed Oct. 21, 2011).

  24. Remnick, Resurrection, 52–53. See also Stephen White, Understanding Russian Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 107.

  25. Remnick, Resurrection, 49, 58–59; also 244.

  26. Colton, Yeltsin, 311.

  27. Remnick, Resurrection, 58–59.

  28. Donald Murray, A Democracy of Despots (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), 177. That tea was meant as a signal that he was not drunk was made explicit by CNN and the international press. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioXt3RT5ueA (accessed Feb. 17, 2009).

  29. Remnick, Resurrection, 64.

  30. Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski, The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), 426.

  31. Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin, 195–98. For a counterpoint see Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 76–77.

  32. Baturin et al., Epokha El’tsina, 515.

  33. Colton, Yeltsin, 311; Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin, 217–18.

  34. Baturin et al., Epokha El’tsina, 521.

  35. Ibid., 522–24.

  36. Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2002), 46.

  37. Ibid., 45–47; Colton, Yeltsin, 310.

  38. George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000), 139–40; Colton, Yeltsin, 310–11.

  39. Simes, After the Collapse, 104.

  40. James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 141; Talbott, Russia Hand, 89, 185. Thomas Friedman went further, opining in the April 16, 1999, edition of the New York Times that “even a half-dead, stone-cold-drunk Boris Yeltsin is still an enormous asset for the U.S.” See Boris Kagarlitsky, Russia under Yeltsin and Putin: Neo-Liberal Autocracy (New York: Pluto, 2002), 226.

  41. Taylor Branch, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 198. Branch mistakenly attributed the year of the visit to 1995, an error the Russian press has used to discredit the entire account. “Bill Clinton and His Tapes: Lies, Lies, Lies,” Pravda, Oct. 2 2009, http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/02–10-2009/109635-bill_clinton-0 (accessed Nov. 11, 2011). Clinton advisor Strobe Talbott confirmed a slightly different take of the pizza event but dated it more precisely at September 26–27, 1994. Talbott, Russia Hand, 135.

  42. Nikolai Kozyrev, “The President Failed to Show…” International Affairs 53, no. 4 (2007): 169. Ambassador Kozyrev is no relation to Andrei Kozyrev, then Yeltsin’s minister of foreign affairs.

  43. Ibid.: 170–71.

  44. Ibid.: 169–71; Korzhakov, Boris El’tsin: Ot rassveta do zakata, 204–5; Mark Franchetti, “The Sober Truth behind Boris Yeltsin’s Drinking Problem,” Sunday Times March 7, 2010, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7052415.ece (accessed March 8, 2010); Colton, Yeltsin, 315, 552–53 n. 93; Aron, Yeltsin, 578. See also “Reynolds Tells of Yeltsin’s Favours after Shannon Snub,” Breakingnews.ie, April 23, 2007, http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/reynolds-tells-of-yeltsins-favours-after-shannon-snub-307635.html (accessed Nov. 11, 2011); Remnick, Resurrection, 250; also 328, 33–34.

  45. Lipetskaya gazeta, March 2, 1995, 2; quoted in White, Understanding Russian Politics, 108. On media reception see Kozyrev, “President Failed to Show…,” 171.

  46. Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 86.

  47. Georgie Anne Geyer, Predicting the Unthinkable, Anticipating the Impossible: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to America in the New Century (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2011), 230–31.

  48. Andrew Higgins, “Grozny Rebels Braced for Final Assault,” The Independent, Jan. 13, 1995; Charles King, The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 235; O’Clery, Moscow, December 25, 1991, 282–83.

  49. Emma Gilligan, Terror in Chechnya: Russia and the Tragedy of Civilians in War (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009), esp. 26–27.

  50. Lieven, Chechnya, 50.

  51. O. P. Orlov and Aleksandr Cherkasov, Rossiya—Chechnya: Tsep’ oshibok i prestuplenii (Moscow: Zven’ia, 1998); an English translation was published as “Russia and Chechnya: A Chain of Errors and Crimes,” Russian Studies in History 41, no. 2 (2002): 88–89. The commander was apparently incorrect—marine depth charges were not used; instead, concrete-piercing, high-explosive bombs that had the same effect. See also Iu. Kazakov, “Voina zakonchilas’, no mir re nastupil,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, June 25, 1997. Similarly, regarding the Second Chechen War, see Amelia Gentleman, “82 Civilians Feared Dead in Chechen Massacre,” The Guardian, Feb. 22, 2000, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/feb/23/chechnya.ameliagentleman (accessed Dec. 20, 2011). On alcohol and barter see Pavel Baev, “Enforcing ‘Military Solutions’ in the North Caucasus: Accumulated Experiences in Conflict (Mis)Management,” in Russian Power Structures: Present and Future Roles in Russian Politics, ed. Jan Leijonhielm and Fredrik Westerlund (Stockholm: FOI, Swedish Defense Research Agency, 2007), 50.

  52. Lieven, Chechnya, 17–18, 49–50, 286.

  53. Henry E. Hale, Why Not Parties in Russia? Democracy, Federalism and the State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 68; Vladimir Petrovich Kartsev and Todd Bludeau, !Zhirinovsky! An Insider’s Account of Yeltsin’s Chief Rival & ‘Bespredel’ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 81; Kevin Fedarko, “A Farce to Be Reckoned With,” Time, Dec. 27, 1993.

 

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