Vodka Politics_Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State

by Mark Lawrence Schrad

  Gorbachev then enumerated the “sick elements” in the Soviet budget that began with commodity number one: vodka. “Of course, nothing can justify increasing the production and sale of wine and vodka. But while state income from the sale of alcoholic beverages in the eighth five-year plan comprised only 67 billion rubles, by the eleventh five-year plan, it exceeded 169 billion.”43 Glasnost was vital in coming clean about the Soviet Union’s problems—and that meant first coming clean about vodka politics.

  Who Is To Blame?

  “Tell us about the most furious row you witnessed at the Politburo.”

  Before the KGB inexplicably expelled him from Russia in 1989, this was Sunday Times correspondent Angus Roxburgh’s standard question as he interviewed over one hundred of the most senior Soviet elites. The typical reply was a lighthearted chuckle followed by, “Oh, there were so many of them, so many.…”

  “Most Politburo members were willing to part with only one or two of their secrets,” Roxburgh wrote, “though almost all of them jumped at the chance to expose what appears to have been the most divisive issue in the early years of perestroika, the ill-fated attempt to stamp out alcoholism.”44 The decision to begin such historic reforms by confronting Russia’s autocratic vodka politics says a lot about the dynamics of political reform as well as the crucial wet/dry divisions within the Soviet elite.

  As Gorbachev’s first major initiative, the anti-alcohol campaign took most observers by surprise. That, combined with its recognition as a dismal failure—both by critics and supporters—has led to rampant speculation: why was it instituted, and who was to blame?45

  Based on an oversimplified, what-the-leader-says-goes caricature of Soviet policy making, most mistakenly blame General Secretary Gorbachev alone. Maybe his roots in the milder, moderate, and wine-drinking south meant that Gorby did not understand the importance of vodka in colder climates? Or perhaps Raisa Gorbacheva—moved by her brother’s tragic alcoholism—persuaded her husband to confront vodka.46 Maybe this is what Mikhail meant when, on the eve of his inauguration, he confided in Raisa that “we simply cannot go on living like this.”47 But this was no conspiracy or a secret: it was widely understood that alcohol had long dragged down economic productivity and undermined the well-being of its citizens. Since the Soviet leadership was privy to classified social and economic data, they knew the magnitude of the problem. With Gorbachev at the helm, it seemed that they were finally willing to do something about it.

  “The statistics were appalling,” Gorbachev later told writer Viktor Erofeyev when asked the “why” question about the anti-alcohol campaign.

  Injuries in the workplace, falling productivity, diminishing life expectancy, accidents on the roads and railways. In 1972, they discussed the problem in the Politburo, but deferred it. It was impossible to solve, because the state budget itself was “drunk”—it relied on the income from vodka sales. Stalin set it up that way—temporarily, but there’s nothing as permanent as a temporary decision. In Brezhnev’s time, the “drunken” component of the budget increased from a hundred billion rubles to a hundred and seventy billion—that was how much profit vodka brought to the state.48

  To hear the Soviet leader candidly acknowledge the central paradox of Russia’s vodka politics—not just the importance of alcohol revenues to the treasury, but also the state’s consistent efforts to hush up the embarrassing social consequences—is truly revolutionary. Indeed, when it came to this historically central pillar of Russia’s autocracy, the dry Gorbachev was more aligned with the dry Soviet dissidents than with the wet Brezhnevite party line. “Long ago Gorbachev internally rebelled against the native System” that had “created, nursed and formed him,” recalled Gorbachev’s onetime Politburo ally Nikolai Ryzhkov.49 Both in policy and in temperament, his position on alcohol seems to best illustrate that.

  “There were many causes for the widespread drunkenness: poor living conditions, the difficulty of everyday life, cultural backwardness,” Gorbachev wrote in his Memoirs. “Many drank because of the impossibility of realizing their potential, of saying what they thought. The oppressive social atmosphere pushed weak natures to use alcohol to drown their feelings of inferiority and their fear of harsh reality. The example of the leaders, who paid lavish tribute to the ‘green snake’ of alcohol, also had a bad effect.”

  From blaming the state for the alcoholization of society, like Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, to sharing Baitalsky’s lament that the only worse thing was the acquiescence and indifference toward vodka, it sounded as though the dissidents were in charge. “Perhaps the saddest thing,” Gorbachev recalled of his Brezhnevite inheritance, “was that although there was a severe shortage of consumer goods the authorities could not think of any way to maintain monetary circulations other than by selling alcohol to make people drunk. This sounds crazy, but it is the pure truth. The gap between the enormous money supply and the wretched supply of goods was filled with alcohol.”50

  Certainly, something had to be done, but it would be wrong to lay all of the blame on Secretary General Gorbachev alone. The one-man totalitarian dictatorship had been cast off along with Stalin’s fetid corpse—most political decisions in the late Soviet era were made collectively, with the general secretary first among equals. Indeed, while Gorbachev ultimately bears (and according to his Memoirs, accepts) ultimate responsibility for the anti-alcohol policy and its failure, he was not the driving force behind it. The architect was actually Mikhail Solomentsev. A zealous dry, the reformed-alcoholic Solomentsev was promoted to full Politburo member just before Andropov’s death and was in charge of party discipline as chair of the powerful Party Control Committee. Since the Brezhnev era Solomentsev had floated policies—like strengthening anti-alcohol propaganda and expanding nonalcoholic entertainment, sports, and recreation—that become the basis of the anti-alcohol campaign.

  If you are searching for a smoking gun, look no further than Solomentsev’s 1984 speech before the Party Control Committee—delivered when acknowledging alcoholism was still taboo. Never before mentioned in historical accounts, Solomentsev’s words embody both the spirit and content of the anti-alcohol campaign:

  I would especially like to focus on the question of strengthening the fight against drunkenness and alcoholism. As you know, in 1972 and subsequent years appropriate decisions were taken in this regard. But they were not supported by the necessary degree of organizational work or the strengthening of anti-alcohol propaganda. Consequently, in recent years, drunkenness has become widespread, penetrating all layers of society—among communists, Komsomol members, and managers.

  The reasons for the growth of drunkenness, of course, include the weak monitoring of the implementation of party decisions. Consequently, some managers even create “cognac” and “banquet” funds from employee requisitions to organize collective boozing. Such drunken banquets are often used to celebrate the completion of socialist competition and community service, the arrival of official delegations, holidays, employee birthdays, and so on. Sometimes they are even held within the very walls of the enterprises and institutions themselves.

  Systematic inspections carried-out by the Party Control Committee show that many places continue to underestimate the dangers of drunkenness. Some party committees and commissions have not taken a principled position, and exhibit insufficient toughness toward those who abuse alcohol. For example, in the Sverdlovsk region the drunken, indecent behavior of a number of communists was not even discussed among the party. In the Chernigov region, communists who were convicted for moonshining were not even expelled from the party.

  We need to make it absolutely clear that appeasement of or forgiveness towards those who abuse alcohol or violate the anti-alcohol laws will no longer be tolerated. Every case that arises in relation to alcohol should be viewed through the prism of the social danger of this evil. Many of the most heinous crimes, including bribe-taking, are often committed in a state of intoxication. Drunkenness is causing enormous material and moral damag
e to our society, harming not only the health of the current generation, but future generations as well.

  Following the obligatory references to Lenin’s opposition to alcohol, and the token acknowledgment to Secretary Chernenko, Solomentsev boldly declared: “Comrades! Our party’s commitment—to rooting-out the theft of socialist property, malfeasance, bribery, profiteering, drunkenness, and other vices—is strong and uncompromising.”51

  Such audacious declarations under the wet Konstantin Chernenko are especially noteworthy, since the ascension of a dry secretary general was hardly a given. With the rise of Gorbachev—whose dry worldview was broadly congruent with his own—Solomentsev’s opportunity had finally arrived.

  And so, during the first week of April 1985—just after his appointment—Gorbachev chaired a two-hour, closed-door meeting of the Politburo on the liquor question, which the abstentionist Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko later described as “an important turning-point in our party’s history.”52

  In addition to listing the report of comrade Grigory Romanov’s visit to Hungary (the one where he got rip-roaringly drunk), the front page of Pravda blithely announced that, “considering the numerous suggestions of working people submitted to central and regional authorities, the Politburo discussed in depth the question of fighting drunkenness and alcoholism.” The typically gray announcement of “a complex of stringent social-political, economic, administrative, medical and other anti-alcohol measures”53 belied what many participants recalled as being an especially raucous affair—an intervention, as it were—about the viability of Soviet vodka politics itself.

  The meeting began with Solomentsev’s report on the alcohol question, which was commissioned under Andropov. His colleagues recalled how Solomentsev regularly came to Politburo meetings armed with “great tomes” of research on combatting alcoholism and delivered lengthly lectures based on official studies and long-hidden social and economic statistics, which “all contained truly horrifying data.”54

  Upon reading these “devastating reports,” as well as heartfelt letters from the people about alcoholism, an outraged Gromyko—whose support weeks earlier had secured Gorbachev’s leadership—boldly expressed his frustrations with comrade Brezhnev for dismissing his concerns about vodka. “Imagine, in this country people drink everywhere—at work and at home, in political and artists’ organizations, in laboratories, school and universities, even kindergartens!”55

  Gorbachev agreed: they weren’t “just talking about a major social problem of the present, but about the biological condition of our nation, about its genetic future,” according to Anatoly Chernyaev’s account. The new secretary general threw down the gauntlet: “If we don’t solve this problem, we can forget about communism.”56

  The strongest advocate for dramatic action—and the one most associated with the anti-alcohol campaign—was Yegor Ligachev. An effective reformer who championed public sobriety as first party secretary in Tomsk from 1965 to 1983, Ligachev was a staunch Gorbachev ally until their relationship soured. A puritanical teetotaler, he denounced alcoholics within the party and shut down forty-five of the forty-seven liquor stores in Tomsk. “My official responsibilities and my personal refusal to tolerate drunkenness coincided in this case,” he later said of his dedication to the anti-alcohol campaign.57

  Ligachev was still only a candidate (non-voting) Politburo member and therefore not involved in the drafting of reports or legislation, as were the full (voting) members, but his condemnation of alcohol was virtually identical to the senior Solomentsev. Before the campaign, Ligachev decried the lax attitude within the party, which seemed not to care that two hundred thousand party members and three hundred and seventy thousand Komsomol members had been cited for drunkenness. Like Solomentsev, he wanted hard-drinking members of the party to be relieved of their responsibilities as part of a “general condemnation of drunkards.”58

  Ligachev was particularly moved by the piles of heart-wrenching letters from despondent wives and mothers. “In these letters, women, crushed with grief, cursed the drunkenness that took away the lives of their sons and husbands and crippled their children,” Ligachev recalled. “This was a veritable cry for help. Moreover, many scientists were sounding the alarm and forecasting the threat of degeneration of the nation’s genetic stock.” Unlike the political chasms that later divided Ligachev and Gorbachev, both agreed about the urgency of confronting this national tragedy.59

  In sum, the reformers’ overriding concern was not only (or even primarily) economic revitalization but rather the “moral atmosphere”—in Gorbachev’s words.60 Still, not everyone agreed with the proposed policy solutions. The Politburo still contained a significant “wet” faction that, for economic, social or personal reasons, actively opposed the campaign. The most vocal foe was Nikolai Ryzhkov, a young reformist ally who later became one of Gorbachev’s most outspoken critics.

  “I was in favor of taking measures against alcoholism, and agreed that the nation was going to ruin,” Ryzhkov said in his interview with British journalist Angus Roxburgh, “but I was categorically against the methods being proposed. At first I thought they were joking when they said that ‘drunkenness would continue so long as there was vodka on the shelves.’ Then I realized they were dead serious.”61

  Repeatedly referring to the ineffectiveness of past measures, and the failures of draconian prohibitions in other countries, Ryzhkov pleaded for moderation—calling for conventional band-aid approaches of increasing prices and clamping down on workplace indiscipline. Protesting the proposed extreme measures, he pointed out the necessity of rationing sugar—the primary ingredient in what he (correctly) foresaw as driving a dramatic upsurge in illegal moonshining. Yet despite the support of some half-dozen senior officials, Ryzhkov’s opposition was steamrolled.

  “And what was their response?” Ryzhkov wrote in his scathing Perestroika: History of Betrayal. The anti-alcohol forces berated him.

  Ryzhkov does not understand the importance of the moment. Ryzhkov does not feel that this is a time of actions, not words. Ryzhkov is not aware that the moral atmosphere of the country needs to be saved by any means. Ryzhkov cares more about the economy than morality. I cannot remember all of the accusations they heaped on. Gorbachev actively supported these fighters against alcoholism, in his concern for the country’s “moral atmosphere.”62

  For centuries, alcohol revenues were the central economic pillar of the Russian autocratic state, so it is no surprise that the most vocal opposition came from those most aware of the economic consequences. When the deputy director of the state economic planning agency Gosplan warned that there was no conceivable way to cover the gap of five billion rubles that would result from the campaign, Gorbachev gave him a dressing down: “You want to build communism on vodka?”63

  After refusing to sign off on the plan three different times, the Gosplan director was threatened with expulsion from the Communist Party. He was joined in his dissent by Vasily Garbuzov. Promoted to minister of finance under Khrushchev in 1960, Garbuzov oversaw and promoted vodka as “Commodity Number One” for the Soviet treasury over the following twenty-five years. As architect of late-Soviet vodka politics he understood more than anyone the economic implications of the proposed measures, so it was Garbuzov whom Gorbachev first summoned to discuss the issue. His protests notwithstanding, Garbuzov also refused to sign the anti-alcohol resolution. Within weeks the elderly finance minister followed Gorbachev’s rival Romanov into forced retirement.64

  Gorbachev’s threat of dismissal sufficiently intimidated those on-the-fence Politburo members, including Eduard Shevardnadze—who soon replaced Gromyko as Soviet foreign minister and later became president of an independent Georgia. Reflecting the moderate traditions of the predominantly wine-drinking Caucasus, Shevardnadze says he was “horrified” over the anti-alcohol plans but admitted that he voted for them, “although inwardly I disagreed.”65

  Others were not so easily cowed, including Heydar Aliyev, who
later became president of post-Soviet Azerbaijan, next door to Shevardnadze’s Georgia. The Politburo’s only Muslim member, the cultured Aliyev drank only the cognac of his native Caucasus and preferred the company of composers, actors, and artists over the usual “alcoholics, foul-mouthed swearers and womanizers” of the Kremlin.66 Yet the powerful deputy prime minister embodied the corruption and nepotism of the old Brezhnev era—transforming Soviet Azerbaijan into a personal fiefdom of oil, cotton, and caviar.

  In protecting his own interests, Aliyev also refused to sign the anti-alcohol resolution. He continued even after the campaign was in full swing: protesting—ultimately in vain—the closure of a champagne factory he recently had set up in Azerbaijan with high-end equipment imported from West Germany. This continued opposition brought him toe to toe with the drys: Gorbachev, Ligachev, and Solomentsev. When he later protested the closing of breweries on the grounds that beer was “not really alcohol,” Solomentsev threatened to produce a report “proving that people got more drunk from beer than vodka.” When he argued that drunkenness was not a big problem in traditionally Muslim, wine-producing Azerbaijan and that ninety-five percent of their wine was exported to other regions, “Ligachev went to Azerbaijan and carpeted the republic’s leaders, accusing them of poisoning the rest of Russia with their drink.”67

  Aliyev’s opposition to the anti-alcohol campaign only hardened the reformers’ view that he exemplified the nepotism, privilege, and corruption of the Brezhnev era. In 1987 “Gorbachev unleashed a full-blown, Stalin-style denunciation of Aliyev,” dismissing him for corruption and cronyism.68 Just like that—as with Romanov and Garbuzov—another powerful critic of the anti-alcohol campaign was gone.