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

by Mark Lawrence Schrad

  10. W.J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 5, 30, 49; Cedric Larson, “The Drinkers Dictionary,” American Speech 12, no. 2 (1937): 87–92.

  Chapter 1

  1. Andrei Bitov, “The Baldest and the Boldest,” in Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar, 1918–1945, ed. Sergei Khrushchev (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), xxxiv.

  2. Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar, 1918–1945 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), xxiii; Jerrold L. Schecter, “Introduction,” in Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1974), xi.

  3. It is worth noting that Vissarion Dzhugashvili, father of a young Joseph Dzhugashvili (Stalin), was a violent, alcoholic semi-itinerant cobbler who routinely beat his wife and children. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 25.

  4. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:79. See also Seweryn Bialer, Stalin’s Successors: Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 33.

  5. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:79, 1:287.

  6. Anastas Mikoyan, Tak bylo: razmyshleniia o minuvshem (Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), 353. Nadezhda Segeevna Alliluyeva died on November 9, 1932. On the events surrounding her death see Roman Brackman, The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life (London: Routledge, 2000), 231; Miklós Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), 207; Donald Rayfield, Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him (New York: Random House, 2005), 240; Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:290. On the outbreak of war see Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 139. On Stalin’s alcoholic father and the role of alcohol in his upbringing see Aleksandr Nikishin, Vodka i Stalin (Moscow: Dom Russkoi Vodki, 2006), 119–21.

  7. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:385. Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, confirms this observation in Only One Year, trans. Paul Chavchavadze (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 385.

  8. Sergei Khrushchev, ed., Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer, 1945–1964 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 43. See also Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:288; Kun, Stalin, 335.

  9. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, trans. Michael B. Petrovich (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962), 76–78; Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 521. See also Yoram Gorlizki, “Stalin’s Cabinet: The Politburo and Decision Making in the Post-War Years,” Europe-Asia Studies 53, no. 2 (2001): 295–98.

  10. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 2:43.

  11. Laurence Rees, World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West (New York: Random House, 2009), 32; I. Joseph Vizulis, The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939: The Baltic Case (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 15.

  12. Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939–1941 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 354; William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), 540.

  13. Read and Fisher, Deadly Embrace, 354. Stalin shared the secret with other Nazi delegates at the signing ceremony. Piers Brendon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (New York: Random House, 2000), 682–83.

  14. Gustav Hilger and Alfred Mayer, Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918–1941 (New York: Macmillan, 1953), 301, 13–14.

  15. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 6: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 348–49.

  16. Documents from the National Archives (U.K.), catalog no. fo/1093/247; http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/fo-1093-247.pdf. Cited in Tommy Norton, “Winston… Was Complaining of a Slight Headache,” National Archives (U.K.) blog, May 22, 2013; http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/winston-was-complaining-of-a-slight-headache/ (accessed May 22, 2013). These documents also allude to a similarly intoxicated banquet for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ambassador-at-large, Wendell Willkie. See also Wendell Lewis Willkie, One World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1943), 58–62, 92–93.

  17. Montefiore, Stalin, 477; Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, trans. Richard Howard, 3 vols. (New York: Da Capo, 1964), 3:752. On the arrest of Khrulev’s wife see Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 487n1.

  18. Montefiore, Stalin, 477. On the fate of Novikov see Michael Parrish, Sacrifice of the Generals: Soviet Senior Officer Losses, 1939–1953 (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2004), 270; Brian D. Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2003 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 177.

  19. Montefiore, Stalin, 314.

  20. Ibid., 477. On Kaganovich and the terror-famine see Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 328; Robert Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 229. On the interrogation of Mikhail Kaganovich see Brackman, Secret File of Joseph Stalin, 349–50; Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 310. Also see David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New York: Random House, 1993), 34.

  21. Montefiore, Stalin, 477–78.

  22. Brackman, Secret File of Joseph Stalin, 411; William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 211, 14–15; Montefiore, Stalin, 521; Adam B. Ulam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York: Viking, 1973), 436; Allilueva, Only One Year, 385; James Graham, Vessels of Rage, Engines of Power: The Secret History of Alcoholism (Lexington, Va.: Aculeus, Inc., 1993), 188.

  23. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:289. Khrushchev continues on this point: “People might ask me: ‘What are you saying? That Stalin was a drunk?’ I can answer that he was and he wasn’t. That is, he was in a certain sense. In his later years, he couldn’t get by without drinking, drinking, drinking. On the other hand, sometimes he didn’t pump himself full as he did his guests; he would pour a drink for himself in a small glass and even dilute it with water. But God forbid that anyone else should do such a thing. Immediately, he would be ‘fined’ for deviating from the norm, for ‘trying to deceive society.’ This of course was a joke, but you had to do some serious drinking as a result of the joke.” Ibid., 1:291.

  24. Mikoyan, Tak bylo, 353.

  25. Montefiore, Stalin, 520. On Khrushchev’s brutality see, for instance, Gellately, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, 388.

  26. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:289. Also see Aleksei Adzhubei, Kruzhenie illiuzii (Moscow: Interbuk, 1991), 166–68; Montefiore, Stalin, 521.

  27. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:291. Also see Nikishin, Vodka i Stalin, 167.

  28. Montefiore, Stalin, 521.

  29. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 2:42.

  30. Ibid., 2:43 (emphasis added).

  31. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:80. See also Kees Boterbloem, The Life and Times of Andrei Zhdanov, 1896–1948 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2004), 259.

  32. Montefiore, Stalin, 326. After being demoted in 1942 and expelled from the Central Committee, Kulik allegedly became critical of Stalin, which sealed his fate. Apparently he was arrested in 1947, and after three years of inquiry and torture, he was executed in 1950. Kun, Stalin, 430.

  33. Allilueva, Only One Year, 386; Montefiore, Stalin, 521–22; Gorlizki, “Stalin’s Cabinet.” Poskrebyshev was often forced to hold lighted “New Year’s candles” of rolled-up paper, Stalin delighting in watching Poskrebyshev’s pain as the fiery paper burned his hands. Graham, Vessels of Rage, 189.
Poskrebyshev arranged many show trials of the 1930s and was removed under pressure from Beria as part of the so-called doctors’ plot in 1952 but not before condemning his own wife to the gulags. Helen Rappaport, Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1999), 210.

  34. Maureen Perrie, The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 172. On the paternalism of the tsars see Georg Brandes, Impressions of Russia, trans. Samuel C. Eastman (Boston: C. J. Peters & Son, 1889), 38.

  35. Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 1:80.

  36. Bialer, Stalin’s Successors, 34–35; Gorlizki, “Stalin’s Cabinet,” 295–98; Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 575; Vladislav B. Aksenov, Veselie Rusi, XX vek: gradus noveishei rossiiskoi istorii ot “p’yanogo byudzheta” do “sukhogo zakona” (Moscow: Probel-2000, 2007), 24–25. On atomization see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitariansim, pt. 3: Totalitarianism (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1968), 9–20. With regard to alcohol see Therese Reitan, “The Operation Failed, but the Patient Survived. Varying Assessments of the Soviet Union’s Last Anti-Alcohol Campaign,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 34, no. 2 (2001): 255–56.

  37. See chapter 10. Also see Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1892), 127–29; Mark D. Steinberg, Voices of Revolution, 1917 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), 24–25; Vladimir I. Lenin, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 43 (Moscow: Political Literature Publishers, 1967), 326. More generally see Charles van Onselen, “Randlords and Rotgut 1886–1903: An Essay on the Role of Alcohol in the Development of European Imperialism and Southern African Capitalism, with Special Reference to Black Mineworkers in the Transvaal Republic,” History Workshop 1, no. 2 (1976).

  38. A. Krasikov, “Commodity Number One (Part 2),” in The Samizdat Register, vol. 2, ed. Roy A. Medvedev (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 163.

  39. Walter G. Moss, A History of Russia: To 1917 (London: Anthem, 2005), 259, 302.

  40. Mikhail Gorbachev, “O zadachakh partii po korennoi perestroike upravleniya ekonomikoi: doklad na Plenume TsK KPSS 25 iyunya 1987 goda,” in Izbrannye rechi i stat’i, vol. 5 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1988), 158. On Europe see Stephen Smith, “Economic Issues in Alcohol Taxation,” in Theory and Practice of Excise Taxation: Smoking, Drinking, Gambling, Polluting and Driving, ed. Sijbren Cnossen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 57–60.

  41. Krasikov, “Commodity Number One (Part 2),” 169.

  42. Viktor Erofeev, Russkii apokalipsis: opyt khudozhestvennoi eskhatologii (Moscow: Zebra E, 2008), 19–20; English version reprinted as Victor Erofeyev, “The Russian God,” New Yorker, Dec. 16, 2002. On the relationship to Vladimir Erofeyev, Stalin’s translator, see “Stalin’s Translator Dead at 90,” Moscow Times, July 20, 2011, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/stalins-translator-dead-at-90/440793.html#axzz1SaU9kXl7 (accessed July 20, 2011.).

  43. Erofeev, Russkii apokalipsis, 20–21.

  Chapter 2

  1. Alexander Nemtsov, “Alcohol-Related Human Losses in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s,” Addiction 97 (2002): 1413; Judyth Twigg, “What Has Happened to Russian Society?” in Russia after the Fall, ed. Andrew Kuchins (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, 2002), 172.

  2. Aleksandr Nemtsov, Alkogol’nyi uron regionov Rossii (Moscow: Nalex, 2003); quoted in Daria A. Khaltourina and Andrey V. Korotayev, “Potential for Alcohol Policy to Decrease the Mortality Crisis in Russia,” Evaluation & the Health Professions 31, no. 3 (2008): 273.

  3. Melvin Goodman, Gorbachev’s Retreat: The Third World (New York: Praeger, 1991), 100.

  4. Jay Bhattacharya, Christina Gathmann, and Grant Miller, The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia’s Mortality Crisis. NBER Working Paper Series No. 18589 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2012), 2; “Vladimir Putin on Raising Russia’s Birth Rate,” Population and Development Review 32, no. 2 (Documents) (2006): 386; 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), 105; David Zaridze et al., “Alcohol and Cause-Specific Mortality in Russia: A Retrospective Case-Control Study of 48,557 Adult Deaths,” The Lancet 373 (2009): 2201–14.

  5. Pravitel’stvo Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Government of the Russian Federation), “Kontseptsiia realizatsii gosudarstvennoi politiki po snizheniiu masshtabov zloupotrebleniia alkogol’noi produktsiei i profilaktike alkogolisma sredi naseleniia Rossiiskoi Federatsii na period do 2020 goda” (Concept for the implementation of a state policy to reduce the scale of alcohol abuse and prevention of alcoholism in the population of the Russian Federation for the period until 2020), order no. 2128-r, December 30, 2009.

  6. Murray Feshbach, “Potential Social Disarray in Russia Due to Health Factors,” Problems of Post-Communism 52, no. 4 (2005): 22, and “The Health Crisis in Russia’s Ranks,” Current History, October, 2008, 336; Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev, “Vvedeniye: alkogol’naya katastrofa; kak ostanovit’ vymiranie Rossii,” in Alkogol’naya katastrofa i vozmozhnosti gosudarstvennoi politiki v preodolenii alkogol’noi sverkosmertnosti v Rossii, ed. Dar’ya A. Khalturina and Andrei V. Korotaev (Moscow: Lenand, 2010).

  7. Mark Lawrence Schrad, “Moscow’s Drinking Problem,” New York Times, April 17, 2011.

  8. Pravitel’stvo Rossiiskoi Federatsii, “Kontseptsiia realizatsii gosudarstvennoi politiki.”

  9. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 194–95. Orwell’s 1984 was premised on the dystopian Russian novel We by Evgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921.

  10. Maria Lipman, “Stalin Lives,” Foreign Policy, March 1, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/01/stalin_lives (accessed March 3, 2013).

  11. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 2. See also Charles Tilly’s four functions of states: war making, state making, protection, and extraction. Both approaches emphasize extracting resources from society, monopolizing violence, and ensuring state security. Charles Tilly, “Warmaking and Statemaking as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 181. See also Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 389.

  12. Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1932 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 119; Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

  13. Vladimir I. Lenin, “X vserossiiskaya konferentsiya RKP(b),” in Sochineniya, tom 32: dekabr’ 1920–avgust 1921 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1951), 403.

  14. 30 million pud of grain translates into 491 million kilograms or 1.08 billion pounds annually. See f. 374 (Narodnyi komissariat raboche-krest’yanskoi inspektsii SSSR), op. 15, d. 1291, l.18–22, Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (State archive of the Russian Federation), Moscow. See also Gregory Sokolnikov et al., Soviet Policy in Public Finance: 1917–1928 (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 194; Anton M. Bol’shakov, Derevnya, 1917–1927 (Moscow: Rabotnik prosveshcheniya, 1927), 339–41. On alcoholism in the party see T. H. Rigby, Communist Party Membership in the U.S.S.R., 1917–1967 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), 121–25.

  15. Alexander Hamilton’s Tariff Act of 1789 and the federal tax of 1791 both disproportionately focused on alcohol. The ensuing Whiskey Rebellion is a reminder of its contentiousness. Still, the inability to raise federal revenues is commonly cited as the main reason for the failure of the Articles of Confederation. Mark Lawrence Schrad, “The First Social Policy: Alcohol Control and Modern
ity in Policy Studies,” Journal of Policy History 19, no. 4 (2007): 433–34. See also W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 50–55; Charles van Onselen, “Randlords and Rotgut 1886–1903: An Essay on the Role of Alcohol in the Development of European Imperialism and Southern African Capitalism, with Special Reference to Black Mineworkers in the Transvaal Republic,” History Workshop 1, no. 2 (1976).