by James Millar
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bolkhovitinov, N. N., and Pierce, Richard A. (1996). Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska, 1834-1867. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Hoxie, Frederick E., and Mancall, Peter C. (2001). American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present. New York: Routledge. Thomas, David Hurst. (200). Exploring Native North America. New York: Oxford University Press.
JOHANNA GRANVILLE
ALBANIANS, CAUCASIAN
Albanians are an ancient people of southeastern Caucasia who originally inhabited the area of the modern republic of Azerbaijan north of the River Kur. In the late fourth century they acquired from Armenia the territory that now comprises the southern half of the republic. According to the Greek geographer Strabo (died c. 20 C.E.), the Albanians were a federation of twenty-six tribes, each originally having its own king, but by his time united under a single ruler. The people’s name for themselves is unknown, but the Greeks and Romans called their country Albania. The original capital of Albania was the city of Cabala or Cabal-aca, north of the River Kur. In the fifth century, however, the capital was transferred to Partaw (now Barda), located south of the river.
According to tradition, the Albanians converted to Christianity early in the fourth century. It is more likely, however, that this occurred in the early fifth century, when St. Mesrob Mashtots, inventor of the Armenian alphabet, devised one for the Albanians. Evidence of this alphabet was lost until 1938, when it was identified in an Armenian manuscript. All surviving Albanian literature was written in, not translated into, Armenian.
The Persians terminated the Albanian monarchy in about 510, after which the country was ruled by an oligarchy of local princes that was headed by the Mihranid prince of Gardman. In 624, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius appointed the head of the Mihrani family as presiding prince of Albania. When the country was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century and the last of the Mihranid presiding princes was assassinated in 822, the Albanian polity began to break up. Thereafter, the title “king of Albania” was claimed by one or another dynasty in Armenia or Georgia until well into the Mongol period. The city of Partaw was destroyed by Rus pirates in 944.
The Albanians had their own church and its own catholicos, or supreme patriarch, who was subordinate to the patriarch of Armenia. The Albanian church endured until 1830, when it was suppressed after the Russian conquest. The Albanian ethnic group appears to survive as the Udins, a people living in northwestern Azerbaijan. Their Northeast Caucasian language (laced with Armenian) is classified as a member of the Lesguian group. Some Udins are Muslim; the rest belong to the Armenian Church. See also: ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bais, Marco. (2001). Albania Caucasica. Milan: Mimesis. Daskhurantsi, Moses. (1961).History of the Caucasian Albanians. London: Oxford University Press. Moses of Khoren. (1978). History of the Armenians, tr. Robert W. Thomson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Toumanoff, Cyrille. (1963). Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
ROBERT H. HEWSEN
ALCOHOLISM
Swedish researcher Magnus Huss first used the term “alcoholism” in 1849 to describe a variety of physical symptoms associated with drunkenness. By the 1860s, Russian medical experts built on
ALCOHOL MONOPOLY
Huss’s theories, relying on models of alcoholism developed in French and German universities to conduct laboratory studies on the effects of alcohol on the body and mind. They adopted the term “alcoholism” (alkogolizm) as opposed to “drunkenness” (pyanstvo) to connote the phenomenon of disease, and determined that it mainly afflicted the lower classes.
In 1896, at the urging of the Swiss-born physician and temperance advocate E. F. Erisman, the Twelfth International Congress of Physicians in Moscow established a special division on alcoholism as a medical problem. Within a year the Kazan Temperance Society established the first hospital for alcoholics in Kazan. In 1897, physician and temperance advocate A. M. Korovin founded a private hospital for alcoholics in Moscow, and in 1898 the Trusteeships of Popular Temperance opened an outpatient clinic.
That same year, growing public concern over alcoholism led to the creation of the Special Commission on Alcoholism and the Means for Combating It. Headed by psychiatrist N. M. Nizhegorodtsev, the ninety-five members of the commission included physicians, psychiatrists, temperance advocates, academics, civil servants, a few clergy, and two government representatives. Classifying alcoholism as a mental illness, members of the commission blamed widespread alcoholism on the tsarist government, which relied heavily on liquor revenues and refused to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the lower classes.
Although they accepted the definition of alcoholism as a disease, professionals could not agree on exactly what it was, what caused it, or how to cure it. These were topics of heated debate, and they could not be seriously discussed without critical analysis of the government’s social and economic policies. Hence, the range of opinions expressed in professional discourse over alcoholism reflected the fragmentation of middle-class ideologies near the end of the imperial period: the abstract civic values of liberalism and modernization as borrowed from the West; a powerful and persistent model of custodial statehood; and a pervasive culture of collectivism.
With the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, definitions of alcoholism changed. Seeking Marxist interpretations for most social ills, Soviet health practitioners defined alcoholism as a petit bourgeois phenomenon, a holdover from the tsarist past. Working from the premise that illness could only be understood in its social context, they determined that alcoholism was a social disease influenced by factors such as illiteracy, poverty, and poor living conditions. In 1926 the director of the State Institute for Social Hygiene, A. V. Molkov, opened a department, headed by E. I. Deichman, for the sole purpose of studying alcoholism as a social disease. Within four years, however, the department was closed and the institute disbanded. By placing blame for alcoholism on social causes, Molkov, Deichman, and others were, in effect, criticizing the state’s social policies-a dangerous position in the Stalinist 1930s.
In 1933 Josef Stalin announced that success was being achieved in the construction of socialism in the USSR; therefore, it was no longer plagued by petit bourgeois problems such as alcoholism. For the next fifty-two years, alcoholism did not officially exist in the Soviet Union. Consequently, all public discussion of alcoholism ended until 1985, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev launched a nationwide but ill-fated temperance campaign. See also: ALCOHOL MONOPOLY; VODKA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Herlihy, Patricia. (2002). The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Segal, Boris. (1987). Russian Drinking: Use and Abuse of Alcohol in Prerevolutionary Russia. New Brunswick, NJ: Publications Division, Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies. Segal, Boris. (1990). The Drunken Society: Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the Soviet Union, a Comparative Study. New York: Hippocrene Books. White, Stephan. (1996). Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State, and Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
KATE TRANSCHEL
ALCOHOL MONOPOLY
Ever since the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Moscovite princes have exercised control over the production and sale of vodka. In 1553 Ivan IV (the Terrible) rewarded some of his administrative elite (oprichnina) for loyal service with the concession of owning kabaks or taverns. Even so, these tavern owners had to pay a fee for such concessions. Under Boris Godunov (1598-1605), the state exerted
ALCOHOL MONOPOLY
greater control over vodka, a monopoly that was codified in the 1649 Ulozhenie (code of laws).
Disputes over the succession to the throne at the end of the seventeenth century loosened state control over vodka, but Peter I (the Great, r. 1682-1725) reasserted strict control over the state monopoly. Catherine II (the Great, r. 1762-1796) allowed the gentry to sell vodka to the state. Since the state did not
have sufficient administrators to collect revenue from sales, merchants were allowed to purchase concessions that entitled them to a monopoly of vodka sales in a given area for a specified period of time. For this concession, merchants paid the state a fixed amount that was based on their anticipated sales. These tax-farmers (otkup-shchiki) assured the state of steady revenue. The percentage of total revenue derived from vodka sales increased from 11 percent in 1724 to 30 per cent in 1795. Between 1798 and 1825, Tsars Paul I and Alexander I attempted to restore a state monopoly, but gentry and merchants, who profited from the tax-farming system, resisted their attempts.
Under the tax-farming system, prices for vodka could be set high and the quality of the product was sometimes questionable. Complaining of adulteration and price gouging, some people in the late 1850s boycotted buying vodka and sacked distilleries. As part of the great reforms that accompanied the emancipation of the serfs, the tax-farming system was abolished in 1863, to be replaced by an excise system. By the late 1890s, it was estimated that about one-third of the excise taxes never reached the state treasury due to fraud.
Alexander III called for the establishment of a state vodka monopoly (vinnaia monopoliia) in order to curb drunkenness. In 1893 his minister of finances, Sergei Witte, presented to the State Council a proposal for the establishment of the state vodka monopoly. He argued that if the state became the sole purchaser and seller of all spirits produced for the internal market, it could regulate the quality of vodka, as well as limit sales so that people would learn to drink in a regular but moderate fashion. Witte insisted that the monopoly was an attempt to reform the drinking habits of people and not to increase revenue. The result, however, was that the sale of vodka became the single greatest source of state revenue and also one of the largest industries in Russia. By 1902, when the state monopoly had taken hold, the state garnered 341 million rubles; by 1911, the sum reached 594 million. By 1914, vodka revenue comprised one-third of the state’s income.
Established in 1894, the monopoly took effect in the eastern provinces of Orenburg, Perm, Samara, and Ufa in 1896. By July 1896, it was introduced in the southwest, to the provinces of Bessarabia, Volynia, Podolia, Kherson, Kiev, Chernigov, Poltava, Tavrida, and Ekaterinoslav. Seven provinces in Belarus and Lithuania had the monopoly by 1897, followed by ten provinces in the Kingdom of Poland and in St. Petersburg, spreading to cover all of European Russia and western Siberia by 1902 and a large part of eastern Siberia by 1904. The goal was to close down the taverns and restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages to state liquor stores. Restaurants would be allowed to serve alcoholic beverages, but state employees in government shops would handle most of the trade. The introduction of the monopoly caused a great deal of financial loss for tavern owners, many of whom were Jews. Because the state vodka was inexpensive and of uniformly pure quality, sales soared. Bootleggers, often women, bought vodka from state stores and resold it when the stores were closed.
In 1895 the state created a temperance society, the Guardianship of Public Sobriety (Popechitel’stvo o narodnoi trezvosti), in part to demonstrate its interest in encouraging moderation in the consumption of alcohol. Composed primarily of government officials, with dignitaries as honorary members, the Guardianship received a small percentage of the vodka revenues from the state; these funds were intended for use in promoting moderation in drink. Most of the limited sums were used to produce entertainments, thus founding popular theater in Russia. Only a small amount was used for clinics to treat alcoholics. Private temperance societies harshly criticized the Guardianship for promoting moderation rather than strict abstinence, accusing it of hypocrisy and futility.
With the mobilization of troops in August 1914, Nicholas II declared a prohibition on the consumption of vodka for the duration of the war. At first alcoholism was reduced, but peasants soon began to produce moonshine (samogon) on a massive scale. This moonshine, together with the lethal use of alcoholic substitutes, took its toll. The use of scarce grain for profitable moonshine also exacerbated food shortages in the cities. In St. Petersburg, food riots contributed to the abdication of Nicholas in February 1917.
ALEXANDER I
The new Bolshevik regime was a strict adherent to prohibition until 1924, when prohibition was relaxed. A full state monopoly of vodka was reinstated in August 1925, largely for fiscal reasons. While Stalin officially discouraged drunkenness, in 1930 he gave orders to maximize vodka production in the middle of his First Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization.
The Soviet state maintained a monopoly on vodka. As soon as Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, he began a major drive to eliminate alcoholism, primarily by limiting the hours and venues for the sale of vodka. This aggressive campaign contributed to Gorbachev’s unpopularity. After he launched his anti-alcohol drive, the Soviet government annually lost between 8 and 11 billion rubles (equivalent to 13 to 17 billion U.S. dollars, at the 1990 exchange rate) in liquor tax revenue. After Gorbachev’s fall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the state vodka monopoly was abolished in May 1992.
Boris Yeltsin attempted to reinstate the monopoly in June 1993, but by that time floods of cheap vodka had been imported and many domestic factories had gone out of business. Although President Vladimir Putin issued an order in February 1996 acknowledging that Yeltsin’s attempt to reestablish the vodka monopoly in 1993 had failed, he has also tried to control and expand domestic production and sales of vodka. The tax code of January 1, 1999 imposed only a 5 percent excise tax on vodka in order to stimulate domestic consumption. By buying large numbers of shares in vodka distilleries, controlling their management, and attacking criminal elements in the business, Putin has attempted to reestablish state control over vodka. See also: ALCOHOLISM; TAXES; VODKA; WITTE, SERGEI YULIEVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Christian, David. (1990). “Living Water”: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Herlihy, Patricia. (2002). The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia. New York: Oxford University Press. LeDonne, John. (1976). “Indirect Taxes in Catherine’s Russia II. The Liquor Monopoly.” Jahrb?cher f?r Geschichte Osteuropas 24(2): 175-207. Pechenuk, Volodimir. (1980). “Temperance and Revenue Raising: The Goals of the Russian State Liquor Monopoly, 1894-1914.” New England Slavonic Journal 1: 35-48.. Sherwell, Arthur. (1915). The Russian Vodka Monopoly. London: White, Stephen. (1996). Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State, and Society. New York: Cambridge University Press.
PATRICIA HERLIHY
ALEXANDER I
(1777-1825), emperor of Russia from 1801-1825, son of Emperor Paul I and Maria Fyodorovna, grandson of Empress Catherine the Great.
CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
When Alexander was a few months old, Catherine removed him from the care of his parents and brought him to her court, where she closely oversaw his education and upbringing. Together with his brother Konstantin Pavlovich, born in 1779, Alexander grew up amid the French cultural influences, numerous sexual intrigues, and enlightened political ideas of Catherine’s court. Catherine placed General Nikolai Ivanovich Saltykov in charge of Alexander’s education when he was six years old. Alexander’s religious education was entrusted to Andrei Samborsky, a Russian Orthodox priest who had lived in England, dressed like an Englishman, and scandalized Russian conservatives with his progressive ways. The most influential of Alexander’s tutors was Frederick Cesar LaHarpe, a prominent Swiss of republican principles who knew nothing of Russia. Alexander learned French, history, and political theory from LaHarpe. Through LaHarpe Alexander became acquainted with liberal political ideas of republican government, reform, and enlightened monarchy.
In sharp contrast to the formative influences on Alexander emanating from his grandmother’s court were the influences of Gatchina, the court of Alexander’s parents. Alexander and Konstantin regularly visited their parents and eight younger siblings at Gatchina, where militarism and Prussian influence were dominant. Clothing a
nd hair styles differed between the two courts, as did the entire tone of life. While Catherine’s court was dominated by endless social extravaganzas and discussion of ideas, Paul’s court focused on the minutiae of military drills and parade ground performance.
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ALEXANDER I
Tsar Alexander I. © MICHAEL NICHOLSON/CORBIS The atmosphere of Gatchina was set by Paul’s sudden bursts of rage and by a coarse barracks mentality.
Alexander’s early life was made more complicated by the fact that Catherine, the present empress, and Paul, the future emperor, hated each other. Alexander was required to pass between these two courts and laugh at the insults which each of these powerful personages hurled at the other, while always remaining mindful of the fact that one presently held his fate in her hands and the other would determine his fate in the future. This complex situation may have contributed to Alexander’s internal contradictions, indecisiveness, and dissimulation as an adult. warm relationship for the rest of their lives. Their relationship endured Alexander’s long-term liaison with his mistress, Maria Naryshkina, his flirtations with a number of noblewomen throughout Europe, and rumors of an affair between Alexander’s wife, Elizabeth, and his close friend and advisor, Adam Czartoryski. Czartoryski was reputed to be the father of the daughter born in 1799 to Elizabeth. Alexander and Elizabeth had no children who survived infancy.