The King of Vodka

by Linda Himelstein

  It was as if all the years of Smirnov’s strict fathering, the constant preaching of society’s expectations and the imperative to meet them, had been abandoned. This second generation followed guideposts of their own making. Their passions, rather than their pasts, ruled their minds, enabling them to inhabit worlds Smirnov would not have dared enter. It was not just their vast inheritances that enabled their carefree behavior, it was also their environment. The Smirnovs had stature, money, and their father’s legacy to gloss over whatever they did.

  More and more, though, it seemed as if the siblings were monitoring one another like spies. They were taking note of each other’s foibles, storing these observations away as defenses against a future assault. Perhaps they already sensed that their alliances were ephemeral, convenient only as long as the status quo could be maintained, which of course it could not. The events of 1901 and beyond left little doubt of that.

  Chapter 16

  Monopoly Madness

  Evidence of the shifting landscape was inescapable. Scores of neighborhood taverns and liquor shops, once identified by folksy, personal monikers and cozy bar-rooms, were shuttered. In their place were sterile, state-owned-and-operated outlets. Yellow and green placards hung above the doorways, announcing the class of the establishment where state-produced, 40-degree vodka was now sold. Inside, the scene was sobering. Nothing except a religious icon, pictures of the tsar or saints, a clock, and announcements related to the rules and regulations of the monopoly could appear on the walls. A partition cut the hallowed room in half. The bottom of the partition was all wood while the top was made of wire mesh. On one side, workers collected money through a small window while other workers handed off bottles of purchased vodka through another opening.

  Swarms of thirsty, sometimes raucous, customers packed these shops starting at seven o’clock in the morning. Often, so many people showed up that they spilled out onto the streets; while they waited, they would play cards or dominoes. Sometimes, they just lingered, swallowing newly purchased vodka despite strict laws forbidding drinking on the premises or in public. Observed one contemporary outside a shop one morning: “There is a line of about a hundred people who have lost themselves with drinking and are ragged. They are waiting for the door to open, when it will be possible to go inside under the yellow-green sign. They are waiting, shivering in the cold.”1 It was 1901—and the vodka monopoly had come to Moscow.

  The changes were jarring. According to one source, whereas 2,664 locations sold alcohol in the Moscow province before the monopoly, fewer than 870 now did. The number of state vodka shops, which totaled 513 a year earlier, was just 260. And the number of inns in towns surrounding Moscow, those that operated like taverns or cafes, had plummeted from more than 900 in 1900 to just 60.2 It was a difficult adjustment in general but particularly trying in Moscow, which had served as the home base for many of Russia’s most beloved vodka brands. “Those who have been far away from Moscow…and have had no chance before to see the monopoly in Moscow were surprised. They could not recognize their favorite restaurants and they were shocked by the appearance of new wine [vodka] shops and by the abundance of monopoly signs…. A merchant can’t find Smirnov’s vodka, to which he has gotten used to over many years. He’s offered only the…state vodka, which may be good but is unknown to him.”3

  The mood was equally unsatisfying—and downright somber—at Smirnov’s vodka factory during the last day of its operations. According to a newspaper photograph, men wearing long white aprons and dark caps darted in between a maze of large wooden barrels that sat motionless in the middle of a dirt courtyard. These barrels most likely had been removed from Smirnov’s storage area inside, no longer required for housing his vodkas. Men were hauling away large wooden crates, which might have been used for boxing up glass bottles. In the background, a tall ladder stretched to the top floor of Smirnov’s building. It was closing day: no one in the photograph was smiling.4

  The Smirnovs, of course, had no intention of fading away. Apart from the state prohibition against producing pure vodka, they were allowed to sell a variety of other, less popular alcoholic beverages. In an announcement that ran on the front page of the Moscow Sheet just days after the monopoly’s official start, the Smirnovs made it clear that they were still very much in business.

  The Administration of the association of P. A. Smirnov has the honor to inform our dear customers that as a consequence of the implemented state monopoly on [vodka], our exports to nonmonopoly provinces and abroad will continue without interruption while production of [flavored] vodkas, nalivkas, and liqueurs has increased considerably. We especially recommend our Russian and foreign grape wines and Russian and foreign cognacs, which are stored in our cellars for many years.5

  Smirnovs’ sons fought to stay afloat. In addition to commercial advertisements, they introduced a variety of cost-cutting measures to combat slumping sales and dropped their father’s lifelong demand that all Smirnov liqueurs be flavored only with fresh fruit. Instead, they began using essences, a much less expensive alternative. “Thanks to this, we were able to deal with the losses that occurred due to the introduction of the state monopoly over liquor,” recalled Vladimir.6

  Other adjustments were flashier and riskier. Vladimir recounted to Smirnova-Maksheyeva the story of an especially creative spectacle the sons concocted for one of the fairs at Nizhniy Novgorod. He and his brothers wanted to stand out, to demonstrate that they were still owners of a flourishing enterprise. They erected a stage in the main pavilion, which was grand and luxurious. They then hired bears who walked around a large stage, danced, bowed, and brought people drinks. “This unprecedented spectacle and free refreshments attracted a huge number of people. The crowd was dense. It was hard to move through it. Everyone wanted to toast with the bear.”7

  All the bears, except two held tightly by a leash, according to Vladimir, had been either people in bear costumes or wind-up animals. The live bears had been “fed so much vodka that they could not stand. First, they lowered themselves onto all four paws, then sat down and then finally fell asleep. Bears are big lovers of vodka. You did not need to ask them to drink it. They drank willingly, holding the bottle in their front paws.”8 The Smirnovs later ran advertisements featuring bears holding Smirnov bottles.

  The scheme may have grabbed people’s attention, but it did little to prop up sales. Significant layoffs at the factory followed; contracts with bottlers, label suppliers, and cork-makers were either cancelled altogether or significantly scaled back. These measures helped some, but in the first year after the monopoly came to Moscow, the Smirnovs’ losses were devastating. Profits sank by a factor of four, from 1.8 million to 441,000 rubles.9 While the monopoly was by far the primary reason for the collapse in business, it was not the only reason. The Smirnovs, along with the state, were also battling the growing threat of bootleggers.

  These bootleggers were like parasites multiplying faster than authorities could hunt them down, expert at disappearing into their secret hideaways, the crevices buried deep within a neighborhood’s routine comings and goings. Sometimes they purchased the state’s vodka and resold it. Other times, they distilled their own vodka concoctions, selling them to eager consumers at prices that undercut the government. Beyond the alcohol, the most enterprising bootleggers also provided a social environment, similar to the speakeasies that would later sprout up all over America during prohibition. These places enabled Russians to drink together outside their homes. Satirical magazines chronicled the unsavory trend as if it were commonplace. One cartoon featured a crowd of innkeepers running frantically trying to capture a stick inscribed with nothing but the word “secret.”10

  No one seemed to care that the punishment for making moonshine or selling it was time in prison. Demand was simply too great and the police, for the most part, tended to look the other way. “Following the imposition of the monopoly, without exaggeration, one can say that for each ten peasant households there is one bootleg establishment
.”11

  The abuses proliferated, even inside state-sponsored anti-alcohol locations. Teahouses, for instance, established as part of the sobriety movement, were meant to be a gathering place for Russians, offering entertainment and socially acceptable alternatives to drinking liquor. Newspapers reported, however, that some of these venues were known to pour vodka—not tea—straight from their kettles.

  Perhaps most disturbing was the exponential rise in public drunkenness. Since consumers could no longer drink in taverns or inns, they took to the streets. They were aided by cunning entrepreneurs who tried to capitalize on the trend by supplying everything from drinking glasses to corkscrews—for a fee. In her book Under the Influence, the historian Kate Transchel writes, “Drinking did not abate but merely moved from the tavern into the streets.”12 A New York Times columnist observed: “Official and unofficial reports from all parts of European Russia agree in stating that the most noticeable result of the establishment of the Government monopoly is the great and alarming increase of street drunkenness and disorder. A peasant now buys a bottle of vodka, carries it away, and drinks himself into a state of helpless or quarrelsome intoxication.”13

  The tsar had some consolation while trying to tame the nation’s alcohol addiction. His treasury ballooned. In the year following adoption of the monopoly in all provinces, the state took in more than 488 million rubles compared to 23 million during the first year of the monopoly. At its height in 1913, the year before complete prohibition was instituted, more than 953 million rubles were collected as a direct result of the liquor monopoly.14 A comparison of liquor revenues in 1909 illustrates just how beneficial the monopoly was for the government. Had the excise system remained in place, liquor sales for that year would have generated 371 million rubles.15 Under the monopoly, the government’s proceeds were greater than 720 million rubles.16

  In 1901 the tsarist regime downplayed the financial aspects of the reform. Its implications paled in comparison to other issues confronting the administration. Violence and deep-seated resentment were on the rise, made worse by the tsar’s increasingly hard-line policies. The state had begun to arrest and punish students who participated in protests or distributed antigovernment propaganda. One measure enabled the monarchy to force these young rebels into the Russian Army. The tsar’s minister of education, Nikolay Bogolepov, ordered 183 students at the St. Vladimir University in Kiev into the military. He also fired a number of professors who openly opposed the autocracy. Within short order, Bogolepov was fatally shot in the neck by a student expelled from a university in Moscow for his revolutionary activities. Soon after, the minister of domestic affairs, Dmitriy Sipyagin, a hard-liner who backed several harsh measures aimed at noncompliant workers, peasants, and students, was also assassinated. Two years later, Sipyagin’s successor, Vyacheslav Pleve, was blown up by a terrorist’s bomb.

  Labor disputes had also turned more combative. In May 1901, a strike at the Obukhov steel plant in St. Petersburg was sparked by the firing of twenty-six metal workers. They had not shown up for their jobs on May Day, a workers’ holiday. Several thousand employees gathered outside the factory less than a week later demanding that the fired employees be reinstated. They also presented a litany of other demands, including wage increases and a shorter workday. The steel factory had approximately twenty socialist circles operating within it, evidence of the increasingly political nature of strikes, which prompted police to come to the demonstration prepared to fight. Laborers who battled back with stones were overpowered, but the confrontation set the stage for more bloody strikes.

  Nikolay II also faced a growing chorus of high-profile critics. Tolstoy, who sympathized with the protesters and much of the underclass, was one of the most outspoken. His uncensored barrage of critiques and a large, loyal following contributed to his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. His crime: heresy. In his writings, particularly in his last novel, Resurrection, he denounced the church, Russia’s government, and the country’s antiquated social customs. He supported the student uprisings, lambasted the monarchy’s increasing censorship, and championed the needs of the poor. Finally, he directed his appeals to the tsar himself in a passionate letter dated January 16, 1902. He pleaded for reforms that would aid impoverished peasants and suggested that the ways of the monarchy no longer met the people’s needs. The fervent entreaty, along with other anti-tsarist chants, only seemed to embolden Nikolay II—he dug in his heels.

  THE SMIRNOVS DUG in, too. Whether it was the turmoil engulfing Russia or the overriding uneasiness seeping into the heart of the vodka clan itself, the siblings took up battle stations. The war began in earnest in 1901, the same year Moscow’s vodka trade came under the government’s control. At first, it appeared to be no more than a few simple legal maneuvers aimed at divvying up assets equitably among family members. Smirnov’s sons and their still-unmarried sister, Aleksandra, jointly owned their father’s various properties, but they decided it would be better for the youngest sons to own property individually instead of as part of a group. “We don’t wish to continue common ownership and we agree to voluntarily divide this property,” a legal document signed by the siblings read.

  Smirnov’s real estate holdings were valued at 1.89 million rubles (about $24.6 million today). Aleksey, the youngest son, would receive seven retail outlets at the Gostiniy Dvor shopping district as well as some land. Sergey would acquire a residence in Moscow, a commercial building near the family mansion, and some retail shops at the Nizhniy Novgorod fair. All the other properties, including the house by the Cast Iron Bridge, the factory, the dachas, and land in Moscow would be owned collectively by Pyotr, Nikolay, Vladimir, and Aleksandra. The siblings who signed the document pledged not to contest its substance. “We are completely satisfied with the given real estate division. We find it to be profitable for the minors [Sergey and Aleksey]… We promise not to raise questions about further divisions of the real estate and not to lay claims against one another.”17

  It looked like an amicable, sensible transaction. The Smirnovs, given the nation’s precarious state, may have believed that they would be unable to convert so many properties into cash should the need arise. Or they might have worried that disagreements or misunderstandings among them would prevent or delay a necessary sell off. But given what happened next, it appears that the elder Smirnovs may have wanted to preserve the most precious assets for themselves. The real estate division in 1901 turned out to be the first of several divisive actions that ultimately transformed blood brothers into fierce, feuding rivals.

  Sergey was the first Smirnov to break from the pack. His youthful face held surprisingly mature features for a sixteen-year-old, and he had a confidence about him that he inherited from his father. His dark hair, thick brows, and dark peach-fuzz mustache gave Sergey the look of someone who was fearless—and he was. Having been orphaned at the age of thirteen years, Sergey had grown up fast.

  He had been under Pyotr’s guardianship since Mariya’s death. The two, with a seventeen-year age gap between them, were not as close to one another as the three older brothers, but they appeared to have a decent relationship. When Sergey began romancing a singer he met at the Yar nightclub, Pyotr sent him money to woo her. He also helped him buy horses from Vladimir and paid to spruce up the house Sergey had been allocated in the real estate agreement. Still, relations between the two began to deteriorate shortly after the monopoly came to Moscow. When Sergey turned seventeen in April 1902, he successfully petitioned to have Pyotr replaced as his guardian. The two had been increasingly at odds over what the older brother termed Sergey’s “wastefulness.”

  Soon after, Pyotr teamed up with Vladimir and petitioned the court to appoint a new guardian over Sergey, at least until he turned twenty-one. In legal filings, they claimed that Sergey was squandering his inheritance. Nikolay was not a part of this effort, presumably, because of his own extravaganzas. Sergey fired back in filings with the court that his brothers were spreading lies
about him in an attempt to discredit him and gain greater control over the family business. “My brothers say they have the best intentions toward me…. I find it necessary to explain that only self interest motivates my brothers.” He pointed to the salaries the brothers paid themselves as well as the bonuses to make his case. “My older brothers, having the majority of voices [in the company], chose themselves to be directors of the company. They gave themselves each a 60,000 rubles salary yearly and 70,000 rubles bonus, even when the company started to suffer because of the introduction of the monopoly. Objections by my younger brother’s guardians couldn’t change anything.”18

  In a letter to Moscow’s general-governor dated July 6, 1902, Sergey outlined the ugly charges against him as well as his strident rebuttal.

  My brothers Pyotr and Vladimir spread rumors about me—that I have a passion for gambling, that I play the stock market, that I bet on horse races. They say this has led me to a situation of debts…. All these accusations, from the beginning to the end, are the fruits of pure imagination. I’ve never been to the stock exchange and I’ve never participated in such speculations. I also haven’t gambled in a long time and I haven’t visited the horse races for a long time. About a year ago I did visit the races several times and sometimes gambled, investing negligible sums of money. My brother, my guardian, knew it. All this was done just to have fun and it was done under the influence of my brother, Vladimir, who is known all over Moscow for his passion for the races and gambling…. My brothers Pyotr and Vladimir find it immoral and wasteful that I have lived with one woman for some time and that I spend a lot of money to support her. This is the only thing among their accusations that has some merit. But it is necessary to take into consideration some facts that accompanied my getting closer to this woman. My brother, Pyotr Petrovich, before accusing me, should have remembered that this affair started while he was my guardian and he knew about it and assisted me with it by giving me three times more money than I had received before when we started living together. My other accuser, Vladimir, openly left his wife to live with another woman. His sinful behavior was the reason why the court refused to allow him to be my young brother Aleksey’s guardian. As for me, I’m physically older than my true age. I was scared about the possibility of getting a bad [venereal] disease. So I found a solution. Nobody can charge me with having close relations with other women. I don’t drink vodka. I don’t smoke. I did have to spend money on this woman but the expenses…are greatly exaggerated by my brothers.19