The King of Vodka

by Linda Himelstein

  CONTRASTING MOSCOW WITH St. Petersburg in the early 1900s was a bit like describing the difference between cotton and silk. One was an invaluable essential, a durable and workmanlike staple. The other was more precious, a sumptuous, fragile, and somewhat elusive luxury. Vladimir had always seemed drawn to the latter.

  Free of any obligation to the vodka business, he had begun to spend more time in St. Petersburg in the years after the 1905 revolution. Previously a frequent visitor to the city, Vladimir had taken in the theater, eaten in the finest restaurants, and mingled with the aristocracy, which had historically congregated more in St. Petersburg than in Moscow. But now, Vladimir sought something new. Following the sale of his shares in the family enterprise, the personal attacks he endured after Bloody Sunday, and the anti-alcohol sentiment raging throughout the empire, he yearned for a fresh start. He had more than enough money and could pursue his love of the arts, particularly theater, with renewed vigor. In St. Petersburg, Vladimir could reinvent himself.

  His attachment to the tsar’s hometown stemmed in part from a stud farm he purchased there, where, in addition to his stallions, mares, and colts, he kept the offspring of his prized thoroughbred Pylyuga, the trotters Valentinochka and Piontkovskaya, named after the popular operetta star Valentina Piontkovskaya.15 Vladimir had met the singer, most likely at one of her performances or at one of the many theater parties they both attended. She mesmerized him. Valentina’s dark eyes were expressive and memorable because they shone in the same way diamonds do, changing their sparkle and brightness with the slightest shift in her gaze. Her thick, dark mop of hair was often pinned back by a jeweled clasp or hidden under an elaborate, feathered hat. Valentina carried herself like a queen, dressing in the most splendid gowns and furs, set off by expensive necklaces perfectly draped across her neckline. She was, in a word, dazzling. Grigoriy Yaron, the son of a well-known director, actor, and writer of operettas, was also an admirer. He wrote that Valentina was “amazingly graceful so that you started to want to paint her every movement, her every pose.”16

  Her charisma came through as much on the stage as it did off. Theater critics referred to Valentina as a superstar, an actress who possessed a trifecta of artistic gifts. She could sing, dance, and act. Polish by birth, she studied her craft in Italy and performed in cities throughout the Russian Empire. She landed the lead role in the St. Petersburg production of Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, one of the most beloved operettas of the day. She also adored men, especially rich men.

  That was where Vladimir had his advantage, for she offered him exactly what he craved. As a starlet, she was invited to the most exclusive parties, and her social circle included an array of top Russian artists and actors. She reveled in the same ultraluxurious living as Vladimir did. He was also ideal for her, a dashing escort with seemingly infinite resources. As was the custom, he could be her lover and patron, underwriting her productions and funding the purchase of all the glamorous accessories necessary to maintain her highly cultivated public profile. “Diamonds and precious stones in general were something very peculiar to operetta actresses before the revolution [of 1917]. The quantity, quality and size of the diamonds were parameters used to judge the significance of a prima donna,” wrote one contemporary. “It became clear that along with high salaries, actresses needed to find other sources of income. These sources of income were found in the faces of admirers who sometimes spent enormous amounts of money for their objects of adoration.”17

  In no time at all, Vladimir and Valentina began living together in Vladimir’s spacious apartment in the center of the city. Vladimir showered his new muse with diamonds and an imported wardrobe; he hosted opulent gatherings or tributes for her, sparing no expense on the menu or entertainment. Details of the menu from one event reveal that Vladimir’s parties featured an array of delicacies, which could include quail, Chinese pheasant, Siberian hazel grouse, red partridge, and French fatted fowl. He also planned the specific pieces he wanted the orchestra to play during the evening. One night featured a program of Mendelssohn, Brahms, and excerpts from Gounod’s Faust and Bizet’s Carmen.18

  Those expenditures, however, paled in comparison to the money Vladimir paid out to underwrite Valentina’s flourishing career. He purchased operettas for her to star in from a variety of composers. He paid for the other actors as well as supporting personnel, props, and costumes. He even rented out grand theaters such as the Passazh (arcade) for her productions.19 The opulent Passazh was a complex on three levels, complete with shops, a restaurant, and a giant theater hall that seated more than five hundred people. While his desire to please Valentina motivated him, he also had personal aspirations that amounted to more than simply playing the role of financier. He wanted to gain recognition as a theatrical producer—and in some cases as even more than that. In one instance, Vladimir purchased the rights to a new foreign-language operetta and tried to hire the well-known Mark Yaron, Grigoriy Yaron’s father, to translate the production into Russian. Vladimir then made another peculiar request. According to Grigoriy, Vladimir asked that his name be included on the poster advertising the operetta as one of its authors. Mark Yaron, outraged at the bold demand, fired back in a way that infuriated Vladimir. “I only told Smirnov that I was used to seeing his surname not on posters for plays but on vodka bottles,” recalled Grigoriy.20

  Vladimir was deeply wounded, much in the same manner he had been when his first wife refused his hand when it was offered. He was trying to move beyond his past, at least the part that associated him with liquor more than theater. To Vladimir, Yaron’s comment, whether intentional or not, belittled his foray into the arts and insinuated that he would never be able to move past his vodka heritage. Vladimir sued Mark Yaron for what he claimed was an unforgivable insult. The outcome of the case is unknown, although its very existence demonstrates just how driven Vladimir was to develop his life in St. Petersburg, free from the taint of alcohol.

  The potency of the brand his father built made Vladimir’s goal of a new life unusually difficult. Vladimir’s ties to his former life in Moscow were as solid as cement. Aleksandra, his second wife, and his young son, Vladimir, still lived there. Vladimir’s cold and public snubbing of Aleksandra left her shattered even more than his first wife had been. Worse for Aleksandra was that her husband demanded and received custody of their son. Young Vladimir went to live with his father and Valentina in St. Petersburg during these years, leaving Aleksandra distraught and desperate—a condition that would later make itself known in a surprising and frightening way.

  Vladimir also faced an increasingly hostile populace as the debate over what to do about the alcohol problem raged throughout Russia. The people’s ire had been awakened by the events of 1905, and it had not dissipated in the least. As the debate widened and grew more heated, a series of high-profile initiatives in 1909 reflected popular attitudes, which condemned not just the uncontrollable drunkards but also the manufacturers and sellers of spirits. This rhetoric vilified old-time vodka makers like Smirnov, much in the same way as Chekhov’s column had two decades earlier.

  Mikhail Chelyshev was a merchant who had been elected to the Duma on an anti-vodka, anti-monopoly platform. Referred to informally as “a sobriety apostle,” he crusaded against what he believed to be a chief cause of revolutionary fervor: “The system of national alcoholization.” He fought against all aspects of the alcohol trade believing alcohol to be a core weakness that prevented his nation from achieving greatness. Wisely, he utilized Lev Tolstoy to sharpen his point.21

  Chelyshev paid a visit to the eighty-one-year-old Tolstoy in October 1909. The distinguished writer, though frail, remained a passionate temperance advocate and was a supporter of Chelyshev. The two discussed how best to educate citizens about the harmful nature of liquor. One solution was to put a menacing label on all bottles of state-produced vodka. Chelyshev asked Tolstoy to design the label, which he did, proposing a simple yet powerful script. Alongside a sketch of a skull and crossbones, Tols
toy suggested just one word: “Poison.”22 He explained, “Wine [vodka] is a poison that is harmful for the soul and for the body. That is why it is a sin to drink wine [vodka] and to treat others with wine [vodka]. Also, it is a bigger sin to produce this poison and to sell it.”23

  It was a novel and brilliant concept. Had Russia adopted it, the country would have been decades ahead of the rest of the world in warning its people about the health dangers of alcohol. But that was not to be. Though the Duma voted in favor of the warning label, the Imperial Council discussed and then tabled the measure, dooming its passage. Among the chief critics was the tsar’s minister of finance, who feared that warning labels would cripple the government’s finances.

  Still, the state got the message. It took concrete steps to demonstrate that it was not only taking the alcohol problem seriously but that it was also looking for solutions. At the urging of the conservative yet reform-minded prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, the state backed the First All-Russian Congress Against Drunkenness. It was to be a series of public meetings that would air the viewpoints of numerous factions, including doctors, academics, and women’s groups. The Social Democratic Party also waded into the debate, urging its members to participate in the public meetings in order to “tie the private question of alcoholism with the general aims and tasks of the workers’ movement.”24 The congress met in December 1909 and then again in January of the following year, fueling the aspirations of temperance advocates, which were moving from promoting a curb on drinking to an outright ban.

  This trend complicated Vladimir’s personal makeover. The more enlightened and incensed Russians became about their alcohol dependency, the more vilified the state and its vodka makers became. Vladimir persisted anyway, immersing himself in the beauty of St. Petersburg and in the love of Valentina. The two traveled together often during this time, both domestically and abroad. They headed to locales for weeks or even months at a time so Valentina could appear in productions and solidify her growing fame.[37]

  As for Vladimir’s brother, Pyotr Petrovich, the monopoly debates dovetailed with his agenda. It was beginning to look as if it would be only a matter of time before the vodka monopoly vanished, a victim of anti-tsarist, anti-state propaganda. With careful planning, maybe Pyotr would be able to regain his father’s former dominance. Pyotr was on the brink of landing the prestigious title of purveyor to the king of Spain. At home, advertisements touting Smirnov’s cognacs, grape wines, and flavored liqueurs seemed to be having their intended effect as Smirnov captured a greater share of the market. The trick for Pyotr was to keep the public rhetoric focused on the state and its vodka monopoly. He could not allow it to mushroom into a referendum against the entire liquor industry, or worse, into talk of prohibition.

  The king of vodka’s oldest son might have had the skills and cunning to pull off such a feat, if only death had not gotten in the way.

  Chapter 20

  Sudden Chaos

  Pyotr Petrovich Smirnov died unexpectedly on April 25, 1910 “after a short but severe illness.”1 He was just forty-two years old. His passing was not a national event like that following his father’s death, but it was noteworthy and, in some very tangible ways, much more consequential. The younger Pyotr’s death was like a falling domino, the first in a series of occurrences that tore into the heart of the Smirnov family and crippled the vodka firm. No one had been prepared for the void he left. It had all happened too fast.

  Pyotr had been a community and business leader, a man well known, well respected, and well liked. He had possessed and practiced his father’s winning combination: a quick mind and an uncanny ability to appear conventional while quietly blazing new trails. Thousands of people turned out for his funeral and burial. Colorful wreaths piled high on his casket, as mourners expressed condolences to his widow, Eugeniya, and their five children. Tributes appeared in leading publications. Most emphasized his charitable work and business savvy, praising Smirnov’s son for his inventiveness and foresight. Compatriots from his industry were particularly saddened by Pyotr’s death, sensing that they had lost one of their most determined and effective advocates.

  A publication representing the liquor and food trades summed it up best.

  At the funeral were thousands of people. Those crowds of people, who came to bury Pyotr Petrovich, knew whom they had lost. They knew that the heart that had stopped beating was that of a responsible, gentle, and kind man, always going to the aid of those laboring and burdened. Shelters, almshouses, and various schools knew that the most fervent guardian and protector had gone away. Merchants and industrialists, gathered in so great a number, knew that already there was no brighter and more energetic defender of their interests and needs. If the unfortunate and laboring felt a frightening loss, an even bigger loss was felt by industry and trade, having lost their bright representative. Home industry is struggling through heavy years, especially those branches to which Pyotr Smirnov stood closest—that is the food and drink business.

  Pyotr Petrovich was not only a man of words. He was mainly a man of business. He not only spoke but he also acted. Words for him did not walk a separate path from business. In particular, the deceased was unsatisfied with the state wine [vodka] monopoly. He understood that the monopolistic trade of wine [vodka] brings frightening damage both to the population and to closely adjoined branches of industry. He hotly fought for the destruction of the state wine [vodka] trade. Any project in this direction met with his special attention…. Recalling his joyous memory, it is impossible not to say: Sleep peacefully! That work which you did in the span of your whole life will be carried on…. There will come a time when this work will yield its results.”2

  That time never came. Pyotr’s death left the spirits industry without one of its most outspoken defenders. No one stepped in to galvanize the sector the way he had. Indeed, the passion for its anti-monopoly crusade seemed to have withered, overrun by an increasingly vibrant and vigilant temperance movement. The anti-alcohol campaign had matured and strengthened. Its rants about the evils of liquor had grown more confident, more scientific, and more reasoned. Its endgame had broadened, too, escalating beyond demands for a repeal of the monopoly or a reduction in consumption into talk of complete prohibition.

  This onslaught stemmed in good part from the deteriorating condition of society and a general acceptance among Russians that alcoholism was a leading contributor. This situation was a chief topic of the day, its discussion no longer a sign of rebellion. The public’s grave concern was reflected regularly in articles critical of the state’s liquor policies and the tsar himself. According to Novoye Vremya, a large-circulation newspaper published twice a day in St. Petersburg: “Everybody speaks about alcoholism now. The state could easily end alcoholism thanks to the monopoly, as the alcohol income makes up one-quarter of our budget.”3 Another article was more dramatic in its assessment, charging that “Russia is dying because of alcohol.”4 The press devoted buckets of ink to this topic. At one point, more than thirty different journals were dedicated solely to the coverage of temperance.5

  Another factor boosting the anti-alcohol movement turned out to be the death of Lev Tolstoy in 1910, less than seven months after Pyotr Petrovich died. Tolstoy’s vehement opposition to the state’s alcohol policies was well documented. He had railed for decades against the ills of liquor, one of the few to emphasize that it was not a problem plaguing only the poorest segments of society. “The ugliness and, above all, the meaninglessness of our life stems primarily from the constant state of drunkenness in which the majority of our people of all classes, callings, and positions are now to be found,” Tolstoy wrote toward the end of his life.6 The Commission on the Question of Drunkenness called a special meeting to commemorate Tolstoy’s passing and to celebrate his temperance principles. His death sparked numerous demonstrations among student activists and others throughout Russia. They marched against everything from poor working conditions to the death penalty. One protest drew 10,000 people to the str
eets of St. Petersburg, disrupting the flow of trams and pedestrian walkways.

  Without Pyotr’s leadership, the Smirnovs struggled to fend off the tidal wave headed their way. His untimely passing left the company defenseless in a sense. His will, hastily composed just three days before his death, bequeathed all his property and the rights to the remnants of his father’s business solely to his wife, Eugeniya Ilyinichna Smirnova. She would have use of the family’s real estate throughout her lifetime and was unilaterally responsible for the guardianship of their children, each of whom was to receive 50,000 rubles (more than $580,000 today) when they reached the age of twenty-five. Thus, Eugeniya became the chief executive and solitary owner of Smirnov’s liquor firm.

  Eugeniya had never shown any real interest in her husband’s business, nor did she have any experience that would have prepared her for her new responsibilities. In fact, when Pyotr Petrovich appointed his wife in 1905 as his partner in the company, he did so as a formality to retain his status as a trading house. He had never intended for Eugeniya to work there, much less serve as its top executive. Like most women in high society, Eugeniya was the product of a private boarding school, a girl born and bred to assume her rightful place among the elite. She loved traveling abroad and was a regular fixture at some of the grandest hotels in Europe. Her grandson described her as “a woman who didn’t have a head for business, hadn’t been involved in business matters. She was as free as a bird. That’s how she had spent her life.”7 Her daughters were being groomed in much the same way. “Their prime concern was spending money, traveling,” Eugeniya’s grandson later recalled.8

  Eugeniya, a widow at just forty-one, was not prepared to spearhead the company’s next steps, particularly in the midst of such a turbulent environment. Although many Smirnov loyalists were still employed by the vodka factory, within a few short months Eugeniya tapped her eldest son, Arseniy, to be her surrogate regarding family business matters when she was otherwise engaged or unavailable. It was an odd, reckless choice for her to make, primarily because her son was sixteen years old. A special amendment to the bylaws of the company had to be drafted just to allow Arseniy to assume his new role.9 What’s more, he was not mature enough to grasp the depth of the struggle facing the vodka industry nor astute enough to manage critical relations with key business contacts. These weaknesses, and the irreparable damage that resulted from them, became apparent almost immediately.