Arseniy learned the hard way how pivotal his father’s dedication and personal stature had been in preserving the financial health of the Smirnov’s vodka business and its broader interests. In 1909, the last full year Pyotr Petrovich ran the business, it employed five hundred people and grossed 7 million rubles.10 That was down considerably from its high of 19.7 million rubles in 1897 but still quite respectable in light of the monopoly and the contentious political landscape. Pyotr had done it in part by stepping up production of flavored vodkas, grape wines, and cognacs, and exporting greater proportions of vodka. In addition, he solidified his place as an industry ambassador of sorts, helping to launch and then pilot the Central Bureau. Competitors and allies alike held Pyotr in high regard and treated him with great deference.
The company had claimed for years that it had a right to display four state coats of arms on Smirnov’s labels and in advertisements. But members of the Central Bureau questioned whether this kind of marketing was appropriate, particularly because it was Pyotr Petrovich’s father who had earned the coveted awards and accolades. They argued that these rights could not be passed to a son who had eight years earlier dissolved the original business and formed another. His rivals had precedent on their side. Indeed, it was Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov himself who had successfully argued that the inheritor of the Popov Trading House could not use a state coat of arms earned by the founder.
Still, the Central Bureau chose not to go to battle over its gripe. Instead, it approached Pyotr Petrovich directly. After some quiet discussions, the two sides reached an amicable agreement. Pyotr promised to remove one of the coats of arms from his labels and advertisements, conceding that it had been a mistake to use it. In the future, he would use only three. That would have been the end of the matter except that Pyotr died before making good on his bargain. The Central Bureau then followed up with Arseniy, but Pyotr’s son repeatedly refused to honor his father’s pact. He and other Smirnov managers claimed that the paperwork related to the use of the coats of arms was unavailable. They stalled for time, convinced that they had inherited the right to use the honors. They probably hoped the situation would simply go away, a costly miscalculation, exacerbated by Arseniy’s haughty refusal to pay a bill for advertisements his father purchased to run in the Central Bureau’s bulletin prior to his death.
Tensions boiled over between the two parties. Former allegiances to Pyotr were exhausted. Now, the Central Bureau concluded, it had no other choice but to take legal action. It filed a petition with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, which opened an investigation into the Smirnov’s use of not one but all four state coats of arms. The Central Bureau contended: “The newly reformed firm Trading House P. Smirnov by law can buy only the movable and immovable property of liquidating enterprises. By no means can it buy distinguishing features, such as a coat of arms granted to the P. A. Smirnov Association. Consequently, the Trading House P. Smirnov has been enjoying up to this time a right not belonging to it, the right to carry on its labels and other such items the coats of arms, medals, and awards.”11 The Smirnovs fired back that they inherited the hard-earned designations: “We consider ourselves within our rights to use on signs and products four representations of the state coat of arms.”12
The legal fracas was nasty. The Smirnovs had plenty of sympathizers, some of whom expressed their opinions publicly in periodicals. Industry insiders, especially the Central Bureau, broadcast their views the loudest. They seemed intent on wounding the Smirnovs, bitter over the shabby treatment they received from their former ally’s son. Worse, the controversy bled over into the company’s most cherished asset, its right to the title of purveyor to the Imperial Court. This distinction was still a coveted and invaluable marketing tool, despite the tsar’s sagging public image. Indeed, when one of Smirnov’s chief competitors, N. L. Shustov & Sons, received the purveyor title in 1912, it was rumored that Shustov was so anxious to show off his newly elevated status that he trashed all his old labels and replaced them with ones highlighting his award in just one night.13
Given the gravity of the situation facing the family, it appears that Eugeniya and a more business-minded representative working on her behalf intervened. Arseniy was no longer the point person on this issue, a wise last-minute shift. Eugeniya saved face by getting a temporary license to keep the purveyor title and one state coat of arms. The Ministry stripped the other three from the Smirnovs in late 1911, a devastating blow to the company.[38] The loss in stature, occurring in tandem with the raging anti-alcohol movement and disarray within Smirnov’s management ranks, contributed to an alarming drop in profits. Gross revenue fell by more than 5 million rubles in 1912, and about 150 employees at the warehouse and factory lost their jobs.14
The Smirnovs suffered from even more negative press when the Shustovs sued the company for trademark infringement. Perhaps smelling blood in the water, the Shustovs claimed that the Smirnovs were copying the name of one of its popular specialty drinks, a cherry-flavored vodka known as Spotykatch, a derivative of the Russian word meaning “to stumble.”15 In point of fact, many vodka makers produced flavored vodkas under the Spotykatch moniker; the court threw out the case, concluding that the word could not be trademarked as it was too commonly used to refer to cherry-flavored drinks.
Still, the bad news just kept coming. Relations between Eugeniya and her son Arseniy grew contentious. He had begun to show troubling signs of behavior similar to Nikolay. Arseniy spent money like it was vodka, free-flowing and infinitely available. He overpaid for two homes, which cost him a total of nearly 1 million rubles.16 He then issued promissory notes in the amount of 150,000 rubles, which returned to him less than 15,000 rubles.17 No one knows why Arseniy’s behavior turned so destructive: it might have been the pressure from the business, the loss of his father, or his absentee mother who, like many aristocrats, left her children in the care of trusted nannies and guardians while she traveled throughout Europe. Regardless, he had to be stopped.
Eugeniya implored Arseniy to curtail his extravagant spending. He sued her, in turn, alleging that she had short-changed him on his inheritance. “Relations between my mother and me are pretty strained,” Arseniy wrote in his complaint. He questioned the financial allowances he had been given, noting that this would be “an issue of a lawsuit.”18 A court found Arseniy’s charges against his mother baseless, but the rift between the two remained. A court-appointed guardian was put in place to monitor his finances, and Arseniy was removed from his position in the Smirnov company. Eugeniya still had no intention of taking the helm of the company. By that time, she had met Umberto de la Valle Ricci, an Italian diplomat and the man she would later marry. It is likely that Eugeniya decided to spend time with him, either in Japan where he would serve as ambassador, or in Europe. She gave her power of attorney to a trusted confidante to run the vodka business in her absence.
Eugeniya seems never to have sought assistance from Vladimir during this period of crises. Their lives were completely separate…and he was dealing with problems of his own.
TENSIONS IN ST. Petersburg were running high. The air in the city was heavy, weighed down by an unspecified uneasiness in the atmosphere. For the most elite members of society, like Vladimir, the mood was especially gloomy and foreboding. A book about St. Petersburg during this time described the city’s “doom, a [feeling of] closeness to the end of the existing social structure.”19 People responded to their fears in different ways—some did nothing, trusting tradition and the monarchy to take care of them; some got passports and fled to seemingly more stable lands; some dug in, intensifying their ardent support of the status quo; others joined the ranks of the disenfranchised, fighting for reforms and more humanistic policies. And some, like Vladimir, took more drastic measures. They armed themselves.
On June 26, 1910, Vladimir applied to the local police department on behalf of himself and a servant for the right to purchase and carry a revolver. He wrote in his application that his vast wealth and treasure tr
ove of valuables made him a target of the city’s criminals and the needy.20 He still lived in a huge and luxurious apartment on Nadezhdinskaya Street, one of St. Petersburg’s most fashionable neighborhoods. His lifestyle was opulent and showy, and he continued to host lavish parties at chic restaurants. This life was what Vladimir wanted—and he sought a gun to protect it. He recalled all too well the frightening attacks he endured following the uprising in 1905. Little did he know that the greatest threat, at least at that moment, lay within his own inner circle.
His estranged wife, Aleksandra, was stewing back in Moscow, pining away for her eleven-year-old boy who had been ripped from her to live with his father in St. Petersburg. She was frantic with grief over the loss of little Volodya. Aleksandra now plotted her next move. She went to court, in part to secure her divorce from Vladimir and in part to gain official permission to see her son. The judge acquiesced to her request, but he allowed her visiting privileges only twice a week for just two-and-a-half hours each time.21 For Aleksandra, though, this access was more than enough.
In March 1912 she boarded the train to St. Petersburg. Vladimir and Valentina were “living abroad at the moment,” according to a St. Petersburg newspaper, likely traveling on theater business. They had hired a tutor and a governess to look after Volodya full time. The tutor shared a room with the boy while the governess, who also inhabited the apartment, taught him music and foreign languages. When Aleksandra showed up on Vladimir’s doorstep early one morning, it was not a day that she was legally authorized to see her son. According to newspaper accounts, which referred to Vladimir as a Moscow manufacturer even though he had not been in the liquor business for seven years, she explained that she was unable to visit on her designated day. So she had come at a more convenient time. This was a lie.
The doorman let Mrs. Smirnova enter on the grand staircase and went away to distribute the mail. The servants who opened the door to Mrs. Smirnova also quickly returned to their usual duties—morning cleaning. The governess and the tutor were not prepared for the sudden meeting with [Volodya’s] mother. So it is unknown where and under what circumstances a meeting between the mother and her son took place. It was a matter of two to three minutes. When the servants went to close the street door, Mrs. Smirnova and her son Vladimir were already out of the apartment…. A search brought no results.
People say that the boy, who loved his mother madly, said to her many times before “Mommy, don’t cry. I’ll always be yours.” The servants, the doorman, the governess and the tutor can’t tell the police what happened. They say everything happened too fast.”22
Another article ran under the headline “New Adventures of a Millionaire’s Son.” It reiterated the facts of the kidnapping, adding that Volodya had run into his mother’s arms and that the whereabouts of the boy and Aleksandra were unknown. It was not Aleksandra’s first attempt at nabbing her son. She had tried to escape with him earlier in March from a railroad station, according to the newspaper, but that plan had been foiled.
Aleksandra now had her boy back. The two soon surfaced together in Moscow. Although it is not clear what transpired next, in the end Vladimir declined to press charges against Aleksandra, allowing Volodya to remain with her. He may have determined that his son was better off with a more attentive, physically present parent. He had no intention of curtailing his travels or pursuits in the theater world. His life with Valentina demanded flexibility and spontaneity. And too, he could not deny Aleksandra’s deep love for their child—and Volodya’s love for her. What’s more, as the situation in Russia, particularly in St. Petersburg, grew precarious he may have reasoned that Volodya would be safer in Moscow.
THE TSAR’S CENTURIES-OLD stronghold on Russia was weakening. Many factors contributed to this historic loss of confidence. First, the tsar’s regime continued with its harsh punitive pursuits. Prosecutions, arrests, and exiles had accelerated as the Imperial Court sought to silence its critics. Executions, often in the form of public hangings, were commonplace; cruel, moblike displays of what could happen to those who spoke out against the tsar’s authority. Censorship reigned, too, muzzling revolutionaries and their allies. The State Duma, once a promising symbol of democratic reform, had been virtually neutered. Its members heralded almost universally from the upper classes, and its legislative initiatives rarely amounted to more than political discourse since the tsar had retaken the power to reject any law it passed.
Contributing further to the instability was the emergence of Grigoriy Rasputin, the charismatic holy man from Siberia who penetrated the royal family’s inner circle. Convincing the family that he was the only one who could heal the tsar’s hemophiliac son, Rasputin came to be known by Nikolay II as “our friend,” while his wife, Empress Aleksandra, viewed him among her most trusted confidants. She sought Rasputin’s advice on matters as far flung as ministerial appointments and on managing relations with foreign nations. Rasputin’s influence was highly controversial. Many observers claimed he was a womanizer, a sexual deviant, a fraud, even a spy. He was also later accused of having an affair with the tsarina. Citizens, particularly in aristocratic circles, were repulsed by his unorthodox opinions and lifestyle, and they secretly feared that his presence was poisoning the Romanovs and dooming their reign.
Overall, the public’s tolerance of this situation and the monarchy was akin to a balloon on the brink of bursting. The government’s two-faced stance on liquor did not help either. Despite the state’s wishful thinking, consumption had skyrocketed under its vodka monopoly. The tsar’s sobriety initiatives as well as private efforts to curtail drinking proved to be miserable failures. Inside the Duma, which was proposing a series of measures to combat drunkenness, verbal attacks focused on Witte’s replacement as minister of finance, Vladimir Kokovtsov. Accused of manipulating the vodka monopoly for the benefit of the treasury, Kokovtsov opposed any proposal aimed at fighting alcoholism if it did not also account for the state’s fiscal needs. This unbending posture made the new minister of finance a lightning rod. The newspapers were full of harsh criticisms and featured cartoons playing up the government’s hypocrisy.
Finally, in January 1914, Nikolay II had had enough. He decided to see for himself how his people were faring when it came to the liquor problem. He was horrified by what he witnessed, noting that he observed “tragic scenes of the degeneration of the people, the poverty of families, and the decline of households as a result of drunkenness.”23 He immediately dismissed Kokovtsov and demanded that his successor embark on a series of reforms aimed at weaning the state off its own vodka dependency. “We cannot make our fiscal prosperity dependent upon the destruction of the spiritual and economic powers of many of my subjects, and therefore it is necessary to direct our financial policy towards seeking government revenues from the unexhausted sources of the country’s wealth and from the creative toil of the people, to seek constantly, while preserving wise economy, to increase the productive powers of the country and to take care of the satisfaction of the people’s needs. Such must be the ends of the desired changes. I am firmly convinced that they must succeed and that they are absolutely necessary for the good of my people, especially since both the Duma and Imperial Council have turned their attention to these needs of the people by revising our alcohol laws.”24
The march toward prohibition in Russia was on.
OVER THE NEXT six months, the state restricted the amount of outlets selling liquor, closed distilleries, gave greater control over alcohol bans to local officials, and replaced its monopoly-driven revenue with other sources. More than eight hundred petitions requesting the adoption of local prohibitions were approved by July 1914, and 1,100 retail shops had been shuttered. The tsar then ordered that the vodka monopoly, which had provided jobs to an estimated 200,000 men, including 23,000 barkeepers, be rescinded. A gradual, carefully orchestrated drive toward a dry Russia was on course, bringing with it, it seemed, the fate of Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov’s once almighty vodka empire.
But t
hen, Russia had not counted on the Great War.
Chapter 21
Revolution
For a time, it seemed that World War I might save Russia from itself. The country had been plagued by an almost daily parade of strikes and other disturbances. Confidence in the government was at an all-time low. Trust in the tsar and his leadership was nearly exhausted. But with the declaration of war, Russians had a new, more alluring target for their rage: Germany.
People throughout the country rallied around their emperor and motherland, replacing their deep-seated resentments with heartfelt patriotism and pride. From nearly every window and rooftop, the tsarist flag flew. Peasants and aristocrats alike listened with renewed admiration as their leader, dressed in uniform, addressed them from the Winter Palace, promising a thrilling triumph. The Duma, which had been a nest of political bickering, snapped into place as a cohesive body, fervently backing the tsar and his wartime pronouncements. There was nothing the nation would not do to demonstrate its collective devotion. Symbolically, St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd to rid the city of its German-sounding moniker. Mobs raised and burned the German Embassy in the capital city; soldiers enthusiastically and confidently marched off to a battle certain they would win. “A torrent of love for Holy Mother Russia poured forth. The war had come at the right moment; it afforded an outlet for the frustrations and hatreds that for so long had been turning Russian against Russian. Once more, if only temporarily, things were back in proper order.”1
The King of Vodka Page 27