Mark Lawrence Schrad - Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State

Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State

MARK LAWRENCE SCHRAD

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Oxford University Press 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 9780199755592

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

For my wife, Jennifer.
I have so many words to express so many things, but none could hope to describe my love and appreciation for who you are and all you do.

In this book, Russian names generally follow the British standard (BGN/PCGN) transliteration, with some alterations to accommodate the widely accepted English equivalents of familiar historical figures (for example, Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Catherine, rather than Tsar Nikolai and Tsaritsa Ekaterina). To aid pronunciation, I have opted to change the Russian ii ending to a y, and eliminate the Russian soft sign from personal and place names (so Maksim Gorkii becomes Maxim Gorky). These alterations do not apply to the bibliographic references in the notes, which maintain the standard transliteration for those who wish to consult the original sources.

A book about Russia based on vodka? Hows that going to sit with Russian readers? Well, when a New York Times article I wrote related to the subject found its way onto the Russian-language blogosphere, it certainly didnt take me long to find out: Vodka? Hey, while youre at it, dont forget the bears and balalaikas came one understandable rejoinder, drenched in the requisite sarcasm about gullible foreigners and their misguided perceptions about Russia. Dozens more jibes and sneers quickly followed.

To be sure, confronting well-worn clichs is an uncomfortable business. Especially when unflattering broadsides are made against an entire nation, they prompt a response from both those outside and inside the group such stereotypes purport to describe. For insiders, the usual response to a hurtful platitude is to downplay or deny it. Sympathetic outsiders normally try to politely ignore it. Rarely do offended parties embrace a perceived insult, and rarer still does anyone stop to investigate and explore it.

Obviously, in studying Russiaits people, culture, politics, and historywe encounter just such a widely held and uncomfortable stereotype in the form of the hopelessly drunken Russian. People who can barely locate Russia on a map readily associate it with insobriety, while foreigners studying the Russian language surely know how to say vodka well before they even learn to say hello.

Yet that image is not exclusive to foreigners: as the new millennium dawned, the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) asked actual Russian citizens what they considered the main symbol of twentieth-century Russia: vodka beat out not just bears and balalaikas, but also nesting dolls and even AK-47s for the top spot. Still, while everyone knows alcohol is a major social problem, vodkas roots run so deep in Russian history and culture that simply acknowledgingmuch less unpacking and confrontingthis endemic challenge seems somehow impolite, especially for an outsider.

Yet while virtually every developed country on earth put their so-called liquor question to bed a century ago, alcohol continues to bedevil high politics in Russia. For instance, in late 2011 and 2012, an unprecedented wave of popular opposition in Moscow nearly thwarted Vladimir Putins return to a third term as Russias president following four years as prime minister alongside his protg Dmitry Medvedev. In his last major speech to the Dumathe lower house of Russias parliamentbefore his re-inauguration, Putin highlighted Russias precarious health and demographic situation as one of his administrations most pressing political challenges. Without any wars or calamities, Putin said, smoking, alcohol, and drug abuse [alone] claim 500,000 lives of our countrymen every year. This is simply a horrific figure. Unless Putin suffers from amnesia, these indeed-horrific figures should not have come as any surprise: he repeatedly lamented vodkas ghastly toll during both his first and second administrations (20002008) in almost the same language.

Since Putin emerged on the political scene in 1999, Russian social indicators have unquestionably improved upon the unimaginable social devastation and economic demodernization in the years immediately following communisms collapse in 1991. The economy grew at some seven percent per year for an entire decade from 1998 to 2008 before getting hammered by the global financial crisis. Yet while the macroeconomic indicators were on the rebound, figures on Russian life expectancy more closely resembled sub-Saharan Africa than postindustrial Europe. Even today, the average teenage Russian boy has a worse chance of living to age sixty-five than do boys in failed states like Somalia and Ethiopia.

Russias tragic cultural weakness for vodka is often chalked up to the torments of the Russian soul. But simply assuming that intoxication and self-destruction are somehow inherent cultural traitsunalienable parts of what it is to be Russian, almost down to the genetic levelis akin to blaming the victim. There is nothing natural about Russias vodka disaster.

As I argue here, Russian societys longstanding attachment to the vodka bottleand the misfortune that follows in its wakeis instead a political disaster generated by the modern, autocratic Russian state. Before the rise of the modern Russian autocracy, the people of medieval Rus drank beers and ales naturally fermented from grains, plus meads naturally fermented from honey, and kvas naturally fermented from bread. If they were well-to-do, they imported wines fermented from grapes and berries. They not only drank beverages similar to those elsewhere on the European continent; they also imbibed similar amounts and in a similar manner. That all changed with the introduction of the very unnatural process of distillation, which created spirits and vodkas of a potencyand profitabilitythat nature simply could not match. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the grand princes and tsars of Muscovy monopolized the lucrative vodka trade, quickly promoting it as the primary means of extracting money and resources from their lowly subjects.