Russian regimes complicit in people's vodka addiction

Vodka Politics
by Mark Lawrence Schrad
Oxford University Press
3.5 stars

Everything you've heard about Russians and their consumption of copious amounts of vodka is true. Not only that, but Russia has lurched - physically and figuratively - from one government to the next, from war to peace and economic boom to bust, all while well and truly sauced on the lethal clear liquor.

That's the argument Mark Lawrence Schrad makes in Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State. His case is amply sprinkled with the juicy details that emerge after any good p***-up, such as how Stalin used to push his deputies into a pond when he got drunk. Schrad does an excellent job of compiling such anecdotes, and delivering a steady stream of statistics to support his theory that vodka played a central role in all of Russia's woes for hundreds of years.

"Russia's society-wide addiction to alcohol is not only a social and cultural problem in its own right, but is also symptomatic of a deeper political illness, an autocratic state that benefits from alcoholic excess and is consequently hostile to grass-roots activism that promotes the interests and welfare of society," Schrad writes.

Key to the Russian addiction was the shift from drinking traditional meads, kavas, wines and beers to guzzling the far cheaper and more potent vodka, a shift that began in the 15th and 16th centuries. Rather than pubs being a hotbed of political debate, the alcohol trade was controlled by the state, including the local kabak, or tavern, which meant the state could better keep an eye on its people. It gave the authorities a cheap, powerful way to keep the masses drunk, divided and often poor, but it was also very lucrative for the government.

"The macabre beauty of building such a system on a foundation of vodka was that the peasant did not see vodka as the source of his bondage but, rather, as an escape to freedom," Schrad writes.

At the height of Russia's tsarist empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, the three main sources of revenue were the poll tax, salt tax and vodka tax. Alcohol revenues made up one third of the state operating budget.

One of the themes that emerges repeatedly is the simple coarseness of Russia's vodka drinking. This was no elegant tippling. The French will praise the scent of their wine and Scots laud the flavour of their whisky, but the Russian gulps his vodka down without paying attention to anything but its effects. Peter the Great, a drunken lout who reportedly drank 30 to 40 glasses of wine a day and even as a child began his days with vodka and sherry, threw a wedding for dwarfs where he forced everyone to drink until they were ill. Stalin repeatedly forced his staff and cohorts to drink until they were comatose, allowing him to tap their secret opinions while causing many of them to become dependent on alcohol.