The King of Vodka (2 page)

Was Smirnov afraid of what the afterlife might have in store for him? It's not hard to imagine. More than a decade before Smirnov's death, the stigma attached to alcohol—and alcoholism—was intensifying. The topic had been debated for many years. A handful of temperance societies had been founded.
Writers had portrayed foul drunkards in their literature. They were always the lost, weak souls who could do little more than inspire pity and wreak havoc. Fyodor Dostoevskiy, for instance, whose own father was a cruel drunk, wrote passionately about the perils of alcoholism: “The consumption of alcoholic beverages brutalizes and makes a man savage, hardens him, distracts him from bright thoughts, blunts all good propaganda and above all else weakens the will, and in general uproots any kind of humanity.”
¹¹
These eloquent rants were certainly thought provoking, but they did not inspire a call to action, nor did they give anyone reason enough to take on a government addicted to its annual vodka windfalls.

At the height of Smirnov's popularity in the 1880s, Russia's anti-alcohol movement began a slow progression. More organizations touting sobriety popped up. More books described the harmful effects of alcohol. Writers, clergy, and doctors took up the cause. Apart from basic information on health, temperance leaders also had the sad state of the vodka industry on their side. At the time, hundreds of rogue distillers and corrupt tavern owners were operating throughout Russia. They cared little about the quality of their often dirty, bitter swill, which was routinely diluted with water, lime, or sandalwood. It had even been known to poison some unlucky imbibers.

All that mattered to these renegade producers was quantity. Their primary objective was to claim as many rubles as possible. They attacked one another, taking on leading producers of the day, such as Smirnov, Popov, and Shustov. They peddled counterfeit vodkas, including Smirnov's, and some rivals even hired scientists to test vodkas made by the largest distillers—and then declared them rotten or impure.

The stoic Smirnov was incensed. He had spent his life cultivating an image of respect and morality that was beyond reproach. Smirnov fought back with full-page ads defending his vodkas and slamming his critics. He developed branded corks,
hoping to trip up his rivals. The battles and Smirnov's countermeasures riveted many observers, but to famed playwright Anton Chekhov, they were abhorrent—and examples of the worst of Russia. Long before he penned
Uncle Vanya
and
The Cherry Orchard
, Chekhov, a physician by training, chronicled in 1885 what he dubbed a “war” among vodka producers. He wrote about the peddlers of “satan's blood,” the evil vodka makers who he predicted one day would destroy one another. In a column he wrote for
Shards
magazine in St. Petersburg, Chekhov singled out Smirnov as one of the chief offenders. “Each enemy, trying to prove that the vodka of his competitor is worthless, sends torpedoes, sinks ships, and exasperates with politics. What
isn't
done in order to sprinkle pepper in the nose of the sleeping enemy?…In all likelihood, the war will end with the producers suing each other…. Fighting spiders eat each other so that in the end, only the legs are left.”
¹²

These public tongue-lashings pressured the tsar and his government, which finally determined that something needed to be done. In 1886, a law was passed making it a crime for employers to continue their common practice of substituting vodka or anything else for wages. All salaries were to be paid in cash. Pubs were banished. These laws, however, did little to sober up Russians—or the workplace. But they did embolden other anti-alcohol crusaders, the most celebrated one being Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

Tolstoy had been a world-class carouser as a young man, despite his somewhat awkward and reserved nature. He spent much of his early adulthood living in the heart of a war that made no sense to him. He hid his misgivings under a mountain of cigarettes, loose women, and gambling binges. Never an ardent tippler, Tolstoy nonetheless found that moderate imbibing enabled him to slip into situations he otherwise would have never dared to enter. After a religious crisis following the great success of
Anna Karenina,
Tolstoy admitted, with horror, to his transgressions in
Confessions,
a moralistic tome that first appeared in 1879. “I killed people in war; summoned others to duels in order to kill them, gambled at cards; I devoured the fruits of the peasants' labor and punished them; I fornicated and practiced deceit. Lying, thieving, promiscuity of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder—there was not a crime I did not commit.”
¹³

Now Tolstoy devoted himself to evangelizing abstinence. His reputation enabled him to reach vast numbers of people. For the next three decades, he wrote regularly about the perils of drinking, which he considered the root of all evil. In an 1886 comedic play titled
The First Distiller
, for instance, Tolstoy invented his own vodka concoction. The ingredients: blood of a fox, a wolf, and a pig. He also founded a publishing house to disseminate moralistic literature, and he enlisted his friend, noted artist Ilya Repin, to illustrate some of his writings. In 1887, he founded the Union Against Drunkenness, a grassroots temperance society.

Early one morning that year, Tolstoy called the people in his village of Yasnaya Polyana together. A table and bench were placed before the communal house near his estate. Tolstoy reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and placed it on the table next to a bottle of ink and a pen. He then spoke passionately about the curses of tobacco and vodka. He entreated every man to sign the paper, a pledge to drink no more. Once they did, many at the urgings of their wives and children, Tolstoy asked them to dig a ditch. It was quickly filled with cigarettes, cigars, jars of tobacco, pipes, and cigar cases.
¹⁴

Smirnov was undoubtedly aware of Tolstoy's high-profile campaign, and he probably resented his life's work being characterized as amoral or anti-Christian. After all, Smirnov saw himself quite the opposite. He rose from modest means to become a respected business leader, the proud patriarch of an empire that
provided jobs to five thousand Russians and funneled millions of rubles to the tsar's treasury.
¹⁵
What's more, Smirnov believed he had turned vodka making into a kind of art form. He cared deeply about the quality and purity of his pristine formulas, and he claimed that his ingredients were the best, his vodkas the finest.

Ultimately, though, vodka itself was blamed. Tsar Aleksander III could no longer ignore the problem of alcoholism in his country. In 1895, three years before Smirnov's death, the tsar established the State Vodka Monopoly in order to control the amount, and ensure the quality, of alcohol sold to the public. After that, vodka could be sold only in state-run stores, crippling independent distillers like Smirnov. His company managed to remain profitable, switching much of its vodka operation to other products and spirits, such as wine and Cognac. But Smirnov's output eventually shriveled to a fraction of what it had been before the monopoly. No longer did some two hundred horse-drawn lorries bring barrels of liquor from the railroad to Smirnov's warehouses. No longer was Smirnov's factory able to produce his most famous drink, Table Wine No. 21 (vodka), or an array of his other original recipes.

As the signs of a more treacherous business environment rose, his health grew precarious, too. Smirnov began to plan for death. His goal was to craft an uncontestable will. He wanted no ambiguity about his desire. Smirnov had reason for concern. He had had three wives in his lifetime, only one of whom was still living, and ten surviving children. His family had managed to function much like a wheel. Smirnov served as the central hub, keeping the spokes connected—but at a reasonable, workable distance. Like so many others born into privilege, some of Smirnov's children were cavalier about work, responsibility, or morality. Two of his sons, Nikolay and Vladimir, were notorious playboys. They gambled to excess
and spent money indifferently, to the delight of proprietors of Moscow's toniest shops.

Smirnov's eldest son, Pyotr, was more business minded. But his ideas for running the vodka empire may have differed greatly from those of his siblings or stepmother, Smirnov's third wife, Mariya Nikolayevna Smirnova. A genteel beauty twenty-seven years younger than her husband, Mariya had less concern for the futures of Smirnov's oldest sons, who were already grown.
^*
She focused on Vladimir and her two youngest sons, Sergey and Aleksey, who were just thirteen and nine, respectively, when their father died. The family schisms likely worried Smirnov. He understood that without him to keep the assemblage intact, it could disintegrate, taking his legacy and cherished empire down with it.

In the days after Smirnov's death and his funeral, it seemed that his fears were on their way to becoming reality. Fights were brewing over how to run the business, who should manage the company, and how Smirnov's considerable assets would be disbursed. Smirnov's five daughters took no part in the discussion since each of them was allotted a flat 30,000 rubles (nearly $400,000). The rest of the estate was to be divided equally between Mariya and the Smirnov boys.
¹⁶

Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov was dead now. A calmness enveloped Moscow late that cold Wednesday in 1898. As the mourners scattered, more than one thousand of the poorest in attendance were treated to free dinners provided by the Smirnovs and their friends. It was a grand gesture, a civility that would too soon be replaced with jealousy, anger, resentment, and ultimately, chaos.

C
arts hauling withered bodies bumped along the dirt roads. Arms dangled off the sides of the wooden flatbeds like overgrown weeds. Victims, young and old, rich and poor, lay like toppled dominos, one after another. As they passed, making their way from the villages, cities, and towns to the freshly stirred ground in the forested countryside, pedestrians watched anxiously, covering their faces with cloth. The stench was worse now that summer was in full swing. Cholera had come to Russia.

The disease first appeared in 1823, coming ashore in the southernmost regions of Russia. At first, it looked to be little more than an isolated disturbance. Cases were reported sporadically but no one, including Tsar Nikolay I, seemed alarmed. A few extra doctors were dispatched and data collected about those infected and those who died. Then…nothing. For six years, Russia remained cholera free. Not until the summer of 1830 did Russia's government and population recognize they were on the brink of a nationwide calamity.

Sickness quickly permeated the whole of Russia, wearing it down like a shark devours its prey, one deadly tear at a time. Scores of citizens fell ill after drinking water contaminated with the cholera bacteria or by coming in contact with untreated sewage. They suffered from a variety of intestinal ailments and severe cramping, which often led to crippling dehydration, shock, and then death. The outbreak had returned in July to Astrakhan, an important waterside trading hub in southern Russia near the Caspian Sea. Within six weeks, nearly three thousand residents died, or about 8 percent of the city's total population.
¹
A gathering terror settled within Russia's borders as cholera made its way north, loosely tracking the path of the Volga River.

The tsar acted quickly, imposing quarantines wherever cases were reported. Anyone wishing to leave sequestered communities had to endure observation periods that could last anywhere from eight days to two weeks. Those detained had to wash themselves daily with a chlorine-lime solution.
²
Their luggage was repeatedly fumigated. Once outside the quarantined zone, travelers had to get through military-enforced cordons. Of the eighteen entrances leading to Moscow eight were shuttered, slowing trade and sharply restricting movement. Guards were ordered to shoot anyone who tried to break through the barriers.
³

Other cleansing measures were just as onerous. Walls and floors in the homes of the infected were sprinkled with chlorine. Clothes and sheets were either rigorously washed in chlorine or simply burned. All water was boiled and the eating of apples, prunes, melons, and cucumbers was forbidden. Garlic, a natural disinfectant, became part of people's diets as the government doled out daily rations.

The tsar's containment policies applied to everyone, regardless of social position or stature. In September 1830, the poet Aleksander Pushkin had planned a short trip to his family's estate in Boldino. He ended up staying there, under virtual house arrest, for three months. This period, nonetheless, turned out
to be one of the most prolific in the writer's life. Among other works, he came close to completing his most famous,
Eugene Onegin
, while under quarantine.
⁴

But most others were not as fortunate. Mass hysteria overtook many who spread ugly rumors that cholera was the weapon chosen by Jews, foreigners, government officials, and aristocrats to rid the nation of its niggling underclass. People charged that wells were deliberately poisoned.
⁵
The absurd talk inflamed the already suspicious masses. They were fed up with a string of seemingly endless regulations and began to speak of being heard, of fighting back, of murder. The talk soon escalated into violence.

In November 1830 the first cholera riot exploded in Tambov, three hundred miles southeast of Moscow. Mobs raided hospitals and police departments; they captured Tambov's governor and killed doctors and officers suspected of mistreating or torturing patients. Rebels overtook the streets and broke into quarantined homes, liberating those who they said had been confined too long. The rebellion, finally suppressed by the Russian military after two violent days, caused serious damage. Some two hundred people in Tambov lost their lives and countless others suffered injuries.

Other riots sprouted throughout Russia, with one of the most serious erupting in St. Petersburg seven months after Tambov. Nearly six hundred people died every day as the situation disintegrated in the nation's capital. Arrests were common during the first ten days of the epidemic. Typically humdrum behaviors, from eating vegetables to drinking water from canals, became criminal acts. Everyone was under suspicion and frustration gave way to anger. Citizens assembled near the cholera hospital in Sennaya Square, ambushing ambulances carrying infected residents. They threw stones at hospitals, smashing windows, then rushed the hospital itself, beating doctors and attendants who stood in the way. One doctor, a German, was discovered while treating a patient. Within moments, his body was left pummeled to death on the floor. The army fought furiously to
subdue the angry crowds and restore peace. But it could not soothe their troubled souls.
⁶

That task was left to the tsar, who came out of seclusion at his summer palace in Peterhof to address his subjects. His personal appearance and arrival at Sennaya Square in an open carriage, with no military escort, was highly unusual. Tsars typically limited their interactions with their subjects, believing too much direct contact could undermine their prestige and authority. But this time, Nikolay I determined that the dire circumstances demanded his personal touch.

More than five thousand people gathered around the tsar, who rose in his carriage and crossed himself after seeing the destruction around him. He wore his military best, a crisp black double-breasted coat with gold buttons, which fit tightly around the tsar's slim waistline before dropping loosely to just below his knees. Bright golden epaulettes surrounded by gold tassels adorned his shoulders, providing Nikolay I with the regal, authoritarian look this moment demanded.

The tsar stood, then commanded his people to kneel. “A great burden has been given us by God: a plague. We must take measures to stop its progress. All these measures have been taken by my orders. Therefore it is against me that you complain—Me! And I order obedience!…If you have offended me by your disobedience, you have offended God still more by a crime: A murder has been committed! Innocent blood has been spilled. Pray God that he forgive you.”
⁷

By the time cholera ran its course, Russia lost more than 243,000 of its citizens.
⁸
It had also gained one infant boy, born in the midst of the epidemic and its mayhem.

 

P
YOTR
A
RSENIEVICH
S
MIRNOV
began life on Friday, January 9, 1831, at his home in Kayurovo, a village just sixty miles east of a quarantined district. The day was cloudy, dark, and cold. The
home, known in Russian as an
izba
, like most others occupied by peasants in the area, was thoroughly modest. It was made of round pine logs, which sometimes had to be dragged for miles, and it had a slanted roof. The few windows were small, the distance between the end of a person's fingertips and elbow. Each was covered with the dried bladder of a bull, which did not do nearly enough to keep out the cold but was useful in letting in some natural light. The typical structure, at just 420 square feet, offered little privacy for the multiple generations who routinely lived together.
^*

Delivering babies in a small village like Kayurovo was treated like any other task on the farm. Pyotr's mother, Matryona, was likely placed on a plank bed near the oven in the middle of the room. The huge oven was the focal point of peasant home life. In those days, the oven had a large hole so people could climb inside, sit down, and wash themselves in relative warmth and comfort. Elder family members slept on a flat surface on top of the oven. The oven was also where most of the cooking took place, and where young calves, lambs, and pigs were kept to protect them from the harsh conditions outdoors. The heavy odor here, as if fused into the walls and floors, was a peculiar mixture of boiled potatoes, meats, soups, and animal fur. That day, however, only the laboring mother and a local midwife occupied the coveted spot.

Few details of Smirnov's birth are known. The simple four-line birth record, typical for serfs, listed first the name of the landowner for whom the family worked. It then listed the village name, the father's name, the godfather's name, and the baby's gender. Last came the child's given name: Pyotr.
⁹
No surname was provided as most serfs did not have one. It was unnecessary, primarily because serfs rarely traveled outside their
small communities. Exactly when Pyotr did gain a surname is not clear, though most likely it was more than two decades later. Smirnov was a common last name in the region and a derivative of
smirnoy
, meaning quiet and law abiding. Today, 2.7 million Russians call themselves Smirnov, making it the most common name in the nation.
¹⁰

It can be assumed that Pyotr was born hearty. The infant mortality rate in Russia was among the highest in nineteenth-century Europe. Indeed, one out of every four babies born died before they reached their first year of life. The Smirnovs themselves lost three infant girls of their own, two from epilepsy and one from measles.
¹¹
But Pyotr, the third out of four surviving children and the second son, was a standout from the start.

Much like his adult years, Pyotr's boyhood was dominated by three primary concerns: work, religion, and family. A seemingly incongruent hodgepodge of allegiances, these devotions were complimentary in practice, providing the foundation for Smirnov's willingness—even eagerness—to do whatever was required of him, checked by an ever-bending conscience born out of rigid Christian orthodoxy.

Smirnov's days, alongside his older brother, Yakov, were crammed with farm work, feeding the animals, hauling firewood, gardening, and cultivating the land. Serfs were required to tend their master's fields—often using their own equipment—to provide for everyone who lived in the community. In Smirnov's province, agriculture was dominated by flax, potato, rye, and wheat. The work was difficult, tedious, and long, particularly for a young child. Pyotr did as he was told, perhaps because he had no other choice.

Many serfs were viewed by their masters as “baptized property,” according to Aleksander Gertsen, a Russian social activist. Most masters made little distinction between the people who plowed their fields and the horses that pulled the plows. Like
merchandise at the community market, they could be bought, sold, or presented as gifts, almost on a whim. Those who stepped out of line or didn't pull their weight could find themselves shipped off to a new home or an entirely new town—sometimes without their families.

The Smirnovs did not have to worry about such penalties. Diligent workers who made no trouble pleased their owners. Unlike the stereotypical serfs, whom the nobility routinely dismissed as ignorant and uncultured, Pyotr's family was industrious and opportunistic. When Pyotr and his siblings were not consumed by chores, they received rudimentary lessons in reading, writing, math, and religion from their parents. Since just 1 percent of serfs were literate at the time, even this superficial education set the family apart from the some 551,000 serfs living in their local province of Yaroslavl. It also made them more valuable. Literate serfs could fetch a purchase price of 300 rubles each compared to just 200 rubles for those who lacked basic reading skills.
¹²

Clearly, the Smirnovs' owners, first the Skripitsyns and later the Demidovs, both descendants of wealthy aristocratic dynasties, appreciated their more capable serfs. The Smirnov's home, though small, was likely larger than any other occupied by serfs in the village. Family members were also given more entrusted positions. Pyotr's father, Arseniy, was handpicked by Nadezhda Stepanovna Skripitsyna out of dozens of serfs to represent her interests when land was distributed between members of the nobility. This responsibility made him a manager of sorts, someone who commanded a degree of respect and authority. Arseniy's younger brother, Ivan, was a house serf. He was one of a handful of serfs permitted to work in the master's lavish estate, to receive meals there, and to organize the affairs of the house. This role exempted Ivan from the hard manual labor others endured daily, though his job was not considered a particularly privileged one. House serfs did not get to share in the bounty of the land, had
to live in small
izbas
behind or near the master's home, and were viewed as even lower on the social ladder than ordinary serfs.

Still, life inside the master's home was more than comfortable. A typical estate consisted of multiple buildings, including a palatial main residence full of lavish imported furnishings and a large two-floored, stone outhouse. These dwellings were often surrounded by wooden garagelike structures to house carriages, stone or wood stables for the horses, a greenhouse, a bowling alley, various sheds to hold hay and grains, and a special structure for summertime activities and entertainment.

The Smirnovs maintained amicable relations with their masters and made the best of their provincial circumstances. Village life could be pleasant—and stable. But it was hardly the most desirable situation, nor was it profitable. The soil, overrun with dense forests, swamps, and ravines, was not particularly fertile. Difficult agricultural conditions presented a tough hurdle for serfs who ached to earn enough money to buy their freedom. At that time, peasants could ransom themselves by paying their masters an agreed-upon sum. In the Smirnov's region of Yaroslavl, the average price of freedom in the early nineteenth century was between 219 and 266 rubles, the equivalent of about $39 to $48 then.
^*
Though it was no more than the cost of about twenty horses
¹³
, it was as far out of reach for the ordinary serf as a private conversation with the tsar. To narrow the gap, serfs often sought permission from their landowners to venture beyond their small surroundings and seek jobs in larger towns and cities. They could make considerably more money—as much as 100 rubles in one winter—that then would have to be divided with their masters. This seasonal migration, a relatively common practice, was primarily meant for men and their sons. Women and girls often remained behind to maintain the homestead and do the hard work necessary to create their dowries,
which often included home-sown bed linens, towels, napkins, and tablecloths.