The King of Vodka (3 page)

Naturally, the Smirnovs yearned for freedom. The first to go after it was Grigoriy, Pyotr's uncle and one of his father's younger brothers. Pyotr was still a toddler when his uncle packed up his meager belongings in 1835 and made for the twenty-five-mile dirt road that led from his village to the bustling town of Uglich. The walk was long and tedious, but Grigoriy would have kept himself occupied, meeting up with caravans heading here or there and stopping at the homes of acquaintances for rest and nourishment. Mostly, though, he probably thought about his future. At age twenty-six, Grigoriy had big plans.

 

G
RIGORIY HAD CERTAINLY
been to Uglich before. It was a busy trading stop for people en route to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other important cities. Although the town had only nine thousand permanent inhabitants, its ranks swelled throughout the week as transients stopped to barter goods, purchase supplies, and rest. Grigoriy, enterprising and resourceful, figured that Uglich could improve its local economy if it gave visitors a good enough reason to hang around longer. The best way to do that, he surmised, was to offer comfortable accommodations, decent food, and plenty of liquor. And that's what he told his master's brother, Mikhail Skripitsyn.

Skripitsyn must have seen something special in Grigoriy. He wasted no time at all scribbling out the legal document required for a serf to travel and work away from home. Skripitsyn likely figured that if Grigoriy was as successful as he suspected he would be, a big payday would be in the offing. Grigoriy might have carried the letter, which attested to his integrity and moral character, inside the folds of his heavy coat. It would have rested against his breast like a priceless treasure map. When Grigoriy took it out to present to officials in Uglich, seeking permission
to open his first inn, he did so with confidence. The document was dated December 10, 1835, and stated:

It was as if Grigoriy had been reborn. No longer just a village serf, he was now a “trading peasant, fourth class.”
¹⁵
Though still a world away from the upper crust, his new status nonetheless gave him ample opportunity to make the acquaintance of one of Uglich's most prominent families, the Zimins. They owned tanneries and linen factories, and produced supplies for Russia's armies. More importantly, the family was into local real estate. Grigoriy leased a house from the Zimins. Its location in the center of town was perfect for the hotel and restaurant he planned to put there. The building was spacious and loaded with such modern conveniences as glass windows.
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Grigoriy transformed the property into a welcoming inn, restaurant, and drinking establishment. He had gained permission from local authorities to rent out rooms and serve a variety of food and beverages, including tea, hot chocolate, beer, and rum. He could also offer sweet drinks made with vodka. Homemade or counterfeit vodkas, as well as pure vodkas, were forbidden. No matter: Grigoriy, who took on the Smirnov name almost at random when he left his village, was peddling vodka for his own account—the first Smirnov to do so.

The establishment was an instant hit. In less than a year,
Grigoriy earned enough money to buy his freedom. It was a momentous occasion for the entire Smirnov family. Grigoriy's emancipation brought hope that all of its members might one day leave their peasant roots behind to become part of a burgeoning class of merchants.

Opportunity that had long evaded Russia's lower classes was not as elusive as it had been in previous years. In the nineteenth century, Russia's tsars allowed for more free enterprise than virtually any generation since Peter the Great. A newfangled brand of capitalism and entrepreneurship blossomed, beginning with the reign of Alexander I, in large part due to the demands of industrialization. The state could not single-handedly manage all that was needed to jumpstart economic development, from building railroads to modernizing arcane industries to establishing banking centers. Necessity, in its purest form, opened the door to dozens of ambitious go-getters—especially those involved in less capital-intensive enterprises.
¹⁷
Grigoriy, and later Pyotr, were just two of the thousands who seized the moment.

Grigoriy led the way, powering ahead in Uglich. Within five years, he owned three hotels and several wine cellars—and he was also making his own beer.
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The former village serf was managing a rapidly increasing portfolio. Grigoriy's new status intoxicated Pyotr especially, though his father and older brother certainly took note. Together, around 1840, they left their village for Uglich to get a closer look at the face of prosperity.
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T
HE TRIO ARRIVED
full of anticipation. It must have been eye-opening for young Pyotr and Yakov, to see their uncle now mingling with his well-heeled neighbors. He opened his wallet
nearly as easily as they did. As the business grew, Grigoriy installed Arseniy as manager of the front desk in one of his hotels. The boys, alongside Grigoriy's own sons, took on whatever menial tasks came their way—from serving drinks to cleaning up the foul smells left by men too drunk to see their way clear to the outhouse.

Pyotr and Yakov had been around burly, hard-drinking men before. Every village, including the Smirnovs', had at least one family designated to make moonshine. Usually a couple of miles outside the main residences, a little wooden house was erected for the sole purpose of producing alcohol made from fermented bread. They used a rudimentary system, which often created liquor with pieces of bread still swimming on top. The drink was cheap, plentiful, and popular. For many, it was a breakfast staple, a warming agent to combat frosty dawns before the workday began.

Village moonshine, though, was nothing compared to the drinks at Uncle Grigoriy's taverns. They were a substantial cut above the boys' previous, comparatively primitive experiences. But that was not what most fascinated them about their new surroundings. More enticing was the actual running of a business. The boys had never seen such an operation in action before, and Pyotr must have been mesmerized. He soon began approaching his menial job like a boy at school, observing everything, studying everyone. Grigoriy, a beloved uncle and shrewd entrepreneur, became his mentor. Pyotr, a doting nephew, enthusiastically slipped into the role of pupil.

The education of Pyotr Smirnov had begun. The subtle—and not so subtle—lessons he picked up from Grigoriy would later prove essential to Pyotr's own success. Indeed, many of them served as roadmaps for how Pyotr launched and grew his businesses. He learned how vital it was to be fearless, expeditious, and innovative. Grigoriy, for instance, was a location mastermind. All three of his hotels were situated in central
areas with high foot traffic. It was ideal for drawing in the greatest number of walk-in customers and for building name recognition from passersby. He also never hesitated to expand his business, more fearful of complacency than of risk taking; he elbowed out competitors vying for coveted rental spaces and business licenses. Grigoriy was also an innovator. He was the first proprietor in town to seek permission to open up at seven o'clock in the morning. He argued before local officials that “crowds of people,” mostly peasants, began forming as early as five o'clock because, unlike the more well-to-do residents and visitors, they had nowhere to go to escape the bitter cold.
¹⁸
They could not warm themselves with a cup of tea because only taverns could provide tea for “gray people,” slang for commoners. These travelers had no access to the more upscale watering holes. Grigoriy got his wish, endearing himself to throngs of new paying customers passing through Uglich. Soon, everyone was open early. But again, Grigoriy was there first.

At his uncle's knee, Pyotr's business instincts and quiet intelligence were sharpened well beyond his years. But Pyotr's time in Uglich was coming to an end, although he didn't know it quite yet. In 1843 Pyotr's grandfather, still at home in the village, took ill and died. The sad event forced Arseniy, the most unencumbered of the Smirnov men of his generation, to return to his village immediately to help manage the property and console family members. The big question: What to do with the boys? Pyotr, just twelve years old, was maturing quickly, but he still had much to learn from his uncle, something Arseniy may have instinctively understood. He agreed to let Pyotr remain in Uglich—at least for the time being. He could continue to earn money and still be close enough to home if Arseniy needed his help. Yakov, however, was almost seventeen, having grown into a tall, robust young man. The family needed to increase its income to have any hope of gaining its freedom, and Yakov could do better in Moscow than in
Uglich, earning twice as much money there, even by washing dishes.

Already a growing number of peasants from the Yaroslavl province, about 9 percent, were leaving for seasonal work. Most went to St. Petersburg, the capital. But increasingly, they were also heading to Moscow, where communities of immigrant serfs were settling in small pockets throughout the growing city. Arseniy's brother, Ivan, belonged to this group. He had been going to Moscow for seasonal work since the age of ten.
¹⁹
He would pick up odd jobs here and there, mostly in wine cellars and pubs. Yaroslavl peasants were well represented in Moscow's liquor industry; indeed, one-third of them found jobs in the shops, cellars, or pubs.

Ivan had been more successful than most. About the same time Grigoriy launched his business in Uglich, Ivan landed a plum job working for Aleksander Yakovlev, a wine merchant in Moscow. As Yakovlev's right-hand man, he helped manage the former peasant's wine cellar and retail outlets.
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The work was a natural fit for Ivan—and fruitful. When Yakovlev died suddenly in 1839, Ivan took over the business. Within one year, he had earned enough to be the second Smirnov to pay off his ransom and, in 1840, gain his freedom. Within another year, Ivan was firmly established as a merchant of the “third guild,” the lowest rung in the hierarchy of Moscow merchants. But it was a solid step toward independence and respectability.

Thinking about his son, Arseniy made the most practical choice: Yakov must go to Moscow. There, under Ivan's watchful eye, he might earn enough money to hasten the family's quest for liberty.

Pyotr may well have envied Yakov. He knew most Muscovites would have looked on him as a country bumpkin. He was uneducated and uncultured, but Pyotr had grown into a deter
mined adolescent while in Uglich. He had tasted freedom and scratched up against success; he had seen one of his own climb from the bottom of the social order to a position of respect. Staying behind in this relative speck of a town, while his brother got to experience the great metropolis, may have seemed unfair. Why should he remain glued to his humble birthplace, close to his parents, while others were migrating, progressing, and succeeding?

His situation darkened even more when Grigoriy died unexpectedly in 1844 from edema. Time did not just seem to stop after that; it appeared to move backward. Little of the details are known about what exactly happened to Grigoriy's dreamed-about hotel empire, but it seems as if it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The family, too, appeared to stall. It did not take long for Grigoriy's wife and sons to fall from the merchant class into the petite bourgeoisie, a rung just above peasant status.

This episode, then, became another valuable lesson for Pyotr: Success was not tangible or guaranteed. It could be there one moment, gone the next.

 

N
OW
P
YOTR SAW
his time in Uglich disappear. In less than a day, he was back where he started, but Pyotr was not the same little boy who had left his village four years earlier. To him, what had once been a comfortable, beloved home, a place full of belonging, felt worn. It was as if life in the village suddenly came into focus, and the picture was dull, as flat as the land surrounding the Yaroslavl province.

Pyotr probably never said a word to his family about his wanderlust. Ever the dutiful son, he had learned not to question his father. Arseniy, a rational, calculating man who did things for a reason, must have had a plan for Pyotr. So Pyotr waited. For almost two years, he went about his business on the farm, performing all the usual tasks.

Arseniy could see that his son was restless and ready to move on—
needed
to move on, so perhaps it was time. His brother, Ivan, seemed to be gaining both financially and in stature with every passing week. His son, Yakov, gone nearly four years, was thriving, too. He came home from time to time, full of stories about the rush of Moscow, the thrill that permeated the city and created opportunities for anyone sharp enough to find them.

It was time, Arseniy concluded. Pyotr would go to Moscow.

P
yotr probably was up before the sun. So were his parents, who gathered around him. They prayed together as a family, asking for safe travels. His bag was packed. It contained clothes, bread, cheese, water, and small gifts for friends. Pyotr also brought an extra pair of shoes. The walk from his small village would be a long 170 mile journey.
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In his jacket Pyotr carried the obligatory passport. It was a permission slip, of sorts, which allowed him to be away from his village and landowner. It listed the usual facts—name, age, physical description, religion, and residence. It also included details about his owner. Pyotr would need this document, purchased for a few rubles, in order to enter Moscow and navigate his way around the city. Anyone caught without a properly issued passport could be severely punished, even exiled to Siberia.

With everything in hand, Pyotr hitched his bag over
his shoulder and kissed his family good-bye. Pyotr most likely hooked up with his father's brother, Uncle Venedikt, for this journey: according to church confession books, they were together in their village and then in Moscow at the same time. The duo made for the dirt road, worn by trading carts that delivered sugar, wheat, and other necessities to Russia's countryside, that would take them to their first stop. Pyotr and Venedikt likely hopped aboard one of these carts, saving their legs for less well-traveled portions of their journey. They no doubt passed by their friends and acquaintances. Travelers to and from the cities and towns were so plentiful that each village had a person specifically designated to welcome them with tea, food, and shelter.

This road was familiar to the fifteen-year-old Smirnov. It was the same one he had traveled en route to Uglich. So he moved with a confidence not expected of a boy embarking on his first expedition so far from home. He stopped with his uncle for some tea at a nearby village before continuing on the twenty-two-mile stretch that would take him back to Uglich. The trip was straightforward—except when the couple arrived at the Volga River, which they had to cross to get to Uglich. There were no bridges or makeshift paths to follow, so they had to find a ferry-man willing to take them along for the ten-minute ride.

Pyotr basked in those moments. Beyond the water, Uglich looked beautiful, just as Pyotr remembered it. He could see the golden domes from the churches in the distance as well as the former residence of Ivan the Terrible's son, Dmitriy. He also heard a chorus of bells coming from the cathedrals as worshipers entered for their late afternoon prayers. The melody comforted Pyotr. Yet he practically flew off the ferry as it connected with the shore, so anxious was he to get on with his journey.

Once on the other side, he made his way with Venedikt to the center of town, where they sought out Pyotr's older sister, Glafira, who had married the son of a beer factory owner in Uglich. They would stay with her for the night.

The next day was much the same, beginning with a prayer followed by long stretches of walking. Every now and then, Pyotr and Venedikt would climb aboard a passing dray. Often, the draymen would sing old Russian tunes. Pyotr listened to the music from his childhood while he studied the dense forests and ravines going by. The leaves had begun to turn bright shades of red and gold even though it was not yet autumn. The days still had the feel of summer in them.

The nights were getting cooler, though, and they came too quickly for Pyotr. The darkness slowed the uncle and nephew down, forcing them to find a patch of grass or a room in a friendly shelter. Pyotr would have preferred to have kept moving, anxious to get to Moscow. In his brief life, he had always had his father to guide him and instruct him. He was the obedient son, never questioning his elders' wishes. But now, even with Venedikt at his side, Pyotr felt as if he were on his own, able to choose when to stop for bread and where he would rest. It brought out powerful feelings inside him, urges that he had not really understood were there before. At first, he tried to suppress them, thinking it unbecoming of a Christian boy in a staunchly patriarchal society to embrace so fully the idea of independence or of self. But Pyotr could not deny the truth—he liked navigating his own way.

And he was good at it. Pyotr and Venedikt made superb time. By the seventh day, they were closing in on Sergiyev Posad, perhaps the holiest site in all of Russia since its founding in 1340. They could see the fortress monastery in the distance, surrounded by dark pine forests. The trees framed the church's blue and gold domes, which shot bright reflections into the light blue sky. Pyotr sat in awe as he looked out at the horizon. He had heard about this place, and now, seeing it in the distance, he felt a sense of deep spirituality. He quickened his step, anxious to get a closer look.

The road had swelled suddenly with a crush of people. Most,
like Pyotr, were traveling by foot. But the more well-to-do came by stage coaches usually pulled by a team of four horses. France's Alexandre Dumas came to Sergiyev Posad some years later by this kind of coach. However people arrived, many were unified by their motivations to be at this sacred place—to pray for whatever their lives lacked. More specifically, they had come to kiss the bones of St. Sergiy, a famous Russian saint.

The bones were kept in a small white chapel inside the vast compound. Pyotr and Venedikt threaded themselves through small openings in the crowd. A monk marked the doorway, guiding them and others through a narrow entrance surrounded by dimly lit candles. The saint's bones, set in the center of the room, high atop a long table, were covered with a pink shroud. Finally it was Pyotr's turn. He followed the lead of others, bending down and kissing the embroidered cross on the pink covering and then backing away. He crossed himself in the elongated Russian Orthodox manner with his right hand and turned to exit, allowing the waiting masses to inch closer to the holy relics.

Once back outside, Pyotr took in the grandness of it all. A new world lay ahead of him.

 

M
OSCOW WAS STILL
forty-five miles away so the duo needed to get another early start the next morning. If they could keep up their pace, they thought they might reach Moscow within three days. The road stretched out before them, lined with pine forests and more fields of rye. Before long, the scenery changed to birch groves and ravines. If they listened closely, they could hear the two-note calls of the cuckoos.

The next two days passed slowly. On day ten of the journey, the paths closer to Moscow ceased to be flat and silent. They almost heaved, so intense was the motion. The noise was just as fierce, buzzing softly one moment and then almost booming the next, as people flowed to and fro. The commotion hyp
notized the village boy. Travelers darted about him as well as peasants who made their living catering to Moscow's comings and goings. They lived along the road, between the numerous pubs and teahouses, selling random goods. They traded religious trinkets, tobacco, and food. Here, customers were plentiful. Scores of Muscovites joined the transients by riding outside the city's boundaries to buy cheaper vodka at the border pubs.

Pyotr had to be careful to avoid getting trampled by the carriages and coaches that thundered by. He stayed close to the road's edge, keeping his eyes fixed in the direction of Moscow. He thought about his mother and father and the life that had been. More often, though, the serf from Kayurovo dreamed of the life still yet to be discovered. Now, he could even smell it.

Factory chimneys set up outside the city skirts of Moscow burped black smoke. This scent was mixed with the odors coming from the blacksmith shops, where coal gas burned constantly. And then there was the most powerful stench: sewage. The city's population had exploded in the last three decades adding some eighty thousand new residents and countless other migrants. By the 1840s, 300,000 people lived in Moscow, forcing the city to cope with a sea of new bodies and their refuse.
¹
Strings of these sewage-laden carts lined the streets, hauling away what they could. Uncovered, their contents often spilled out onto the uneven dirt roads, forming pools of waste. Some pedestrians wore rubber boots to wade through these cesspools. A local newspaper remarked on the situation: “Moscow is filled up in the inside and covered from the outside with sewage.”
²

The sour air did little to hamper Pyotr's enthusiasm. Just ahead of him was one of eighteen gates marking the official entrances to Moscow. He and Venedikt would pass through the
Krestovskaya Zastava
gates, joining the more than five thousand others who came through them daily in summer. Initially, the gates had been erected to collect custom taxes and register visitors. But the tax function ended in 1754, and it no longer made
sense to log everybody coming through. Many travelers offered fake names or counterfeit passports anyway, making it almost impossible to verify identities. Officials, then, did a mere visual check of a person's credentials.

In the distance, Pyotr would have spied the two stone obelisks that framed the city's gate—each about the height of three grown men. Atop both obelisks perched a two-headed eagle, the state emblem. A stone fence continued out from the obelisks, encasing two yellow houses. A booth sat nearby, too, the place for officers, soldiers, or guardians to mind the gate. Supposedly no one could pass through without one of the officials lifting a black-and-white wooden stick that ran the length of the obelisks, but of course, anyone could get by if they really wanted to. The stick was easily bypassed and the guards often too preoccupied with playing cards or chewing tobacco to notice someone slipping through.

Pyotr had no intention of slipping through. He had no need. A typical exchange between guards and new entrants was perfunctory, nonthreatening. Few words were uttered, as a guard usually inquired of a newcomer like Pyotr: “Who are you?” Obediently, Pyotr would have presented his passport and replied: “I am Pyotr Smirnov, a peasant from Yaroslavl.” It probably took less than twenty seconds from the time Pyotr met the guard to the time he and Venedikt passed through the gates and into Moscow.

They headed directly to Varvarka Street, the home of his uncle Ivan, brother Yakov, and a handful of cousins and other relatives. They would not have wanted to dally, for although Moscow was beginning to change, to modernize, it was still a place of strict laws and rules. A general-governor, appointed by the tsar, controlled the city; his henchmen enforced a seemingly endless list of arbitrary prohibitions, including smoking on the streets, beards or mustaches worn by government officials, and long hair on male students. The long hair was considered revo
lutionary, something only done by “free thinkers” who opposed the existing social and political order. Failure to comply with any of these so-called laws, which varied somewhat from city to city, could result in severe penalties.

Pyotr was probably unfamiliar with Moscow's rigid customs. And although Venedikt had been to the big city before, they likely decided to get to Ivan's place quickly. They did not want to get caught in Moscow's nighttime. Street lighting, what little there was, was primitive. Lamps illuminated with naphtha, a colorless liquid derived from petroleum, were fixed atop clumsy, gray-colored wooden pillars that appeared sporadically on the streets, offering only a dim light. Once the sun went down, pockets of the city were shrouded in a dense, ominous darkness.

Varvarka was a snake of a street. It was one of three that began to unwind just beyond the Moscow River and to the east of Red Square. It was sandwiched between a bustling and important trading center, Gostiniy Dvor, and one of Moscow's crammed Jewish hubs,
Zaryadye
. Gostiniy Dvor, meaning Guest Yard, featured a three-floored building containing warehouses and almost eight hundred small shops. Thousands of buyers and sellers came here daily to trade goods, wandering the long, narrow trading aisles, each dedicated to product lines ranging from saddles to cloth to religious icons. On the other side,
Zaryadye
(“behind the rows”) was thick with crowds of Orthodox Jews wandering around its narrow, curved lanes. The segregated neighborhood was considered a slum, low and gray, and the people who lived there, it was rumored, mainly traded stolen goods.

In the middle of this eclectic setting was bustling Varvarka, a dirt-covered street. Varvarka, which was named after a cathedral built to honor St. Varvara, was ancient, almost medieval. Five churches, marked by golden domes and tall belfries, dominated the landscape of the street as well as its tenor. The neigh
borhood was a haven for Russia's entrenched religious traditions and old beliefs. Residents here, many of whom were serfs, ex-serfs, merchants, or artisans, prayed daily and led simple, devout lives. Their homes, scattered between shops that sold groceries, spices, and wax, were unadorned and made of stone. Their clothes were plain; many men wore long black kaftans and beards instead of more stylish European garments of the more progressive, clean-shaven, educated classes.

There were two exceptions to the street's modesty. The first was located at No. 10 Varvarka Street.
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In the sixteenth century, the building had belonged to the grandfather of Russia's first Romanov tsar. The house, or palace, had been restored two centuries later and turned into a museum devoted to the Romanov Boyars.
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Ivan's home was just a few paces from it. The second, even more notable exception, was the litter of cellars and shops making or peddling grape wines, beer, and vodka. These establishments, including the one Ivan operated, were generally situated directly under or next to Orthodox churches. Ivan's wine cellar butted up against the small parish church of St. Maksim the Confessor. The church, as it turned out, was also Ivan's landlord. The resident clergy, along with his family, were his housemates.

This arrangement was more than peculiar, it was illegal. Russian law prohibited any liquor establishment to exist closer than 280 feet from a church entrance. Restrictions of this kind first appeared in 1806 in St. Petersburg and in 1821 in Moscow after the clergy, moralists, and temperance leaders complained bitterly about the abuses of alcohol throughout society. Church leaders worried that some members of their congregation were getting too drunk, either immediately before or after services, to remain spiritual and devout. There was also the fear that alcoholism was chipping away at the moral values they preached to parishioners.