Vodka Politics (17 page)

Finally, Smirnov’s interpretation rests on a complete distortion of the word
vodja
that is inconsistent with all linguistic scholarship. While Russian etymologists debate whether
vodja
(“he leads”) in the document has something to do with marriage, there is near-universal acknowledgment that the word is in fact a verb participle, not a noun. “Birchbark documents don’t give information about the early days of vodka,” insists Jos Schaeken, accomplished Slavic linguist and head of the international Russian Birchbark Literacy Project. “The idea of vodja = vodka should be rejected by every serious scholar.”
³²

So it seems we are back to square one, yet again.

Tracing Vodka’s International Roots

Debunking false histories is fun in its own right, but it doesn’t get us any closer to vodka’s true origins… or if there is such a truth at all. What
do
we know? Perhaps we need to delve deeper into the global history of alcohol.

The first alcoholic beverages were relatively light fare: wines, meads, and beer. The natural process of fermentation, whereby yeasts interact with sugars in grape or other juices to create wine, was first observed in the Stone Age. Winemaking facilities recently unearthed in Armenia date from 4000
B.C.E
. The Chinese fermented rice, honey, and fruit around 5000
B.C.
Wines and beers have even been found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs.
³³
Yet for all the pleasure and anguish they bring, fermented beverages are relatively weak—a maximum of 15 percent alcohol by volume—when compared to the standard eighty-proof (40% alcohol) vodka that we find in liquor stores today.
³⁴
Reaching these higher concentrations can be done only through
distillation
—heating a fermented liquid mash above alcohol’s relatively low boiling point of 78°C. At that point the alcohol evaporates, leaving the water, mash, and impurities behind, which is then cooled and condensed in a separate container.

Vodka—along with all modern spirits like gin, brandy, rum, and whiskey—can be traced back to the distillation by European alchemists of the twelfth century. While today we think of them as quixotic mystics forever seeking to turn metal into gold, medieval alchemists mined the scholarship of ancient Greeks, Romans, and Arabs for practical remedies for the body and mind, founding modern chemistry and medicine in the process. While ancient Arabs and Greeks had distilled fermented grapes, this process was only rediscovered by the alchemists in their attempts to create an elixir of longevity—a youth potion.
³⁵

Unlike today’s recreational liquors, beginning in the thirteenth century medicinal spirits were distilled from fermented grape wine lees, most likely
originating in the medical school of Salerno, in the south of Italy.
³⁶
There, as throughout medieval Europe, the search for scientific knowledge was a spiritual endeavor closely tied to the Church of Rome. Accordingly, both the development and spread of distillation depended on schools and monasteries with abiding interests in philosophy and religion.

So how did distillation emigrate from pre-Renaissance Italy to the imperial court of Moscow? That’s where the Poles and the Russians can’t seem to agree. Historians credit—or blame—the colorful troubadour-turned-missionary Ramon Llull for spreading the technique to much of Europe. Before aspiring to convert Jews and Muslims to Catholicism, Llull taught Arabic and philosophy in the Franciscan convent on the Mediterranean island of Majorca off the coast of Spain. In 1290, after his missionary endeavors to North Africa ended in violent expulsion, he arrived in the north Italian city-state of Genoa, where he wrote extensively on distillation and rectification. Based perhaps on their shared interests in alchemy and Arabic, Llull teamed with physician Arnaldus de Villa Nova (Arnold of Villanova—not to be confused with the American university), who drew on his experiences treating popes, nobles, and kings to write
Liber de vinis
, the first medicinal book on viniculture.
³⁷
Most likely, it was Arnold of Villanova who first introduced the Arabic word
al-kuhul
(alcohol) into the European nomenclature through his investigation of fermented grape wines and these new distilled or “burnt” wines. In his treatise
De conservanda juventute
, he writes:

Burnt water also known as
aqua vitae
, is obtained by the distillation of wine or wine yeast. It is the subtlest portion of the wine. Some say that it is “the everlasting water”, also that, because of its sublime method of preparation, it is the “gold water” of the alchemists. Its advantages are well known. It cures many diseases, prolongs life and hence deserves to be known as
aqua vitae
.
³⁸

Through Arnold of Villanova this
aqua vitae
, or “water of life,” became known to Genoese merchants, who were intent on profiting from this mysterious new medicine. The Genoese discovered that spirits could be distilled not only from expensive wine lees but also from cheaper fermented fruits and grains. By this time the small Italian fishing village had grown into a powerhouse of naval commerce and exploration: even Christopher Columbus hailed from Genoa. By the fourteenth century
aqua vitae
was one of the most prized wares of apothecaries throughout Europe.
³⁹

When it came to commerce in the Mediterranean, the Genoese vied for control with their nautical rivals in Venice. Outmaneuvering the Venetians, Genoa established an alliance with the Byzantine Empire, which granted Genoese merchants the right to duty-free trade throughout Byzantium and a monopoly on commerce in the Black Sea.
⁴⁰

E
ARLY
G
ERMAN
W
OODCUT
P
ORTRAYING THE
D
ISTILLATION OF
A
QUA
V
ITAE

The science of distillation most likely came to the Slavic peoples through the bustling Genoese-controlled port city of Caffa—present-day Feodosia—on the Crimean Peninsula. In the colorful, multiethnic and multi-confessional bazaars, early Russians did a bustling trade in metals, furs, and slaves.
⁴¹
Spanish explorer Pero Tafur described the “bestial” natives of Caffa, where young virgins could be—and were—bought for a measure of wine in the taverns run by the Genoese. Perhaps, then, it should come as little surprise that Russians were first introduced not only to
aqua vitae
in the Genoese ports but also to liquor’s close cousin—venereal disease.
⁴²

In the fourteenth century distillation could have made its way north from the Crimea across the vast grasslands, fields, and forests to Muscovy by a variety of means.
Aqua vitae
was the most popular potion of the alchemists and physicians who accompanied diplomats on their international missions. In his seminal work on Russian cultural history
The Icon and the Axe
(1966), Librarian of Congress James Billington underscores the “fact that vodka apparently came into Russia
by way of the medical profession points to the importance of Western-educated court doctors as channels for the early influx of Western ideas and techniques.”
⁴³
Even Pokhlebkin suggested that the Genoese ambassador from Caffa occasionally visited Moscow en route to and from Lithuania in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries—each time bringing medicinal
aqua vitae
.
⁴⁴

Beyond such sporadic visits, the practice and product of distillation likely came north to Moscow for good accompanying refugees fleeing the Mongol invasion of the Crimea, as Caffa was sacked by the Mongol khan Tamerlane in 1395.
⁴⁵
The monasteries of Muscovy in general, and of the Kremlin in particular, were fertile grounds for this new practice, as monks quickly transformed the imported Genoese practice of distilling
aqua vitae
into a mass-produceable domestic product—vodka—that could be distilled from local grains (primarily rye and wheat) and soft spring water.
⁴⁶
It is this combination that gives both Russian and Polish vodkas their “genuine” characteristics, if you believe the advertising slogans.

Beyond a general consensus that distillation reached Moscow by the fifteenth century, like so many things, the details are a little… fuzzy. According to a legend retold by Pokhlebkin, a Greek monk named Isidore—who learned distillation as part of a Russian church legation to Italy in the 1430s—was suspected of having divided loyalties and upon returning to Moscow was imprisoned in the Chudov Monastery of the Kremlin. Having no other raw materials than local grains, the crafty Greek created the first batch of “genuine” Russian vodka, which he then slipped to his captors, fleeing to Kiev after they passed out.

Like most of Pokhlebkin’s claims, there is absolutely no factual basis or documentation for this whimsical tale. Think: why would a suspected traitor be imprisoned in a monastery with the tools of chemistry instead of (the more conventional) punishment of being tossed in a dungeon and tortured ruthlessly? What’s more, the entire story oozes with Russian nationalist symbolism: vodka was allegedly born in the Chudov Monastery—the Monastery “of the Miracle,” which was completed in 1365 and razed by Stalin in 1929 to make way for the stolid, concrete Palace of Congresses. Although the legend cannot be taken seriously, many in Russia continue to date vodka’s origins from the 1440s based primarily on this tale.
⁴⁷

Another, more plausible alternative is that distillation came to Moscow not from the south, but from central and Western Europe via long-established Hanseatic trade routes to Russia’s Baltic outposts of Pskov and Novgorod. The importation of wine along this trade route has been regularly documented as far back as 1436. Forty years later, the archbishop of Novgorod presented lavish gifts to Ivan the Terrible’s grandfather—Grand Prince Ivan the Great of Moscow—including barrels of both red and white wines. While these wines were prized as fantastic luxuries, there is no mention of
aqua vitae
, much less vodka.
⁴⁸

So, where and when did vodka originate? Who was the first person to distill local grains into a potent alcoholic beverage—and was he Russian or Polish?

We may never know for sure. Anything I claim here would be speculation based on inference and conjecture, and probably no more definitive than the efforts of the “luminary” culinary Pokhlebkin, whose testament still stands as the well-thumbed reference at the Vodka Museum at Izmailovsky Park.
⁴⁹

Ultimately, though, it does not matter. Beyond nationalist sparring between Russians and Poles, the questions of who, where, and when aren’t nearly as important as the question of
why
vodka?

What we do know is that by whatever route or as a result of whoever’s handiwork, by the early sixteenth century the medicinal
aqua vitae
of the alchemists had already taken root as “burnt wine” or what we might recognize as beverage vodka.
⁵⁰

Russia would never be the same.

7

Why Vodka? Russian Statecraft and the Origins of Addiction

Pointing out that Russia has a serious alcohol problem may be impolite, but it isn’t particularly controversial. What outsiders see as a crude stereotype, Russians have long understood as a persistent social challenge—one that has endured through the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras. Still, while few histories even acknowledge Russia’s vodka problem, even fewer actually attempt to address its sources.
¹

Of all substances, why do Russians drink vodka? Why do they drink so much of it? And why do they drink it in such a destructive manner? Conventional answers revert to long-standing practices, the enigmatic “Russian soul,” or some other eternal, immutable, and inalienable cultural trait. And culture cannot be questioned. Still, there are very powerful political and economic forces behind the development and maintenance of such self-destructive cultural practices.

A popular belief is that Russians, Scandinavians, and others living in Nordic climes are drawn to spiritous liquors because supposedly they give motion to the blood in extreme cold. Anyone who’s been warmed by a swig of vodka on a frigid night can relate. Even Montesquieu, in his
Spirit of Laws
(1748), pontificated on the stark cultural differences between the spirits-drinking peoples of northern Europe and their beer- or wine-drinking counterparts to the south, arguing that “the climate seems to force them into a kind of national intemperance, very different from personal sobriety,” leading him to conclude: “Drunkenness predominates throughout the world in proportion to the coldness and humidity of the climate.”
²
Accordingly, throughout the historical record we find descriptions of Russian men who spurn wine but “will toss off his glass of whisky like a genuine child of the north.”
³