Vodka Politics (2 page)

The Russian people today understand that they confront a huge problem with alcohol, and leaders across the political spectrum also begrudgingly admit that vodka is—quite possibly—the most serious problem facing their country. With so much to be gained in terms of both understanding the past and confronting the future, the benefits of addressing alcohol in Russia rationally and seriously far outweigh the risk of ruffling feathers and confronting a sensitive and uncomfortable stereotype or politely dismissing the topic as somehow too cliché. Scholars of all stripes and nationalities have done that for far too long already.

This surely isn’t the first biography of vodka, nor will it be the last. Russians have been writing national histories of alcohol dating from Ivan Pryzhov’s
Istoriya kabakov v Rossii
(
History of Taverns in Russia
) as early as 1868. Much of the subsequent popular literature on the topic—both in Russia and abroad—examines both the evolution and etymology of the drink we now know as vodka and tends to be rather superficial.
⁸
Far more rewarding are the works of professional historians, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, demographers, and public health experts who have dedicated their academic careers to understanding narrow slices related to the general history of alcohol in Russia. These include David Christian’s
Living Water
(1990) dealing with the pre-emancipation Russian empire, Patricia Herlihy’s
Alcoholic Empire
(2002) on late-imperial Russia, Kate Transchel’s
Under the Influence
(2006) on the tumultuous years of communist revolution, Vlad Treml’s
Alcohol in the USSR
(1982) on the postwar era, Stephen White’s
Russia Goes Dry
(1996) on Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign, or Aleksandr Nemtsov’s
Contemporary History of Alcohol in Russia
(2011) on the Soviet and post-Soviet legacies.
⁹
Unlike the more cursory social histories of vodka, I have built upon these and other more rigorous academic investigations—as well as unearthed additional primary source materials, including those in Russian, European, and American archives—to instead paint a political biography of alcohol in Russia by investigating how vodka is intimately tied to Russian statecraft across historical time periods: from Ivan the Terrible through the 2012 elections and beyond.

This book is neither meant to valorize alcohol nor maliciously lampoon Russian drunkenness. It is not an exercise in patronizing orientalism or anti-Russian hysterics—it is a recognition of the variety of ways alcohol influences and catalyzes political phenomena (and vice versa) in the context of Russian history. Even the idea of a political biography of alcohol is not unique to Russia. Indeed, W. J. Rorabaugh’s influential
Alcoholic Republic
(1979) similarly recast
the early history of the United States in a new light: America was widely considered “a nation of drunkards” in the period when anti-British revolutionary plots were being hatched in smoke-filled taverns. Even as early as the 1730s the most successful newspaper in the American colonies, the
Pennsylvania Gazette
, compiled a list of 220 colloquialisms for being drunk and also ran reports of foreign attempts to deal with rampant drunkenness. The author of such pieces was none other than the young Philadelphia printer and future founding father Benjamin Franklin. Actually, most of America’s vaunted founding fathers had ties to alcohol, as winemakers, brewers, or distillers, with whiskey distiller George Washington even becoming the iconic leader of the new country.
¹⁰
Yet while every country has its own history with alcohol, perhaps in no other country is that relationship as enduring and intertwined with the culture, society, and politics of the nation than in Russia. In the end, I hope that this book will instill in others the same adoration and fascination with Russia—its people, politics, history, and culture—that has motivated me for the past twenty years.

The writing of the manuscript occupied only the last three of those years—though it seemed like far longer than that. For too long this project has taken me away from my loving wife, Jennifer, and my children, Alexander, Sophia, and Helena. I’m looking forward to baseball games, swimming lessons, and bike rides with my family—all of which were put on hold for this book. My parents, Dale and Paula Schrad, were always willing to bail me out on the home front when the writing needed a kick-start, while my brothers Dan and Kent were ready with sagacious advice and support. This project would be nothing without my family—and neither would I, for that matter.

I’m also indebted to friends, colleagues, administrators, and students at Villanova University—especially in political science and Russian studies—who have provided feedback, camaraderie, and a wonderful and inclusive environment for our family. In particular, I benefitted tremendously from discussions with Lynne Hartnett, Adele Lindenmeyr, Jeffrey Hahn, Matt Kerbel, Christine Palus, Markus Kreuzer, Father Joe Loya, Miron Wolnicki, Boris Briker, Lauren Miltenberger, David Barrett, Kunle Olowabi, Lowell Gustafson, Jack Johannes, Bob Langran, Eric Lomazoff, Catherine Warrick, Catherine Wilson, Lara Brown, Maria Toyoda, Jennifer Dixon, Daniel Mark, Shigehiro Suzuki, and Mary Beth Simmons. Meanwhile, good friends Erasmus and Maureen Kersting were always there to listen to my frustrations and gripes, even after hours. While Father Peter Donohue, Father Kail Ellis, Merrill Stein and Taras Ortynsky provided institutional support at different administrative levels, Steven Darbes, Shishav Parajuli, and Max McGuire were instrumental for their research assistance. Villanova University also provided a much-appreciated subvention to secure licensing for the various photos used throughout the book. Yet more than anyone at Villanova I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Steven Schultz, who diligently poured over
chapter upon chapter, draft upon draft—talking me through so many unexpected frustrations of writing for a wider audience. Thank you.

I feel blessed to have known Murray Feshbach—who plays a starring role in this book—as an advisor, mentor, and friend. Russia owes you a tremendous debt of gratitude for some five decades of tireless investigation; I owe you just as much in terms of guidance and inspiration.

Beyond my confines on the Main Line, I am thankful to a wide variety of scholars and friends who were gracious enough to endure my questions, impositions, or just provide friendly support, including Mark Steinberg, Mark Beissinger, Aleksandr Nemtsov, Nicholas Eberstadt, David Christian, Jim Sweigert, Richard Tempest, Kate Transchel, Robin Room, Martin McKee, David Leon, David Fahey, Charles King, Harley Balzer, Scott Gehlbach, Judy Twigg, Carol Leff, Emmanuel Akyeampong, Steve Trusa, Herb Meyer, Adrianne Jacobs, Anna Bailey, Dmitry Fedotov, Thomas Jabine at the Library of Congress, Jos Schaeken at the Birchbark Literacy project at Leiden University, Peter Maggs at the University of Illinois Law School, and Kristy Ironside, who saved me from making a separate transatlantic voyage to the archives in Moscow. Whether they know it or not, support and inspiration were often provided from afar by Vlad Treml, Jeremy Duff, Cliff Gaddy, Quinn Ernster, Daniel Treisman, Chris Walker, Clint Fuller, Lyndon Allin, Brian Varney, Tony Dutcher, Mark Adomanis, Anatoly Karlin, Sean Guillory, Duncan Redmonds, Jeff Williams, Tim Shriver, Dave Deibler and Barb Schilf, Steve Perry and the good folks at CPD, Fishbone, Templeton Rye, and Mitchell & Ness. Special appreciation goes to those active in the special needs community everywhere—both in the United States and abroad—for their often unheralded work with the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the brutalized. In a similar vein, much of my research in Russia would not have been possible without the kindness of Georgia and Andrew Williams and their charitable work with ROOF—the Russian Orphan Opportunity Fund. My experiences with disadvantaged orphans in Podolsk were truly life altering, as later chapters should make clear. Since many of the real victims of vodka politics are to be found in Russia’s beleaguered orphanage system, it is only appropriate that a percentage of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to ROOF.

Last but far from least, like its predecessor,
The Political Power of Bad Ideas
, this book would not have been possible without all of the tremendous, hardworking people at Oxford University Press. Foremost among them is my editor, David McBride, who has shared my vision and faith in the viability of this project from the get-go. I’d also like to extend my most heartfelt appreciation to the slate of anonymous reviewers who slogged through every line and every footnote of the manuscript: the project is much improved for your efforts.

Finally, it is necessary to say a thing or two about biases and motivations as a foreigner writing about a taboo subject like alcohol in Russia. I am certain that
instead of confronting the arguments I put forth in the book some readers will jump to unfounded conclusions based solely on nationality. So let me clarify that my aim in writing this book is to promote the health, happiness, and prosperity of the Russian people, whom I have long admired and respected. My fascination with the topic grew even stronger while living in Moscow throughout the 1990s, when I first realized that an outsider’s perspective means being able to see the forest for the trees when it comes to alcohol and Russian statecraft.

Others are sure to assume—again mistakenly—that my criticism of vodka’s role in Russian politics and society is motivated by a personal distaste for alcohol. Having lived (and drunk extensively) both in Russia and the United States, I’ll admit that I drink far more vodka than the average American and far more beer than the average Russian. This book ultimately may be criticized for many things, but it is certainly not a temperance tract by a puritanical teetotaler.

VODKA POLITICS

1

Introduction

Nikita Khrushchev was an oddly disarming fellow: five-foot-three and nearly as wide, with a face that seemed to be made from putty. With only four years of formal education, this former peasant somehow rose through the Soviet commissariat to become the unlikely successor to the blood-soaked tyranny of Joseph Stalin. The pudgy Khrushchev was the embodiment of contradiction: alternatively shrewd and shortsighted, secretive and straightforward, unassuming and pompous, optimistic and apocalyptic.

The world had never seen a Russian autocrat quite like Khrushchev. Before he rose to power in the early 1950s, Eurasia was ruled for centuries by commissars and emperors who were distant, cold, and inaccessible. Whether tsarist or communist, Russian leaders seemed omnipotent and actively supported an image of infallibility. Khrushchev, by contrast, was cursed with human frailty and imperfection, which were on full display for the world throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
¹
From crushing popular opposition in Eastern Europe to banging his shoe at the United Nations, and even pushing the world to the brink of thermonuclear holocaust over Cuba, Khrushchev blundered from one fiasco to another. So it was understandable that, in 1964, the Politburo deposed the all-too-human Khrushchev in favor of the dour Leonid Brezhnev, returning to the traditional cold and distant Russian autocrat.

After being booted from power by his own Communist Party, “special pensioner” Khrushchev spent his autumn years in forced retirement at his dacha—a summer home west of Moscow. When not tending to his garden, or giving his guards the slip in order to stroll the banks of the nearby Moscow River in his telltale fedora and straining belt halfway up to his armpits, Khrushchev dictated his memoirs on a rudimentary tape recorder—providing invaluable perspectives from the only Russian autocrat to die peacefully out of office. Of the 1.5 million words that fell from Khrushchev’s aging, meaty lips onto hundreds of hours of four-track, reel-to-reel tapes, the most fascinating tell of the importance of alcohol to the intrigues of Stalin’s inner circle by one of the few who lived to tell the tale.
²

Joseph Stalin is conventionally portrayed as a brutal dictator who in the early 1920s seized the reins of absolute power in the Soviet Union by outmaneuvering and purging his political opponents; a paranoid tyrant who fostered an all-encompassing personality cult and ruled the Soviet Union through fear, repression, and intimidation. Under him, untold millions would perish in labor camps, forced deportations, crash collectivization and industrialization, genocide and famine—all before sacrificing twenty-four million souls to Nazi Germany in World War II.
³
What must it have been like to be complicit in having the blood of millions on your hands? How do you walk the fine line between pleasing the master so that your head is not the next to roll and saving your sanity and your soul?

Through those scratchy tapes, Khrushchev’s aging voice gives us a glimpse of life in Stalin’s inner circle where, in good times and bad, the most pressing political questions were decided at the great leader’s table. Early on in the 1930s Stalin was “simple and accessible.”
⁴
Have a problem? Call Stalin directly. Or, better yet, go see him directly at his country dacha, where he’d sit out on the porch in the tepid summer air:

They served soup, a thick Russian broth, and there’d be a small carafe of vodka and a pitcher of water; the vodka glass was moderate in size. You’d go in and say hello and he would say: “Want something to eat? Take a seat.” And “take a seat” meant grab a soup bowl (the soup kettle was right there), fill a bowl for yourself, as much as you want, sit down, and eat. If you want something to drink, grab a carafe, pour yourself a glass, and drink it down. If you want a second drink, you decide that for yourself. The soul knows its own measure, as the saying goes. If you don’t want to drink, you don’t have to.
⁵