Vodka Politics (81 page)

The story of vodka truly is the story of Russia: not just its culture and society, but its history and statecraft as well. Whether it can ever break free of the shackles of vodka politics—and the autocratic system that nurtures it and is nurtured by it—may well be the most fundamental political question facing the future of Russia.

NOTES

Preface

1
.
Chto-to pro medvedei i balalaiki zabyli
. “‘N’yu Iork Taims’ ne unimaetsya,”
http://politics.d3.ru/comments/469696
(accessed Aug. 28, 2013). This in response to my op-ed on the LGBT Russian vodka boycotts: Mark Lawrence Schrad, “Boycotting Vodka Won’t Help Russia’s Gays,”
New York Times
, Aug. 21, 2013, A19.

2
. Valerii Melekhin, “Nuzhno vybirat’ trezvost’,”
Soratnik
, January 2010, 2,
http://video.sbnt.ru/vl/Newspapers/Soratnik/Soratnik_167.pdf
; “Obshchestvennoe mnenie,” Radio svoboda, Nov. 17, 2002,
http://archive.svoboda.org/programs/vp/2002/vp.111702.asp
(both accessed Jan. 8, 2011).; Aleksandr Nemtsov,
Alkogol’naya istoriya Rossii: Noveishii period
(Moscow: URSS, 2009), 6. On the image of Russian alcoholism more generally, see Irina R. Takala, “Russkoe p’yanstvo kak fenomen kul’tury,” in:
Alkogol’ v Rossii: Materialy pervoi mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii
(Ivanovo, 29–30 oktyabrya 2010), ed. Mikhail V. Teplyanskii (Ivanovo: Filial RGGU v g. Ivanovo, 2010), 12–21.

3
. This is not to claim that economic fears are unimportant: “inflation,” “living standards” and “employment” all consistently place in the 40–50 percent range. Respondents can choose up to seven of the twenty-six issues listed. VTsIOM, “What Russians Are Afraid Of: Press Release No. 1299,”
Russian Public Opinion Research Center
1299 (2010), and “August Problem Background: Press Release No. 1383,”
Russian Public Opinion Research Center
1383 (2011),
http://wciom.com/index.php?id=61&uid=411
(accessed Feb. 2, 2012).

4
. AFP, “Kremlin-Bound Putin Tells Russians to Have More Children,”
AhramOnline
, April 11, 2012,
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/9/39030/World/International/Kremlinbound-Putin-tells-Russians-to-have-more-chi.aspx
(accessed April 12, 2012). See also Vladimir Putin, “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly,” May 10, 2006,
http://archive.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2006/05/10/1823_type70029type82912_105566.shtml
(accessed Nov. 1, 2010).

5
. Nicholas Eberstadt,
Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications
(Seattle, Wash.: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2010), 89; 2009 Life Tables at World Health Organization (WHO), “Life Tables for WHO Member States,”
http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/mortality_life_tables/en/
(accessed Jan. 22, 2013).

6
. Mark Lawrence Schrad, “Moscow’s Drinking Problem,”
New York Times
, April 17, 2011, and “A Lesson in Drinking,”
Moscow Times
, March 4, 2011.

7
. Charles van Onselen, “Randlords and Rotgut 1886–1903: An Essay on the Role of Alcohol in the Development of European Imperialism and Southern African Capitalism, with Special Reference to Black Mineworkers in the Transvaal Republic,”
History Workshop
1, no. 2 (1976): 84; Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave
[1845] (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 74–76. Many thanks to Emmanuel
Akyeampong for this reference. On Russia see David Christian, “Traditional and Modern Drinking Cultures in Russia on the Eve of Emancipation,”
Australian Slavonic and East European Studies
1, no. 1 (1987): 61–84.

8
. Examples include Nicholas Ermochkine and Peter Iglikowski,
40 Degrees East: An Anatomy of Vodka
(Hauppauge, N.Y.: Nova, 2003); Patricia Herlihy,
Vodka: A Global History
(London: Reaktion Books, 2012); Vladimir Nikolaev,
Vodka v sud’be Rossii
(Moscow: Parad, 2004); Gennadii M. Karagodin,
Kniga o vodke i vinodelii
(Chelyabinsk: Ural, 2000).

9
. David Christian,
Living Water: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); Patricia Herlihy,
The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Kate Transchel,
Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932
(Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006); Vladimir G. Treml,
Alcohol in the USSR: A Statistical Study
, Duke Press Policy Studies (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982); Stephen White,
Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Aleksandr Nemtsov,
A Contemporary History of Alcohol in Russia
, trans. Howard M. Goldfinger and Andrew Stickley (Stockholm: Södertörns högskola, 2011). The works of Boris Segal and Irina Takala also are worthy of mention in this vein. Boris Segal,
Russian Drinking: Use and Abuse of Alcohol in Pre-Revolutionary Russia
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies, 1987) and
The Drunken Society: Alcohol Use and Abuse in the Soviet Union
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990); Irina R. Takala,
Veselie Rusi: Istoriia alkogol’noi problemy v Rossii
(St. Petersburg: Zhurnal Neva, 2002).

10
. W.J. Rorabaugh,
The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 5, 30, 49; Cedric Larson, “The Drinkers Dictionary,”
American Speech
12, no. 2 (1937): 87–92.

Chapter 1

1
. Andrei Bitov, “The Baldest and the Boldest,” in
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar, 1918–1945
, ed. Sergei Khrushchev (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), xxxiv.

2
. Sergei Khrushchev, ed.,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 1: Commissar, 1918–1945
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), xxiii; Jerrold L. Schecter, “Introduction,” in
Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament
, ed. Strobe Talbott (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1974), xi.

3
. It is worth noting that Vissarion Dzhugashvili, father of a young Joseph Dzhugashvili (Stalin), was a violent, alcoholic semi-itinerant cobbler who routinely beat his wife and children. Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Young Stalin
(New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 25.

4
. Khrushchev,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
, 1:79. See also Seweryn Bialer,
Stalin’s Successors: Leadership, Stability, and Change in the Soviet Union
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 33.

5
. Khrushchev,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
, 1:79, 1:287.

6
. Anastas Mikoyan,
Tak bylo: razmyshleniia o minuvshem
(Moscow: Vagrius, 1999), 353. Nadezhda Segeevna Alliluyeva died on November 9, 1932. On the events surrounding her death see Roman Brackman,
The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life
(London: Routledge, 2000), 231; Miklós Kun,
Stalin: An Unknown Portrait
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), 207; Donald Rayfield,
Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him
(New York: Random House, 2005), 240; Khrushchev,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
, 1:290. On the outbreak of war see Peter Kenez,
A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End
, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 139. On Stalin’s alcoholic father and the role of alcohol in his upbringing see Aleksandr Nikishin,
Vodka i Stalin
(Moscow: Dom Russkoi Vodki, 2006), 119–21.

7
. Khrushchev,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
, 1:385. Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Allilueva, confirms this observation in
Only One Year
, trans. Paul Chavchavadze (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 385.

8
. Sergei Khrushchev, ed.,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, vol. 2: Reformer, 1945–1964
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 43. See also Khrushchev,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
, 1:288; Kun,
Stalin
, 335.

9
. Milovan Djilas,
Conversations with Stalin
, trans. Michael B. Petrovich (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962), 76–78; Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 521. See also Yoram Gorlizki, “Stalin’s Cabinet: The Politburo and Decision Making in the Post-War Years,”
Europe-Asia Studies
53, no. 2 (2001): 295–98.

10
. Khrushchev,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
, 2:43.

11
. Laurence Rees,
World War II Behind Closed Doors: Stalin, the Nazis and the West
(New York: Random House, 2009), 32; I. Joseph Vizulis,
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939: The Baltic Case
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 15.

12
. Anthony Read and David Fisher,
The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939–1941
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 354; William L. Shirer,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960), 540.

13
. Read and Fisher,
Deadly Embrace
, 354. Stalin shared the secret with other Nazi delegates at the signing ceremony. Piers Brendon,
The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s
(New York: Random House, 2000), 682–83.

14
. Gustav Hilger and Alfred Mayer,
Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918–1941
(New York: Macmillan, 1953), 301, 13–14.

15
. Winston Churchill,
The Second World War, vol. 6: Triumph and Tragedy
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1953), 348–49.

16
. Documents from the National Archives (U.K.), catalog no. fo/1093/247;
http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/fo-1093-247.pdf
. Cited in Tommy Norton, “Winston… Was Complaining of a Slight Headache,” National Archives (U.K.) blog, May 22, 2013;
http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/winston-was-complaining-of-a-slight-headache/
(accessed May 22, 2013). These documents also allude to a similarly intoxicated banquet for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ambassador-at-large, Wendell Willkie. See also Wendell Lewis Willkie,
One World
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1943), 58–62, 92–93.

17
. Montefiore,
Stalin
, 477; Charles de Gaulle,
The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle
, trans. Richard Howard, 3 vols. (New York: Da Capo, 1964), 3:752. On the arrest of Khrulev’s wife see Harrison E. Salisbury,
The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
(New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 487n1.

18
. Montefiore,
Stalin
, 477. On the fate of Novikov see Michael Parrish,
Sacrifice of the Generals: Soviet Senior Officer Losses, 1939–1953
(Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2004), 270; Brian D. Taylor,
Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2003
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 177.

19
. Montefiore,
Stalin
, 314.

20
. Ibid., 477. On Kaganovich and the terror-famine see Robert Conquest,
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 328; Robert Gellately,
Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe
(New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 229. On the interrogation of Mikhail Kaganovich see Brackman,
Secret File of Joseph Stalin
, 349–50; Roy A. Medvedev,
Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 310. Also see David Remnick,
Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
(New York: Random House, 1993), 34.

21
. Montefiore,
Stalin
, 477–78.

22
. Brackman,
Secret File of Joseph Stalin
, 411; William Taubman,
Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 211, 14–15; Montefiore,
Stalin
, 521; Adam B. Ulam,
Stalin: The Man and His Era
(New York: Viking, 1973), 436; Allilueva,
Only One Year
, 385; James Graham,
Vessels of Rage, Engines of Power: The Secret History of Alcoholism
(Lexington, Va.: Aculeus, Inc., 1993), 188.

23
. Khrushchev,
Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev
, 1:289. Khrushchev continues on this point: “People might ask me: ‘What are you saying? That Stalin was a drunk?’ I can answer that he was and he wasn’t. That is, he was in a certain sense. In his later years, he couldn’t get by without drinking, drinking, drinking. On the other hand, sometimes he didn’t pump
himself full as he did his guests; he would pour a drink for himself in a small glass and even dilute it with water. But God forbid that anyone else should do such a thing. Immediately, he would be ‘fined’ for deviating from the norm, for ‘trying to deceive society.’ This of course was a joke, but you had to do some serious drinking as a result of the joke.” Ibid., 1:291.