The role of vodka in the history of Russia: truth and fiction
In the courtyard there is a luxurious summer - time for vacations, picnics and all kinds of other types of recreation. On such days, it’s even not easy to write about revolutions, unrest and wars, the thought itself turns into something more peaceful and, preferably, pleasant. Why, even say that - not only blood for many centuries flowed rivers in the vastness of our Fatherland! "Green wine" also shed a lot ...
Unfortunately, articles about everything connected with the use of alcohol in our country can, for the most part, be divided into two categories - either purely advertising (everything is clear with them), or angrily condemning, tragic, mercilessly branding drinks as such and all at least a few "consuming" people. We will try to look for the answer to the question of what role the intoxication played in Russian and Soviet history, and along the way we will scatter to smithereens at least the most obsessive and ridiculous myths related to this issue.
“Vodka is the most Russian drink!”, “Russians are the most drunken nation in the world, carrying alcoholism in their gene pool!”, “Our people have been drinking for centuries - first tsars, then General Secretaries!” - what impassable stupidities you cannot hear and read, you just need to “hook” this issue. And foreigners ... Look, not so long ago, Japanese journalist Mititaka Hattori in all seriousness issued a version that it was Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol decrees, which the Japanese persistently call “dry law”, and led to the collapse of the USSR! They, in his opinion, “aroused the wrath of the drinkers,” who simply “had no other entertainment.” And that’s all - the end of the “perestroika”, krants to the Soviet Union ... Well, what can I say? It remains only to deal in detail with the centuries-old lies and misconceptions heaped around “Russian drunkenness”.
"Prince Vladimir is an apologist for Old Russian alcoholism." Such nonsense was born into the world and to this day has been circulating due to the fact that Nestor the Chronicler, the author of The Tale of Bygone Years, known to all of us from school, in the section describing the choice of the new faith for Grand Duke Vladimir, claimed that Muslims refused almost exclusively because of the ban on the use of wine in the Qur'an. "Fun in Russia is drinking!" - it seems that Krasno gave out the Sun, thereby giving the Mohammedans a turn from the gate. It is clear that the ancient pen worker simply wanted to paint everything “prettier” and the choice of such an important attribute as the state religion of the great pragmatist Vladimir was influenced by completely different factors, which today would be called geopolitical considerations. But the legend went for a walk around the world, giving a good trump card to those who claim that ...
“Russians are the most drinking nation and have always been so.” Everyone in Europe will tell you this - they know for sure! In fact - complete nonsense, just blatant slander, one of the broadest arsenal of "Russophobia for beginners." We must start with the fact that the same Nestor does not have faith for an extremely simple reason - in Russia since the time of Vladimir mass drunkenness was physically impossible! Fermented “standing” honey served as the main intoxicating drink. His fortress was closer to beer, maximum to weak wine. And, most importantly - how many that hoppy honey was there ?! Especially when you consider that the valuable product obtained from bees had a host of other uses. Beer was brewed too - but in very small quantities, again, not everyone could transfer barley to it. And wine was a product exclusively of “imported production”, due to which it was available exclusively to princes, close squad and other “cream of society”.
In the richest pantheon of the ancient Slavs, there weren’t any “gods” like the Greek Bacchus or the Roman Bacchus. The gods of fire and water, war and agriculture, carnal love and fun ... But the god-drunkards, unlike the "enlightened Europeans", our ancestors did not have. And in the most ancient legislative code of our Motherland - “Russian Truth”, which examined in detail the most possible crimes and offenses, one cannot find “alcohol articles” either. The problem was clearly irrelevant! Moreover, according to statistics, already in the 95th century, absolute teetotalers (that is, people who had never tasted alcohol in their lives) were more than 18% of minors (under 90 years old), 43% of women and XNUMX% of men in the Russian Empire! So much for “drunkenness” ...
And, of course, the Russians did not “invent” alcohol or vodka. The Arabs were the first to come up with the distillation of grape wine - according to historical chronicles, a substance as close as possible to the current hard liquor was obtained by some Ragez or Ragiz back in the VI-VII century. Hence the name "al-kogol", meaning "stupefying," "depriving the mind." But Mohammed intervened, imposing a ban on alcohol for all the faithful - and the center of "drinking development" of mankind has moved to Europe. This is where the “green serpent” turned around to the full! Particularly zealous in this matter were alchemists, whom in the Old World then divorced, like dogs uncut. Hence all sorts of lavish names, such as “spiritus vin” (“spirit of wine”), which remained in our everyday life as “alcohol”. The first drinks obtained from distilled grape wine (which were, in fact, analogues of the current grappa or chacha) in Europe were called “aqua vita”, that is, “water of life”. This name is in a reverted form - “shackles" and was fixed for vodka in Ukraine. They’re generally Europeans, yeah ...
Russians did not know vodka of a century of commercials until XII. The then “aqua vita” was brought to Moscow by Genoese merchants, trying to surprise the local nobility. The stubborn Muscovites tried, spat, rinsed their mouths and continued to “drink honey-beer”, remaining confident that such stuffy things could be consumed except for medicinal purposes. But strong booze even took root in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which, according to many natives there (of the same Mikhail Litvin) greatly contributed to the collapse of its statehood and falling under the complete power of the Commonwealth. So, there wasn’t any “original Russian vodka” at all ?! Well, how - it was, of course. The honor of its creation is attributed to a certain monk, Isidore (a person, quite possibly mythical). It was he who, according to legend, thought of mixing alcohol with water in a proportion that makes it much more acceptable for consumption. The main difference between the new drink and its true “Russianness” was that it was based on alcohol obtained not from grapes, but from rye grain. Hence the first, true name of Russian vodka - “bread wine”.
As such, the term “vodka” began to be used in Russia for the water-alcohol mixture of the century familiar to all of us from the 14th century before, in addition to the name given above were: “hot wine”, “burnt wine”, “green wine”, "Boiled wine" and so on. And the fortress of vodka used in the Russian state was originally far from the present. For the first time, Tsar of All Russia, Ivan Vasilievich the Terrible, authorized the sale of “bread wine”. By the way, he opened the first tavern in Moscow - an institution intended exclusively for drinking hops. So, with him, vodka was at 40 degrees! She began to gain fortress only later - over the years and centuries. Here, of course, it is impossible to ignore another idiotic myth - that the great Russian chemist Mendeleev “invented” modern and supposedly “ideal” vodka. There was nothing like this in life! Yes, the scientist did defend a dissertation in his time on the topic of “the mutual dissolution of anhydrous alcohol and water,” but she had nothing to do with the production of vodka! According to Mendeleev himself, he “didn’t drink vodka in life,” and he knew its taste “along with the taste of most salts or poisons”. So where did 38 degrees come from ?! This correlation has a very specific author - the Russian Minister of Finance Reiter. It was he who proposed "rounding off" the vodka fortress established by Peter the Great at 39-40 degrees to exactly XNUMX. It was easier and faster to calculate the corresponding tax deductions! Alas, we do not owe the "classical degree" to a genius, but to an official. True, it’s the same for the domestic one.
The fact that "universal Russian drunkenness" and the "addiction to alcohol" of our people is nothing more than a vicious myth has already been said above. By the way, there is a version according to which our ancestors are partly to blame for his appearance - foreign guests have always tried to “receive the glory”: if you improve, so that they can’t get up from the table, if you drink, so that they’ll crawl ... Here the poor people accepted Russian hospitable hospitality for “national traditions”. However, it cannot be denied that drunkenness has been present in Russia as a national problem since a certain time. Who is guilty of this? If you want to - believe it or not - but the first to be caught in instilling in our people the love of plentiful booze are again foreigners. Specifically, the Germans captured in the Livonian War, whom the same John Vasilyevich settled in Moscow in the so-called Kukuy-Sloboda and endowed with considerable, in the current language, “benefits and privileges”. Including the production of hard liquor and trade in it, which was strictly forbidden by Russians at that time. Well, the guests turned around gloriously - the scale of the disaster was such that it came to complaints to the metropolitan. It’s not without reason that Ivan the Terrible received his nickname - they burned the settlement to hell, and drove the presumptuous “bootleggers” into the cold, as contemporaries wrote “what mother gave birth to”.
However, Kukuy, with all its traditions, including drunkenness, has been beautifully revived already under Boris Godunov. And even under Peter I he flourished at all. This emperor, no doubt, was great, but how much he brought all the rubbish to the Russian land - not to count! Of course, he hung pood “medals” for drunkenness on his subjects, but one of his “Most Sovereign and All-Drunken Cathedral” crossed out the entire “anti-alcohol policies"King in one fell swoop. By the way, this same monarch first introduced the second state monopoly on distillation in domestic history, and then, having canceled it, he began to tear excise taxes from the winemakers - money was needed to equip the army and navy and to conduct wars. Catherine II, who in every possible way promoted the idea of “liberty of the nobility”, made distillery the privilege of an exclusively noble estate. With her, the system of so-called “farms” received the final development and consolidation at the state level, the meaning of which was that private individuals who had their own, rather considerable “margin” were engaged in collecting funds for the state treasury from the wine trade. This is an explanation in an extremely compressed form, the system, in fact, was quite complex and was constantly changing.
The “alcoholic” payback payments received by the treasury of the Russian Empire were enormous! If in the year this system was introduced (1781) they amounted to 10 million rubles, then already in 1811-1815 they exceeded far for 50 million annually. The state wine monopoly finally introduced in 1894 by 1913 amounted to more than a quarter of all the income of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, these frightening figures are far from an indicator of “general drunkenness,” and therefore need to be clarified. The thing is that until about the end of the XNUMXth - beginning of the XNUMXth centuries “bread wine” in Russia was made from alcohol obtained by distillation. Such a drink needed to be thoroughly cleaned and could be produced only from high-quality raw materials (grain). However, technical progress, be it three times wrong brought technology of rectified alcohol. Here it was possible to drive him out of anything - from potatoes, beets, at least from sawdust, about which the great Soviet bard sang with such resentment. Having lost its, one might say, “sacred essence”, Russian vodka became cheap. At the end of the XVII century, a twelve-liter bucket of vodka “today’s ridiculous” at 24 degrees “pulled” about a ruble of money, and in a lean year it could cost three to four times more expensive, respectively, a liter of it cost at least 8 kopecks. In 1913, the rectified “forty-degree” went on average at 60 kopecks per liter. Here are just a craftsman of Peter's time for a month did not work and not a half, and an experienced factory worker under Nicholas II had a salary of 30-50 rubles! Feel the difference. By the way, the bucket measure for vodka was not accidentally given to me - until the XNUMXth century, less bread bread from the tavern was not let go. It was also a kind of filter against soldering the poor.
As we see, until the beginning of the 1858th century, huge "vodka" revenues in the Russian treasury were provided, rather, by the high cost of the product than by the mass consumption. However, not everyone in Russia adhered to this opinion. In Russian history, the fact that is as flattering to our people as shameful for the then government is the anti-alcohol riots of the late 1859th century is extremely little known. More specifically, the mass demonstrations that took place in 32-11 spanning XNUMX provinces of the Russian Empire, during which the peasants at first refused to drink hops, then began to smash the taverns, destroyed alcohol (and not at all by drinking) and, moreover - they demanded that the authorities “never add them again.” In the Volga region, the rebellion took on the size of almost a new Pugachev region — it got to the point that troops were fired against militant teetotalers, who fired to defeat! XNUMX thousand fighters with alcohol were sent to prison and hard labor! The "sobering gatherings" by personal decree were banned by the Minister of Finance himself - still, such a loss to the treasury ...
It is not surprising that under such a “state policy”, the consumption of vodka in the Russian Empire grew steadily, reaching 1914 liters per capita by 4.7. In this case, however, the Russians remained in the field of drinking second in the world ... from the end! But then a real “dry law” broke out - with the outbreak of World War I, the sale of alcohol (not only vodka, but wine and even beer) was banned. Moreover, there is evidence that Nicholas II in all seriousness declared his intention to keep the ban in force even after the end of the war! Well, how can revolution not happen here ?! However, the Bolsheviks, who, as a result of all the upheavals, took power in Russia, did not think to abolish “forced sobriety”. “Prohibition” first existed in the RSFSR, and then in the USSR until 1925. And then at first vodka was sold no stronger than 30 degrees. Well, the Stalinist USSR, in comparison with present-day Russia and the "post-Soviet republics", was generally a country of teetotalers: in 1932, no more than a liter of vodka per year was consumed per capita, by 1950 - 1.85 liters. So, the ravings about the “100 grams of the people who had consumed the people”, are nothing more than another of the vile inventions of the liberals, “anti-Stalinists”.
Even in the years preceding the decline of the Soviet Union, our people drank ten times less than the French, all - less than the inhabitants of the United States and three times less than the English sirs and ladies. However, by 1984, alcohol consumption had reached 10 and a half liters per capita per year. And this is without taking into account moonshine ... Was Gorbachev right to declare alcohol in any form a “war to destroy”? It’s hard to say now - only the winners are not judged, and that “war” was waged by such stupid and barbaric methods that to this day it is scary to remember. And she was ultimately lost - like everything that Gorbachev was up to, with the exception, alas, of the collapse of the USSR. The “spring” of drunkenness, “compressed” during the years of the anti-alcohol campaign, straightened in the bad memory of the 90s with such force that we are reaping the terrible consequences to this day. And, nevertheless, Russia has not become "the most drunken country in the world"! In the annual ratings drawn up on this subject, as a rule, it does not even fall into the top ten. All the “honorable” places in it are occupied by the countries of Europe or our former “neighbors” in the USSR. Europeans, by the way, have held the championship for suicides for years on the basis of drunkenness. By the way, the same Japanese Hattori mentioned at the beginning of the article is forced to admit: today Russians drink much less than his compatriots.
So, dear readers ... Wisely, in moderation, on a worthy occasion, a quality product and in good company ... And why not ?! To your health!
Unfortunately, articles about everything connected with the use of alcohol in our country can, for the most part, be divided into two categories - either purely advertising (everything is clear with them), or angrily condemning, tragic, mercilessly branding drinks as such and all at least a few "consuming" people. We will try to look for the answer to the question of what role the intoxication played in Russian and Soviet history, and along the way we will scatter to smithereens at least the most obsessive and ridiculous myths related to this issue.
"Drinking" myths of Russia
“Vodka is the most Russian drink!”, “Russians are the most drunken nation in the world, carrying alcoholism in their gene pool!”, “Our people have been drinking for centuries - first tsars, then General Secretaries!” - what impassable stupidities you cannot hear and read, you just need to “hook” this issue. And foreigners ... Look, not so long ago, Japanese journalist Mititaka Hattori in all seriousness issued a version that it was Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol decrees, which the Japanese persistently call “dry law”, and led to the collapse of the USSR! They, in his opinion, “aroused the wrath of the drinkers,” who simply “had no other entertainment.” And that’s all - the end of the “perestroika”, krants to the Soviet Union ... Well, what can I say? It remains only to deal in detail with the centuries-old lies and misconceptions heaped around “Russian drunkenness”.
"Prince Vladimir is an apologist for Old Russian alcoholism." Such nonsense was born into the world and to this day has been circulating due to the fact that Nestor the Chronicler, the author of The Tale of Bygone Years, known to all of us from school, in the section describing the choice of the new faith for Grand Duke Vladimir, claimed that Muslims refused almost exclusively because of the ban on the use of wine in the Qur'an. "Fun in Russia is drinking!" - it seems that Krasno gave out the Sun, thereby giving the Mohammedans a turn from the gate. It is clear that the ancient pen worker simply wanted to paint everything “prettier” and the choice of such an important attribute as the state religion of the great pragmatist Vladimir was influenced by completely different factors, which today would be called geopolitical considerations. But the legend went for a walk around the world, giving a good trump card to those who claim that ...
“Russians are the most drinking nation and have always been so.” Everyone in Europe will tell you this - they know for sure! In fact - complete nonsense, just blatant slander, one of the broadest arsenal of "Russophobia for beginners." We must start with the fact that the same Nestor does not have faith for an extremely simple reason - in Russia since the time of Vladimir mass drunkenness was physically impossible! Fermented “standing” honey served as the main intoxicating drink. His fortress was closer to beer, maximum to weak wine. And, most importantly - how many that hoppy honey was there ?! Especially when you consider that the valuable product obtained from bees had a host of other uses. Beer was brewed too - but in very small quantities, again, not everyone could transfer barley to it. And wine was a product exclusively of “imported production”, due to which it was available exclusively to princes, close squad and other “cream of society”.
In the richest pantheon of the ancient Slavs, there weren’t any “gods” like the Greek Bacchus or the Roman Bacchus. The gods of fire and water, war and agriculture, carnal love and fun ... But the god-drunkards, unlike the "enlightened Europeans", our ancestors did not have. And in the most ancient legislative code of our Motherland - “Russian Truth”, which examined in detail the most possible crimes and offenses, one cannot find “alcohol articles” either. The problem was clearly irrelevant! Moreover, according to statistics, already in the 95th century, absolute teetotalers (that is, people who had never tasted alcohol in their lives) were more than 18% of minors (under 90 years old), 43% of women and XNUMX% of men in the Russian Empire! So much for “drunkenness” ...
Who invented vodka?
And, of course, the Russians did not “invent” alcohol or vodka. The Arabs were the first to come up with the distillation of grape wine - according to historical chronicles, a substance as close as possible to the current hard liquor was obtained by some Ragez or Ragiz back in the VI-VII century. Hence the name "al-kogol", meaning "stupefying," "depriving the mind." But Mohammed intervened, imposing a ban on alcohol for all the faithful - and the center of "drinking development" of mankind has moved to Europe. This is where the “green serpent” turned around to the full! Particularly zealous in this matter were alchemists, whom in the Old World then divorced, like dogs uncut. Hence all sorts of lavish names, such as “spiritus vin” (“spirit of wine”), which remained in our everyday life as “alcohol”. The first drinks obtained from distilled grape wine (which were, in fact, analogues of the current grappa or chacha) in Europe were called “aqua vita”, that is, “water of life”. This name is in a reverted form - “shackles" and was fixed for vodka in Ukraine. They’re generally Europeans, yeah ...
Russians did not know vodka of a century of commercials until XII. The then “aqua vita” was brought to Moscow by Genoese merchants, trying to surprise the local nobility. The stubborn Muscovites tried, spat, rinsed their mouths and continued to “drink honey-beer”, remaining confident that such stuffy things could be consumed except for medicinal purposes. But strong booze even took root in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which, according to many natives there (of the same Mikhail Litvin) greatly contributed to the collapse of its statehood and falling under the complete power of the Commonwealth. So, there wasn’t any “original Russian vodka” at all ?! Well, how - it was, of course. The honor of its creation is attributed to a certain monk, Isidore (a person, quite possibly mythical). It was he who, according to legend, thought of mixing alcohol with water in a proportion that makes it much more acceptable for consumption. The main difference between the new drink and its true “Russianness” was that it was based on alcohol obtained not from grapes, but from rye grain. Hence the first, true name of Russian vodka - “bread wine”.
As such, the term “vodka” began to be used in Russia for the water-alcohol mixture of the century familiar to all of us from the 14th century before, in addition to the name given above were: “hot wine”, “burnt wine”, “green wine”, "Boiled wine" and so on. And the fortress of vodka used in the Russian state was originally far from the present. For the first time, Tsar of All Russia, Ivan Vasilievich the Terrible, authorized the sale of “bread wine”. By the way, he opened the first tavern in Moscow - an institution intended exclusively for drinking hops. So, with him, vodka was at 40 degrees! She began to gain fortress only later - over the years and centuries. Here, of course, it is impossible to ignore another idiotic myth - that the great Russian chemist Mendeleev “invented” modern and supposedly “ideal” vodka. There was nothing like this in life! Yes, the scientist did defend a dissertation in his time on the topic of “the mutual dissolution of anhydrous alcohol and water,” but she had nothing to do with the production of vodka! According to Mendeleev himself, he “didn’t drink vodka in life,” and he knew its taste “along with the taste of most salts or poisons”. So where did 38 degrees come from ?! This correlation has a very specific author - the Russian Minister of Finance Reiter. It was he who proposed "rounding off" the vodka fortress established by Peter the Great at 39-40 degrees to exactly XNUMX. It was easier and faster to calculate the corresponding tax deductions! Alas, we do not owe the "classical degree" to a genius, but to an official. True, it’s the same for the domestic one.
So who "soldered the Russian people"?
The fact that "universal Russian drunkenness" and the "addiction to alcohol" of our people is nothing more than a vicious myth has already been said above. By the way, there is a version according to which our ancestors are partly to blame for his appearance - foreign guests have always tried to “receive the glory”: if you improve, so that they can’t get up from the table, if you drink, so that they’ll crawl ... Here the poor people accepted Russian hospitable hospitality for “national traditions”. However, it cannot be denied that drunkenness has been present in Russia as a national problem since a certain time. Who is guilty of this? If you want to - believe it or not - but the first to be caught in instilling in our people the love of plentiful booze are again foreigners. Specifically, the Germans captured in the Livonian War, whom the same John Vasilyevich settled in Moscow in the so-called Kukuy-Sloboda and endowed with considerable, in the current language, “benefits and privileges”. Including the production of hard liquor and trade in it, which was strictly forbidden by Russians at that time. Well, the guests turned around gloriously - the scale of the disaster was such that it came to complaints to the metropolitan. It’s not without reason that Ivan the Terrible received his nickname - they burned the settlement to hell, and drove the presumptuous “bootleggers” into the cold, as contemporaries wrote “what mother gave birth to”.
However, Kukuy, with all its traditions, including drunkenness, has been beautifully revived already under Boris Godunov. And even under Peter I he flourished at all. This emperor, no doubt, was great, but how much he brought all the rubbish to the Russian land - not to count! Of course, he hung pood “medals” for drunkenness on his subjects, but one of his “Most Sovereign and All-Drunken Cathedral” crossed out the entire “anti-alcohol policies"King in one fell swoop. By the way, this same monarch first introduced the second state monopoly on distillation in domestic history, and then, having canceled it, he began to tear excise taxes from the winemakers - money was needed to equip the army and navy and to conduct wars. Catherine II, who in every possible way promoted the idea of “liberty of the nobility”, made distillery the privilege of an exclusively noble estate. With her, the system of so-called “farms” received the final development and consolidation at the state level, the meaning of which was that private individuals who had their own, rather considerable “margin” were engaged in collecting funds for the state treasury from the wine trade. This is an explanation in an extremely compressed form, the system, in fact, was quite complex and was constantly changing.
The “alcoholic” payback payments received by the treasury of the Russian Empire were enormous! If in the year this system was introduced (1781) they amounted to 10 million rubles, then already in 1811-1815 they exceeded far for 50 million annually. The state wine monopoly finally introduced in 1894 by 1913 amounted to more than a quarter of all the income of the Russian Empire. Nevertheless, these frightening figures are far from an indicator of “general drunkenness,” and therefore need to be clarified. The thing is that until about the end of the XNUMXth - beginning of the XNUMXth centuries “bread wine” in Russia was made from alcohol obtained by distillation. Such a drink needed to be thoroughly cleaned and could be produced only from high-quality raw materials (grain). However, technical progress, be it three times wrong brought technology of rectified alcohol. Here it was possible to drive him out of anything - from potatoes, beets, at least from sawdust, about which the great Soviet bard sang with such resentment. Having lost its, one might say, “sacred essence”, Russian vodka became cheap. At the end of the XVII century, a twelve-liter bucket of vodka “today’s ridiculous” at 24 degrees “pulled” about a ruble of money, and in a lean year it could cost three to four times more expensive, respectively, a liter of it cost at least 8 kopecks. In 1913, the rectified “forty-degree” went on average at 60 kopecks per liter. Here are just a craftsman of Peter's time for a month did not work and not a half, and an experienced factory worker under Nicholas II had a salary of 30-50 rubles! Feel the difference. By the way, the bucket measure for vodka was not accidentally given to me - until the XNUMXth century, less bread bread from the tavern was not let go. It was also a kind of filter against soldering the poor.
The struggle with food - for good and for evil
As we see, until the beginning of the 1858th century, huge "vodka" revenues in the Russian treasury were provided, rather, by the high cost of the product than by the mass consumption. However, not everyone in Russia adhered to this opinion. In Russian history, the fact that is as flattering to our people as shameful for the then government is the anti-alcohol riots of the late 1859th century is extremely little known. More specifically, the mass demonstrations that took place in 32-11 spanning XNUMX provinces of the Russian Empire, during which the peasants at first refused to drink hops, then began to smash the taverns, destroyed alcohol (and not at all by drinking) and, moreover - they demanded that the authorities “never add them again.” In the Volga region, the rebellion took on the size of almost a new Pugachev region — it got to the point that troops were fired against militant teetotalers, who fired to defeat! XNUMX thousand fighters with alcohol were sent to prison and hard labor! The "sobering gatherings" by personal decree were banned by the Minister of Finance himself - still, such a loss to the treasury ...
It is not surprising that under such a “state policy”, the consumption of vodka in the Russian Empire grew steadily, reaching 1914 liters per capita by 4.7. In this case, however, the Russians remained in the field of drinking second in the world ... from the end! But then a real “dry law” broke out - with the outbreak of World War I, the sale of alcohol (not only vodka, but wine and even beer) was banned. Moreover, there is evidence that Nicholas II in all seriousness declared his intention to keep the ban in force even after the end of the war! Well, how can revolution not happen here ?! However, the Bolsheviks, who, as a result of all the upheavals, took power in Russia, did not think to abolish “forced sobriety”. “Prohibition” first existed in the RSFSR, and then in the USSR until 1925. And then at first vodka was sold no stronger than 30 degrees. Well, the Stalinist USSR, in comparison with present-day Russia and the "post-Soviet republics", was generally a country of teetotalers: in 1932, no more than a liter of vodka per year was consumed per capita, by 1950 - 1.85 liters. So, the ravings about the “100 grams of the people who had consumed the people”, are nothing more than another of the vile inventions of the liberals, “anti-Stalinists”.
Even in the years preceding the decline of the Soviet Union, our people drank ten times less than the French, all - less than the inhabitants of the United States and three times less than the English sirs and ladies. However, by 1984, alcohol consumption had reached 10 and a half liters per capita per year. And this is without taking into account moonshine ... Was Gorbachev right to declare alcohol in any form a “war to destroy”? It’s hard to say now - only the winners are not judged, and that “war” was waged by such stupid and barbaric methods that to this day it is scary to remember. And she was ultimately lost - like everything that Gorbachev was up to, with the exception, alas, of the collapse of the USSR. The “spring” of drunkenness, “compressed” during the years of the anti-alcohol campaign, straightened in the bad memory of the 90s with such force that we are reaping the terrible consequences to this day. And, nevertheless, Russia has not become "the most drunken country in the world"! In the annual ratings drawn up on this subject, as a rule, it does not even fall into the top ten. All the “honorable” places in it are occupied by the countries of Europe or our former “neighbors” in the USSR. Europeans, by the way, have held the championship for suicides for years on the basis of drunkenness. By the way, the same Japanese Hattori mentioned at the beginning of the article is forced to admit: today Russians drink much less than his compatriots.
So, dear readers ... Wisely, in moderation, on a worthy occasion, a quality product and in good company ... And why not ?! To your health!
Information