Stalinism and alcoholism in the Soviet Union (supplement to Part 7)

Poverty and alcoholism in Yalçın Küçük’s “excessively trouble-free country”

Note: This essay should be read as a supplementary piece to the earlier blog post entitled Mistaking alcoholism for a sign of prosperity: Yalçın Küçük’s fantasies. There, we examined Küçük’s approach to the alcohol problem in the Soviet Union: he presented it not as a symptom and catalyst of economic and social crisis, but rather as a by-product of an “excessively trouble-free” society. Here, we seek to give the same discussion a somewhat more concrete form through Mervyn Matthews’s pioneering study of poverty in the Soviet Union.

In portraying the Soviet Union under Brezhnev as having become an “excessively trouble-free country” - a society in which “disposable incomes had outstripped the possibilities of consumption” - Yalçın Küçük either did not know of an important study dealing with that same period, or chose to ignore it. We are referring to the British Sovietologist Mervyn Matthews’s book, published in 1986, Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years. [*]

Matthews’s book does not approach poverty in the Soviet Union merely in terms of low wages or income inequality. Rather, it shows that poverty in Soviet society must be understood together with the qualitative forms of deprivation that permeated the entire fabric of everyday life: inadequate and unbalanced diets, poor-quality food, chronic shortages of consumer goods, interminable queues, substandard housing conditions, overcrowded living spaces, problems of access to health care, the vulnerability of the elderly and of dependants, and the time swallowed up by queues and the daily struggle to obtain basic supplies.

This picture points to a Soviet reality very different from Küçük’s fantasy of an “excessively trouble-free country”. Possessing roubles in the Soviet Union did not necessarily mean having access to the goods and services one wanted. Low prices might have appeared to provide a guarantee on paper; yet when the shelves were empty, when the goods and services available were of poor quality, and when access to decent food, adequate housing, durable consumer goods or reliable health care depended on personal connections, status, waiting lists, the black market and bureaucratic privilege, that guarantee remained largely formal.

Another important aspect of Matthews’s study is that it shows how the Stalinist regime regarded even the word “poverty” as ideologically dangerous. Rather than openly acknowledging the existence of poverty in the Soviet Union, official discourse hid behind indirect expressions such as “the inadequately provided for” or “those whose needs were not adequately met”. This terminological sleight of hand was not merely a matter of statistical camouflage; it was an attempt to render invisible the fact that a regime claiming to be “socialist”, and even to have reached the stage of “mature socialism”, had left millions of people below an acceptable standard of living.

It is particularly significant for the purposes of this series that Matthews devoted a separate section of his book to alcoholism. In his view, alcoholism was both one of the causes of Soviet poverty and one of its most destructive consequences. In low-income households, alcohol drained already limited family budgets, with devastating effects on nutrition, clothing, childcare and the costs of everyday life. At the same time, through absenteeism, productivity losses, workplace accidents, domestic violence and health problems, it helped to reproduce poverty.

Thus, in Soviet society, alcoholism was not, as Küçük claimed, a secondary malaise arising from the failure to channel “free time” into “communisant” channels. It was a symptom of a structural crisis intertwined with poverty, bureaucratic alienation, chronic shortages of consumer goods, the housing crisis, low wages, the privileged nomenklatura system and the constrictions of everyday life. The fact that the state, while condemning alcoholism and conducting propaganda against it, at the same time derived a considerable share of its consolidated budget revenues from alcohol sales revealed, with stark clarity, the contradiction and hypocrisy of the Stalinist regime.

Matthews’s study had been published five years before Küçük’s book. This means that Yalçın Küçük was either unaware of this pioneering work on Soviet poverty - a serious shortcoming for someone making such sweeping judgements about the Soviet Union - or he was aware of it and deliberately chose to ignore it.

By way of conclusion, it is worth returning to the Moscow scene we recounted in another blog post on the political memoirs of Feridun Gürgöz, formerly a leading member of the Stalinist Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). [**] In the summer of 1987, Gürgöz, together with TKP members Cemal Kıral and Mehmet Bozışık, visited a retired Russian woman worker in Moscow. Living in the city centre, in a damp-smelling apartment block, in a tiny room in a communal flat, this elderly woman received a pension of only 60 roubles a month. Her furnishings were extremely meagre; the kitchen was shared; even the simple loudspeaker in the room reminded Gürgöz of his impoverished childhood in Istanbul in the 1950s. The woman offered her guests whatever she had - a few tomatoes, a few cherries and some tea - but faced with such poverty, Gürgöz could not bring himself to take any of the tomatoes or cherries.

This heart-rending scene is particularly important because it reminds us that the picture Matthews drew in his book was not merely a matter of dry statistics.

[*] Mervyn Matthews, Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986.

[**] Feridun Gürgöz, Saat Geri Dönmüyor, Tüstav Yayınları, Istanbul, April 2007.

Sovyetler Birliği’nde Stalinizm ve alkolizm (7’ye ek)

Yalçın Küçük’ün “aşırı sorunsuz ülkesi”nde yoksulluk ve alkolizm

Not: Bu yazı, daha önce blogda yayımlanan Alkolizmi refah belirtisi sanmak: Yalçın Küçük’ün fantezileri başlıklı yazının tamamlayıcı bir eki olarak okunmalıdır. Orada Yalçın Küçük’ün Sovyetler Birliği’ndeki alkol sorununu ekonomik ve toplumsal krizin bir belirtisi ve katalizörü olarak değil, “aşırı sorunsuz” bir toplumun yan ürünü gibi sunan yaklaşımını ele almıştık. Burada ise aynı tartışmayı, Mervyn Matthews’un Sovyet yoksulluğu üzerine öncü çalışması üzerinden biraz daha somutlaştırıyoruz.

Yalçın Küçük, Sovyetler Birliği’ni Brejnev döneminde “aşırı sorunsuz ülke” hâline gelmiş, “harcanabilir gelirlerin tüketim imkânlarının üstüne çıktığı” bir toplum olarak tasvir ederken, aynı döneme ilişkin önemli bir çalışmayı ya bilmiyor ya da bilmezden geliyordu. Britanyalı Sovyetolog Mervyn Matthews’un 1986 yılında yayımlanan Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years (Sovyetler Birliği’nde Yoksulluk: Son Yıllarda Ayrıcalıksız Kesimlerin Yaşam Tarzları) başlıklı kitabından [*] söz ediyoruz.

Matthews’un kitabı, Sovyetler Birliği’nde yoksulluğu yalnızca düşük ücretler ya da gelir eşitsizliği üzerinden ele almaz. Tersine, Sovyet toplumunda yoksulluğun gündelik hayatın bütün dokusuna yayılan niteliksel yoksunluklarla birlikte anlaşılması gerektiğini gösterir: yetersiz ve dengesiz beslenme, kalitesiz gıda, kronik tüketim malları kıtlığı, uzun kuyruklar, kötü konut koşulları, aşırı kalabalık yaşam alanları, sağlık hizmetlerine erişimdeki sorunlar, yaşlıların ve bağımlı nüfusun kırılganlığı, zamanın kuyruklarda ve gündelik tedarik mücadelesinde tüketilmesi.

Bu tablo, Küçük’ün “aşırı sorunsuz ülke” fantezisinden çok farklı bir Sovyet gerçekliğine işaret eder. Sovyetler Birliği’nde rubleye sahip olmak, istenen mal ve hizmetlere erişebilmek anlamına gelmiyordu. Düşük fiyatlar kâğıt üzerinde bir güvence sağlıyor gibi görünse de raflar boşaldığında, erişilebilen mal ve hizmetler kalitesiz olduğunda, iyi gıdaya, uygun konuta, dayanıklı tüketim mallarına ya da nitelikli sağlık hizmetine ulaşmak kişisel bağlantılara, statüye, bekleme listelerine, karaborsaya ve bürokratik ayrıcalıklara bağlı hâle geldiğinde, bu güvence büyük ölçüde biçimsel kalıyordu.

Matthews’un çalışmasının bir başka önemli yönü, Stalinist rejimin “yoksulluk” sözcüğünü bile ideolojik bakımdan tehlikeli saydığını göstermesidir. Resmî söylem, Sovyetler Birliği’nde yoksulluğun varlığını açıkça kabul etmek yerine, “yetersiz güvenceye sahip” ya da “ihtiyaçları yeterince karşılanmamış” kesimler gibi dolaylı ifadelerin arkasına saklanıyordu. Bu kelime oyunu, yalnızca istatistiksel bir maskeleme değildi; “sosyalist” olduğunu, hatta “olgun sosyalizm” aşamasına ulaştığını iddia eden bir rejimin milyonlarca insanı kabul edilebilir bir yaşam standardının altında bırakmasını görünmez kılma çabasıydı.

Matthews’un kitabında alkolizme özel bir başlık ayırmış olması da bu yazı dizisi açısından özellikle önemlidir. Ona göre alkolizm, Sovyet yoksulluğunun hem nedenlerinden hem de onun en yıkıcı sonuçlarından biriydi. Dar gelirli hanelerde alkol, zaten sınırlı olan aile bütçelerini emiyor; beslenme, giyim, çocukların bakımı ve gündelik yaşam giderleri üzerinde yıkıcı sonuçlar doğuruyordu. Aynı zamanda işe devamsızlık, üretkenlik kaybı, iş kazaları, aile içi şiddet ve sağlık sorunları yoluyla yoksulluğun yeniden üretilmesine katkıda bulunuyordu.

Dolayısıyla Sovyet toplumunda alkolizm, Küçük’ün ileri sürdüğü gibi “boş zaman”ın “komünizan” kanallara akıtılamamasından doğmuş tali bir rahatsızlık değildi. Yoksulluk, bürokratik yabancılaşma, tüketim malları kıtlığı, konut bunalımı, düşük ücretler, ayrıcalıklı nomenklatura düzeni ve gündelik hayatın sıkışmışlığıyla iç içe geçmiş yapısal bir kriz belirtisiydi. Devletin bir yandan alkolizmi kınayıp ona karşı propaganda faaliyeti yürütürken, diğer yandan konsolide bütçe gelirlerinin hatırı sayılır bir bölümünü alkol satışlarından elde etmesi, Stalinist rejimin çelişkisini ve ikiyüzlülüğünü bütün açıklığıyla gösteriyordu.

Matthews’un çalışması, Küçük’ün kitabından beş yıl önce yayımlanmıştı. Dolayısıyla Yalçın Küçük ya Sovyet yoksulluğu üzerine bu öncü çalışmadan haberdar değildi -bu, SSCB üzerine bu kadar iddialı hükümler veren biri açısından ciddi bir eksikliktir- ya da haberdardı ve onu bilerek görmezden geldi.

Bitirirken, daha önce Stalinist Türkiye Komünist Partisi’nin (TKP) önde gelen bir üyesi olan Feridun Gürgöz’ün siyasi anıları [**] üzerine yazdığımız bir başka yazıda aktardığımız Moskova sahnesine geri dönmekte yarar var. Gürgöz, 1987 yazında TKP üyeleri Cemal Kıral ve Mehmet Bozışık’la birlikte Moskova’da emekli bir Rus kadın işçiyi ziyaret eder. Moskova’nın merkezinde, rutubet kokan bir apartmanda, ortak kullanılan bir dairenin küçücük odasında yaşayan bu yaşlı kadın ayda yalnızca 60 ruble emekli maaşı almaktadır. Evin eşyası son derece sınırlıdır; mutfak ortaktır; odadaki basit hoparlör bile Gürgöz’e 1950’lerin İstanbul’undaki yoksul çocukluk anılarını hatırlatır. Kadın, evinde ne varsa -birkaç domates, birkaç kiraz ve çay- misafirlerine ikram eder; ama Gürgöz, bu yoksulluğun karşısında domateslere ve kirazlara elini uzatamaz.

Bu iç burkan sahne, Matthews’un kitabında çizilen tablonun kuru istatistiklerden ibaret olmadığını hatırlatması bakımından özellikle önemlidir.

[*] Mervyn Matthews, Poverty in the Soviet Union: The Life-styles of the Underprivileged in Recent Years, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986.

[**] Feridun Gürgöz, Saat Geri Dönmüyor, Tüstav Yayınları,  İstanbul, Nisan 2007.

The World Cup begins:

The World Revolution’s First XI take to the pitch!

“Soviet United” on the pitch: in this 1923 cartoon from Red Pepper, Marx has the ball, and the line-up is made up of the star players of the Bolshevik movement. Stalin, of course, is nowhere to be seen in the First XI - for at the time, the bureaucratic counter-revolution had not yet prevailed. (See: Who were the true leaders of the October Revolution?)

As the World Cup kicks off, here is something from the archives: the most theoretically accomplished, politically advanced and technically gifted First XI of all time!

This 1923 cartoon was published in the Soviet satirical magazine Red Pepper (Krasnyi Perets). Red Pepper was an illustrated political humour magazine published in Moscow between 1923 and 1926. It satirised shoddy and inadequate practices, the distortions of the NEP period, the remnants of the old way of life, and international politics. In its early period, it was issued as a supplement to the newspaper Rabochaya Moskva; from 1925 onwards, it became a standalone publication.

The cartoon introduces readers to the football team “Soviet United”. In the front row are Radek, Sosnovsky, Trotsky, Riazanov and Bukharin; in the back row are Zinoviev, Lenin, Marx, Kamenev, Lozovsky and Chicherin. The ball - or rather, the globe - is in the hands of the team captain, Marx. As for the side’s style of play, it is, as one might expect, as follows: a coherent strategy grounded in revolutionary Marxist theory; highly creative tactics that leave the opposition bewildered; pressing all over the pitch; a solid defence; uninterrupted agitation; and attacking football on a world scale.

One of the most striking aspects of the drawing, viewed from today’s vantage point, is that Stalin is absent from this First XI. Leaving Marx and Lenin aside, the great majority of the line-up would, in the years that followed, fall victim to the purges and political murders carried out on his orders: Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Riazanov, Sosnovsky and Lozovsky were executed; Radek died in prison; and Trotsky was murdered in Mexico in 1940 by a Stalinist agent.

The World Cup will last for 39 days - by no means a short stretch of time. The stars of the World Revolution, however, will continue to play on the pitches of class struggle for many years to come, refusing to make the slightest concession to today’s increasingly commercialised footballing order, which loses more of its beauty with every passing year.

And there is one crucial difference that sets this team apart from every other team: it is not a national side! As Captain Marx reminds the whole squad in the dressing room before every match: “The workers have no country!”

Source: David King, Trotsky: A Photographic Biography, Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986, p. 124.

Dünya Kupası başlıyor:

Dünya Devrimi’nin ilk 11’i sahada!

“Soviet United” sahada: Kırmızı Biber dergisinin 1923 tarihli karikatüründe top Marx’ta, kadro Bolşevik hareketin yıldız oyuncularından oluşuyor. Stalin ise elbette ilk 11’de yok; çünkü o tarihte bürokratik karşı-devrim henüz galebe çalmamıştı. (Bkz. Ekim Devrimi’nin gerçek önderleri kimdi?) 

Dünya Kupası başlarken arşivden: tüm zamanların teorik bakımdan en donanımlı, siyasi açıdan en gelişkin, teknik becerisi ve yeteneği en yüksek ilk 11’i!

1923 tarihli bu karikatür, Sovyet hiciv dergisi Red Pepper’da (Kırmızı Biber) yayımlanmış. Kırmızı Biber, Moskova’da 1923-1926 yılları arasında çıkan resimli bir siyasi mizah dergisiydi. Kötü ve yetersiz uygulamaları, NEP döneminin çarpıklıklarını, eski hayatın kalıntılarını ve uluslararası politikayı hiciv konusu yapıyordu. İlk döneminde Rabochaya Moskva gazetesinin eki olarak yayımlanmış, 1925’ten itibaren ayrı bir yayın hâline gelmişti.

Karikatür okurlara “Soviet United” futbol takımını tanıtıyor. Ön sırada Radek, Sosnovskiy, Trotskiy, Riazanov ve Buharin; arka sırada ise Zinovyev, Lenin, Marx, Kamenev, Lozovskiy ve Çiçerin yer alıyor. Top -daha doğrusu dünya- takım kaptanı Marx’ın elinde. Kadronun oyun anlayışı ise tahmin edileceği üzere şöyle: devrimci Marksist teoriye dayanan tutarlı bir strateji, rakibi şaşkınlığa sürükleyen son derece yaratıcı taktikler, tam saha pres, sağlam defans, kesintisiz ajitasyon ve dünya çapında hücum futbolu.

Çizimin bugünden bakıldığında en çarpıcı yanlarından biri de Stalin’in bu ilk 11’de yer almıyor olması. Marx ve Lenin’i ayrı tutarsak, sonraki yıllarda kadronun büyük bölümü onun talimatlarıyla yapılan tasfiyelerin ve siyasal cinayetlerin kurbanı olacaktı: Zinovyev, Kamenev, Buharin, Riazanov, Sosnovskiy ve Lozovskiy idam edildi; Radek hapishanede öldü; Trotskiy ise 1940’ta Meksika’da bir Stalinist ajan tarafından katledildi.

Dünya Kupası 39 gün sürecek. Hiç de az bir zaman değil. Dünya Devrimi’nin yıldızları ise her yıl biraz daha ticarileşen ve bu yüzden güzelliğinden çok şey yitiren bugünkü futbol düzenine en ufak bir prim vermeden, sınıf mücadelesi sahalarında daha uzun yıllar top koşturmaya devam edecek. 

Üstelik bu takımı diğerlerinden ayıran çok önemli bir fark var: Bu bir ulusal takım değil! Kaptan Marx’ın soyunma odasında tüm takıma her maç öncesinde hatırlattığı gibi: “İşçilerin vatanı yoktur!”

Kaynak: David King, Trotsky: A Photographic Biography, Oxford & New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986, s. 124.

Announcement:

A brief editorial pause

The first eight instalments of the series I have been publishing on the blog under the general heading Stalinism and Alcoholism in the Soviet Union have now appeared in both Turkish and English. As I noted at the very beginning of the first article, my intention has been to turn this work into a small booklet at a later stage.

Over the past few days, instead of adding a new instalment to the series, I have been reworking the first eight published pieces for this booklet. This involves far more than simply placing the blog posts one after another. It means strengthening the internal connections between the texts, expanding certain sections and themes, removing repetitions, filling in gaps, and producing a coherent draft as a whole. In the process, the text has expanded considerably, and its substance has been significantly strengthened.

I am now close to completing this work on the first eight instalments. I hope to finish this stage within the next few days. After that, I will resume the series from where I left off. Once the series is complete, I plan to finalise the draft text of the booklet and then share it with friends who may be able to set aside some time to read it, in order to open the draft up for discussion and take their views and suggestions into account.

Therefore, this brief pause in the series does not mean that the work has been abandoned. It simply means that I have taken a necessary break in order to turn the instalments published so far into a stronger, more coherent whole, better suited to the booklet format. Rather than attempting to do all this in one go after completing the series, I felt it made far more sense, given my way of working, to bring the material together gradually and proceed in this more methodical fashion.

The word “blog” is derived from the English term “weblog”. In Turkish, it is generally used to mean an online journal or diary. In keeping with this meaning, I try to structure my own blog not merely as a place where finished texts are published, but as a space in which ongoing work, explorations, and pauses along the way can also be shared.

My thanks to everyone who has taken an interest, read and shared the series, and contributed through their comments and criticisms. I will be back soon with new instalments.

Duyuru: 

Kısa bir edisyon arası

Blogda Sovyetler Birliği’nde Stalinizm ve alkolizm üst başlığı altında yayımladığım yazı dizisinin ilk sekiz bölümü hem Türkçe hem de İngilizce olarak okurlarla buluştu. Dizinin ilk yazısının hemen başında da belirttiğim gibi, bu çalışmayı daha sonra küçük bir kitapçık haline getirmeyi planlıyordum.

Son birkaç gündür diziye yeni bir bölüm eklemek yerine, şimdiye kadar yayımlanmış ilk sekiz yazıyı bu kitapçık için yeniden işlemekle uğraşıyorum. Bu çalışma, blog yazılarını basitçe alt alta eklemekten çok daha fazlasını içeriyor. Metinlerin iç bağlantılarını güçlendirmek, bazı bölüm ve temaları genişletmek, tekrarları ayıklamak, eksik kalan noktaları tamamlamak ve bütünlüklü bir taslak ortaya çıkarmak gerekiyor. Bu süreçte metnin hacmi epey genişledi; içeriği de belirgin biçimde güçlendi.

İlk sekiz bölüm için yürüttüğüm bu çalışmayı tamamlamama az kaldı. Önümüzdeki birkaç gün içinde bu aşamayı bitirmeyi umuyorum. Sonrasında yazı dizisine kaldığım yerden devam edeceğim. Dizinin tamamlanmasının ardından kitapçığın taslak metnine son halini vermeyi, ardından da bu taslağı okumaya vakit ayırabilecek arkadaşlarımla paylaşarak tartışmaya açmayı, onların görüş ve önerilerini almayı planlıyorum.

Dolayısıyla dizideki bu kısa duraklama, çalışmanın yarım bırakıldığı anlamına gelmiyor. Sadece, bugüne kadar yayımlanmış bölümleri daha sağlam, daha tutarlı ve kitapçık formatına uygun bir bütün haline getirmek için gerekli bir ara vermiş oldum. Yazı dizisini tamamladıktan sonra bu çalışmayı bir kerede yapmaya girişmektense, bu şekilde toparlayarak ilerlemek izlediğim çalışma yöntemi açısından bana çok daha doğru göründü.

“Blog”, İngilizcedeki “weblog” kelimesinden türetilmiş bir sözcük. Türkçede genellikle ağ günlüğü, internet güncesi veya çevrim içi günlük anlamında kullanılıyor. Ben de blogumu, adına uygun biçimde, yalnızca tamamlanmış metinlerin yayımlandığı bir yer olarak değil, yürümekte olan çalışmaların, arayışların ve ara durakların da paylaşıldığı bir alan olarak yapılandırmaya çalışıyorum.

İlgi gösteren, okuyan, paylaşan ve eleştirileriyle katkıda bulunan herkese teşekkür ederim. Yeni bölümlerle yakında devam edeceğim.

Stalinism and alcoholism in the Soviet Union (8)

Dizzy with success: The Campaign’s initial balance sheet

“Long live sobriety!” A scene from one of the officially staged demonstrations presented as expressions of mass support for the anti-alcohol campaign in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s.

In the second instalment of this series, we noted that the first cracks in the anti-alcohol campaign, introduced on 1 June 1985, began to appear within a very short time. Yet the Kremlin’s bureaucratic voluntarist approach paid little heed to these early warning signs, preferring instead to treat them as temporary and secondary problems. Thus, the period from the second half of 1985 to the end of 1987 became a phase in which the campaign was pressed ahead at full speed and with growing political self-assurance.

Local administrators, as if anxious to prove that they had correctly read the signals coming from the centre, virtually began competing with one another to report the quickest and most striking “successes”. The central authorities, for their part, took these reports as confirmation of their own line, and proceeded to raise the campaign’s initial targets and expect even more ambitious results.

Thus, the administrative mobilisation organised from above was rounded off by the appearance of enthusiastic support from below; the bureaucratic decision-making apparatus mistook the feedback loop it had itself created for genuine social approval. This evoked that familiar reflex deeply embedded in Stalinist bureaucratic culture: the bureaucratic voluntarism that had ignored the devastating consequences of forced collectivisation in 1930 was now reappearing, more than half a century later, as the notorious “Dizzy with Success” of the Gorbachev-Ligachev-Solomentsev drive for “sobriety”.

The press continued to hail the campaign as a historic turning point; it became one of the principal themes of academic conferences and symposia, and citizens’ “voluntary” initiatives were presented as further evidence of this general mobilisation. Yet this apparent enthusiasm was, to a large extent, a product of the familiar political mechanisms of the Stalinist bureaucracy: the impression was created that society was responding spontaneously and eagerly to the strategy charted by the far-sighted leadership, thereby proclaiming that the campaign had already become a success story.

To reinforce this optimistic picture, statistics were published purporting to show that the campaign had begun to deliver its intended results; the individual “success stories” featured in the press were likewise presented as behavioural models for society to emulate. This was the prevailing atmosphere throughout the rest of 1985 and for much of the following two years: the campaign was portrayed not only as necessary, but also as a historic initiative already on the path to success.

Within this atmosphere, prominent activists who were held up before the public and soon became the public faces of the campaign began to advocate not merely curbing the alcohol problem, but the complete eradication of alcohol consumption as an imminent, attainable and realistic goal. Encouraged by the “success” reports reaching them, Party and state officials likewise promoted a more radical line in the same direction. Thus, although the campaign had initially been presented as a struggle against drunkenness and alcoholism, it gradually evolved into a broader bureaucratic mobilisation aimed at re-disciplining society from above around the principle of “sobriety”.

The state’s intervention under the campaign took many different forms. At the initial stage, the implementation of the new anti-alcohol regulations was defined as the responsibility of the police and the judicial system; from the very outset, however, it was made clear that these powers would be exercised not loosely or merely for show, but firmly and decisively. Drunkenness, illicit alcohol production, illegal sales, breaches of workplace discipline and disturbances of public order were placed at the centre of the campaign’s legal and law-enforcement dimension.

A Soviet citizen accused of producing samogon on trial before a Comrades’ Court, beside a homemade distillation device.

One of the most visible areas of intervention was pricing policy. As a first step, in August 1985 the prices of fruit juices were reduced, while those of vodka, cognac, and fruit and berry wines were raised significantly; the prices of beer and table wines were left unchanged at this stage. Roughly a year later, in July 1986, further increases of between 20 and 25 per cent were introduced for vodka, liqueurs, spirits and cognac, while the prices of fortified wines were raised more modestly. These price increases were partly offset by reductions in the prices of certain household and consumer goods.

Official assessments of the campaign’s first months had already signalled that its implementation would be toughened. Reviewing the work carried out in September 1985, the Politburo defined the establishment of “sobriety” as a settled norm as “one of the most important tasks of the Party and the state”, and stressed that this task had to be carried out “firmly and without compromise”. A few days later, a more extensive Central Committee statement claimed that the campaign had received the “full approval and support” of the Soviet people, and that efforts to implement it were “gaining momentum everywhere”. Thus, rather than opening up a discussion of the initial problems caused by the campaign, the Kremlin bureaucracy declared it to be a line already vindicated in terms of both political legitimacy and mass support.

The same orientation was reflected in the new Party Programme adopted at the 27th CPSU Congress in 1986. The Programme required the CPSU to wage an “unrelenting struggle against crime, drunkenness and alcoholism”, and declared that, as part of educational and ideological measures, drunkenness had to be “steadily and consistently eradicated” alongside “manifestations of alien ideology and morality” and other “negative phenomena”. In this way, alcoholism was defined not merely as a public health or social problem, but also as a deviation threatening the ideological purity of socialist society.

The same tone prevailed in the congress resolution on the Central Committee’s report. The resolution stressed the “exceptionally great importance” of the efforts to establish a healthy way of life and eliminate drunkenness and alcoholism -efforts initiated by the Central Committee and said to be “actively supported” by the Soviet people. It was emphasised in particular that there could be no slackening in the struggle against this “evil”.

This language laid bare the bureaucratic logic of the campaign. The problem was not treated as a complex phenomenon whose social and economic roots had to be confronted, but as a deviation that could be “eradicated” through the determination of the Party leadership, the coercive power of the state apparatus and ideological mobilisation. In this way, the campaign moved beyond the initial administrative measures of 1985 and was made into one of the chief expressions, in the early Gorbachev period, of the regime’s claim to renew itself morally and ideologically.

“There is no place in factories for people like you!” A 1986 Soviet anti-alcohol propaganda poster by O. K. Kokhan.

One of the most important instruments used to bolster this narrative of success was official statistics. After more than two decades of statistical blackout, the published figures pointed to a rapid decline in alcoholic beverage production. Output of champagne, cognac and beer had remained relatively stable; by 1987, however, production of vodka, other spirits and wine had fallen to less than half the level reached in 1980. These quantities were also well below the production levels envisaged in the decrees issued at the start of the campaign.

Per-capita sales, expressed as pure alcohol, had also fallen sharply according to official figures: the figure, which stood at 8.4 litres in 1984, had dropped to 3.7 litres by 1988. The share of alcoholic beverages in total retail sales declined from 16.7 per cent in 1984 to 10.7 per cent in 1987, while the proportion of household income spent on alcoholic beverages also decreased significantly across all social groups.

Crime statistics were likewise presented in a way that supported this optimistic picture. According to the USSR Supreme Court, the campaign against drunkenness and alcoholism had led to “a significant reduction” in convictions for intentional homicide, rape, hooliganism and other serious offences committed under the influence of alcohol. However, no notable decline was observed in convictions for lesser offences, while convictions related to illicit alcohol production rose as a result of increased enforcement. Official sources also reported a fall in dismissals for violations of labour legislation, as well as substantial decreases in alcohol-related road deaths, accidents and injuries.

According to official figures, the first years of the campaign had also brought a notable improvement in public health indicators. In 1986, the mortality rate declined for the first time in many years, while deaths resulting from workplace accidents fell by one third. The birth rate rose, the share of healthy births among all births increased, and the number of divorces fell.

Although virtually all the relevant indicators pointed in the same direction -that is, towards a marked improvement- there were also significant regional differences. As before, mortality rates remained highest among the Slavic and Baltic populations, and lowest among the peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Even so, an overall improvement was recorded in every case. We shall not go into the details of these regional variations here.

In summary, the campaign’s initial results appeared encouraging. Even foreign correspondents conceded that by the end of the first year “positive and at times striking results” had been achieved, and that the new laws were being enforced “to quite a considerable extent”. Yet behind these early successes, explosive contradictions were rapidly accumulating; the problems that the campaign had partially suppressed through bureaucratic and administrative methods were soon to resurface in different forms and with far more severe consequences.

To be continued