Stalinism and alcoholism in the Soviet Union (5)

From Khrushchev to Andropov: the struggle against alcoholism

A scene from a rally in support of the anti-alcohol campaign, 1987.

In the previous instalment, we noted Aleksandr Nemtsov’s characterisation of the anti-alcohol campaign launched in May 1985 as an undertaking without parallel anywhere in the world in the preceding half-century. Moreover, according to Nemtsov, this campaign was unprecedented even in the long history of alcohol production and consumption in Russia: the state not only managed to reduce alcohol consumption significantly and within a very short period, but also, for the first time, brought about a serious decline in state revenues from alcohol sales, which throughout the twentieth century had been one of the stable sources of public finance.

Despite its exceptional character, the anti-alcohol campaign launched in 1985 was not the first major intervention against drunkenness and alcoholism in the Soviet Union. From the Khrushchev era onwards, the party and state leadership had repeatedly launched campaigns and restrictive measures aimed at curbing alcohol consumption, strengthening labour discipline, raising labour productivity, preventing the production of illicit alcohol, and bringing the social consequences of drunkenness under control. Yet all these efforts came up against the same contradiction: the Stalinist bureaucracy treated alcoholism not as a social problem, but primarily as an administrative issue that could be solved through prices, prohibitions, discipline, propaganda, and police control.

In 1958, the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet government adopted the first major anti-alcohol resolution of the post-war period. According to the chronology included in the CIA’s April 1986 research report [*], the programme introduced under Khrushchev involved a 20 per cent increase in the price of vodka; restricting sales to the hours between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m.; reducing the number of retail outlets; and limiting the sale of alcohol in restaurants. The same chronology notes that consumption fell by 5.4 per cent for one year. Yet this decline did not prove lasting.

A Soviet citizen caught with a homemade still used for producing illicit alcohol.

This was not simply because the measures themselves were limited in scope. The deeper problem lay in the internal contradictions of the state’s alcohol policies. On the one hand, vodka prices were raised, sales hours were restricted, and efforts were made to combat samogon - illicit home-distilled alcohol; on the other hand, wine production was expanded, prices were cut, and sugar production, together with sugar imports from Cuba, created conditions that fuelled both the state’s own alcohol production and illicit distilling. According to Nemtsov, in the first two months after the 1958 resolution began to be implemented, more than 20,000 illicit stills were either voluntarily handed over by members of the public or seized by the militia. Yet these measures failed to halt illicit alcohol production; by 1960, illicit alcohol sales had reached 5.2 litres per capita, surpassing official state sales, which stood at 4.6 litres. [**]

This initial attempt clearly revealed a pattern that would recur in subsequent campaigns: the state sought to limit alcohol consumption, yet continued to rely on alcohol as an indispensable instrument both for budgetary revenues and for the supply of consumer goods. The problem, therefore, did not stem solely from the “bad habits” of the population or from individual weaknesses. The mechanisms that reproduced alcoholism were rooted in the Soviet economy itself and in the bureaucratic methods of rule.

During the Brezhnev period, the second major intervention found expression in the 1972 resolution. This time, the measures were harsher. Nemtsov notes that the 1972 resolution was particularly stringent: administrative measures were stepped up, vodka prices were raised, alcohol sales before 11 a.m. on working days were prohibited, and sales on Sundays were halted altogether. The World Health Organization’s study on Russia’s alcohol policies likewise describes the 1972 resolution as the second major Soviet anti-alcohol campaign, between Khrushchev’s 1958 initiative and Gorbachev’s 1985 campaign. [***]

Brezhnev-era measures were not limited to sales restrictions. Prosecutions targeting illicit alcohol production were temporarily intensified; sobering-up centres became a familiar feature of urban life; and practices that established a direct link between alcohol dependence and breaches of labour discipline became increasingly widespread. In 1967, a system of “re-education” through compulsory treatment and labour for alcohol-dependent individuals, as well as for those who violated public order or workplace discipline, acquired a formal legal basis. Depending on a court ruling, such individuals could be held in special labour-therapy centres for periods ranging from six months to two years. In 1976, a specialised narcology service was established to deal with alcohol and drug dependence; narcology stations were set up even in large factories and industrial enterprises.

Yet Brezhnev-era alcohol policy, too, was riddled with contradictions. On the one hand, the aim was to restrict vodka consumption and combat samogon; on the other, plans were made to expand wine and beer production. In this way, the struggle against alcoholism was reduced to a limited policy of substitution: less consumption of spirits, and more consumption of low-alcohol beverages. But this approach neither eliminated the social roots of alcoholism nor called into question the state’s dependence on alcohol revenues.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s - that is, in the final years of the Brezhnev regime - anti-alcohol measures were intensified once again. According to the CIA chronology, alcohol prices were raised by between 17 and 27 per cent in the period 1979-82; educational and propaganda activities were expanded; and the enforcement of existing legal measures was tightened. [****] Yet during the same period, state alcohol production continued to rise, while samogon (illicit) production also increased sharply. This picture once again revealed the fundamental impasse in the Soviet bureaucracy’s approach to the alcohol problem: the regime was disturbed by the social and economic destruction caused by alcohol, but it did not possess a socio-economic structure that would allow it to abandon alcohol production and sales altogether.

The Andropov period is particularly significant in the run-up to the 1985 campaign. Andropov’s brief tenure is generally associated with efforts to strengthen labour discipline, improve efficiency, combat corruption, and raise labour productivity. According to Nemtsov, while still head of the KGB, Andropov sent a memorandum to Politburo members in early 1982 stating that the fight against drunkenness needed to be intensified. The Politburo subsequently established a commission chaired by A. Pelše. What is striking is that the commission’s first draft acknowledged that administrative and punitive measures could not get to the roots of the alcoholism problem. The draft stated that a long-term and systematic struggle was required; as a first step, it proposed increasing the production of dry wine and beer, and expanding the network of cafés and other establishments where alcoholic beverages were sold by the glass. [*****]

However, this more “liberal” draft was never implemented. With Brezhnev’s death in November 1982 and Pelše’s death in 1983, the process took a different turn. Solomentsev’s appointment as head of the commission dealing with anti-alcohol legislation, together with Andropov’s drive to tighten discipline across the country, paved the way for harsher administrative measures. In the same period, Andropov also approved the sale of a cheaper type of vodka. This inexpensive vodka - popularly known as “Andropovka” or shkolnitsa - was in all likelihood intended to make the anti-alcohol measures more acceptable to the public. This alone is enough to summarise the contradiction of the period: the regime championed “sobriety” and labour discipline while at the same time putting cheaper vodka on the market.

A 1985 USSR postage stamp:
“Sobriety is the rule of life.”

The common feature of the initiatives preceding the 1985 campaign was that they sought to bring the problem under control through administrative decrees and measures without questioning the social conditions that gave rise to alcoholism. The absence of socialist democracy, relations of production, the organisation of work, the constriction of everyday life, the scarcity of consumer goods, the deep-seated alienation that permeated society, the state’s dependence on alcohol revenues, and the bureaucratic methods of rule were all left outside the scope of this scrutiny. Given its own material interests, the Kremlin bureaucracy could not have acted otherwise.

The difference in 1985 was that, under conditions in which the Soviet Union’s economic problems had become markedly more severe, instruments that had already been tried before were now deployed far more rapidly, far more harshly, and on a far broader scale. The shortening of sales hours, price increases, production restrictions, propaganda, disciplinary measures, party-controlled “voluntary” societies, and interventions in the cultural sphere constituted an intensified combination of methods that had been tried piecemeal in earlier campaigns. Moreover, this time the Kremlin bureaucracy was prepared to accept a serious decline even in alcohol revenues, one of the stable sources of the state budget throughout the twentieth century.

Yet, as with all previous attempts, the 1985 campaign too took shape as a bureaucratic intervention that failed to address the roots of the problem. The failure of earlier campaigns had not enabled the Stalinist regime to grasp the social sources of alcoholism. On the contrary, the same prescriptions were reapplied with greater administrative force. For this reason, the consequences of the 1985 campaign must be considered not only in terms of the temporary decline in alcohol consumption, but also together with the collapse in budget revenues, the spread of illicit alcohol production, sugar shortages, growing social discontent, and new fissures in the regime’s legitimacy. These consequences will be examined in the following instalments.

[*] CIA, Gorbachev’s Campaign Against Alcohol, April 1986, p. 7.

[**] Aleksandr Nemtsov, A Contemporary History of Alcohol in Russia, trans. Howard M. Goldfinger and Andrew Stickley, Södertörn University, 2011, pp. 91-92.

[***] WHO Regional Office for Europe, Alcohol Policy Impact Case Study: The Effects of Alcohol Control Measures on Mortality and Life Expectancy in the Russian Federation, Copenhagen, 2019, p. 2.

[****] CIA, Gorbachev’s Campaign Against Alcohol, p. 7.

[*****] Nemtsov, A Contemporary History of Alcohol in Russia, pp. 100-101.

To be continued