Stalinism and alcoholism in the Soviet Union (4)

Measures adopted under the campaign and the “participation” of the masses

Mikhail Solomentsev and Yegor Ligachev

A commission was established to oversee the progress of the campaign, with Yegor Ligachev and Mikhail Solomentsev placed at its head. In his memoirs, Gorbachev writes that the two men threw themselves into the task with “irrepressible zeal”, thereby implying that, from the very outset, those tasked with implementing the campaign acted with excessive fervour. [*]

Coordinated by this commission, various organs of the state apparatus were mobilised. On the one hand, Gosplan (the State Planning Committee), the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Trade sought practical answers to the question of how to offset the substantial loss of revenue that would result from reduced alcohol sales; on the other, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Internal Affairs oversaw the implementation of the new policy.

The measures introduced as part of the anti-alcohol campaign, in line with the decisions and decrees discussed in the first section, began to be implemented on 1 June 1985. These measures may be summarised under the following headings:

Fight Against Drunkenness (1989)

• restrictions on the hours during which alcoholic beverages could be sold and on the number of sales outlets;

• reductions in the production of vodka, wine and other alcoholic drinks;

• making access to alcohol more difficult through price increases;

• disciplinary measures targeting alcohol consumption in public spaces and workplaces;

• propaganda campaigns, posters, and press and media activity;

• intervention in areas of everyday life such as weddings, restaurants and celebrations;

• the uprooting of vineyards or the curtailment of wine production;

This summary table makes it clear that the campaign was not merely a propaganda exercise aimed at reducing alcohol consumption. After the complete failure, within just a few years, of the 1972-73 initiative, the Party and state apparatus this time adopted a far more comprehensive approach, launching an extensive programme of administrative intervention extending from production to sales, and from pricing to the rhythm of everyday life.

Aleksandr Nemtsov, one of the leading researchers on alcohol-related problems in Russia and the Soviet Union and a former department head at the Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry, draws attention to the exceptional nature of the campaign. According to Nemtsov, the anti-alcohol campaign had no parallel anywhere in the world over the preceding half-century. It was also unprecedented in the long history of alcohol production and consumption in Russia: the state had not only managed to reduce alcohol consumption sharply and within a very short period, but had also, for the first time, brought about a substantial fall in state revenue from alcohol sales - one of the stable sources of public finance throughout the twentieth century. [**]

One of the distinctive features of the campaign was that, in its decision of 7 May 1985, the Central Committee called for the establishment of an all-Union society for the “struggle for sobriety” and for this society to have its own publication. [***] Stephen White notes in his book Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society that this decision was implemented within a short time. In early August 1985, a meeting was convened by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, the Komsomol, the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Health. At this meeting, it was decided to establish the All-Union Voluntary Society for the Struggle for Sobriety. An organising committee was formed to oversee the preparations; Yuri Ovchinnikov, vice-president of the Academy of Sciences, a biochemist and a candidate member of the Central Committee, was designated as the society’s first president. [****]

The Kremlin bureaucracy had decided that the administrative measures adopted should be complemented by a “social mobilisation” organised within society under official supervision. This mobilisation sought to win over at least some of those who were disturbed by the social consequences of alcohol dependency and widespread drunkenness. Yet the initiative only served to underscore the bureaucratic character of the campaign. The Society, though labelled “voluntary”, was in reality nothing more than an instrument of mobilisation organised from above by institutions subordinate to the state and Party apparatus.

The task of the Society was to promote “sobriety” in factories and other workplaces, in cultural and leisure centres, and in neighbourhoods and residential areas. Its members were expected to pay particular attention to individuals known to be prone to drinking. The Society also aimed to shape public opinion, to explain clearly and persuasively the harm caused by alcoholic beverages to “public and private life”, to oppose alcohol propaganda, and to help ensure compliance with legal regulations concerning drunkenness and alcoholism. Preventing the production of home-made alcohol and monitoring the enforcement of rules governing the alcohol trade likewise fell within the Society’s remit. It was also expected to contribute to the development of leisure activities for the population, especially young people.

As White observes, this structure was in fact a classic “front” organisation: it lent the campaign’s objectives a supposedly mass and voluntary character. Indeed, in his interview with Pravda following the public announcement of the campaign in May, Ovchinnikov explicitly stated that all the Society’s activities would be conducted under the leadership of Party committees and would rest on the principle of democratic [read: bureaucratic] centralism. [*****]

The Society was formally established at a conference held in Moscow in September 1985. At this conference, it was given a formal structure along lines familiar from the CPSU and other Soviet mass organisations. According to the figures cited by White, the Society claimed to have grown rapidly within a matter of months: by May 1986, it announced that it had 350,000 branches and approximately 11 million individual members. Its growth continued thereafter; by early 1987, the Society appeared to have reached 14 million members and 450,000 branches. [******]

An officially supervised anti-alcohol demonstration held in the Soviet Union in 1987: “Alcohol and socialism are incompatible!”

At first glance, these figures were undoubtedly impressive. Yet it was highly questionable how many of these members were genuinely people ready to work voluntarily in line with the Society’s aims. Indeed, there were numerous indications revealing the bureaucratic character of this top-down “grassroots initiative”. According to White, complaints persisted that people in factories and institutes were being enrolled en masse, that Party members were being told it was compulsory to join the Society, and that in some places even individuals who drank and openly declared that they would continue to do so were being registered as members. Workers in Penza, for example, were told that they could drink 100 grams of vodka “if necessary”. Moreover, rumours that members of the Society would not be sent to sobering-up centres if caught drunk also encouraged enrolment.

It should nevertheless be noted that, despite its bureaucratic character, the Society, backed by the Party and state apparatus, organised numerous activities across various parts of the Soviet Union. It held mass rallies, courses, museum visits and conferences; following earlier Soviet practices, it operated an “agitation steamer” on the Volga and an “agitation train” named after the Leninist Komsomol; it mounted exhibitions and published brochures. By the end of 1986, more than fifty films had been withdrawn from commercial distribution on the grounds that they were too tolerant of alcoholism, and cuts had been made to more than a hundred television programmes. The first issue of the Society’s journal Trezvost’ i kul’tura [Sobriety and Culture] appeared in January 1986 and reached 600,000 subscribers from its very first issue; according to its editor, Stanislav Sheverdin, this figure was “far higher than expected”. The Society also offered other services, such as a helpline in Tallinn run by its members. [*******]

All this showed that, as the Soviet Union entered a period soon to be marked by the concepts of glasnost, perestroika and “new thinking”, the anti-alcohol campaign amounted to more than a set of prohibitions and administrative restrictions: it created a broad sphere of bureaucratic intervention extending from cultural production to everyday life, and from leisure activities to the mass media.

[*] Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs, Doubleday, New York, 1996, p. 221. Immediately after this implication, Gorbachev sharpens his criticism, noting that Ligachev and Solomentsev “took everything to the point of absurdity”. In the sections where we examine the failure of the campaign, we shall also address the mutual accusations made by the different sides.

[**] Aleksandr Nemtsov, A Contemporary History of Alcohol in Russia, trans. Howard M. Goldfinger and Andrew Stickley, Södertörn University College, 2011, p. 41.

[***] The 1985 Society was not an entirely new creation. On 16 February 1928, the Society for the Struggle against Alcoholism (Obshchestvo po bor’be s alkogolizmom, OBSA) had been founded in Moscow; through factory cells, conferences, publications and propaganda work, it sought to promote sobriety among the working class. The title of its journal, launched in July 1928, was Trezvost’ i kul’tura [Sobriety and Culture], a name that would be revived in 1986. Yet the initiative came into conflict with the state’s reliance on alcohol revenues and was effectively liquidated in 1932 by being absorbed into the broader Society for a Healthy Everyday Life. See Kate Transchel, “Staggering Towards Socialism: The Soviet Anti-Alcohol Campaign, 1928–1932”, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, vol. 23, no. 2, 1996, pp. 191–202.

[****] Stephen White, Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1996, p. 75.

[*****] ibid., p. 76.

[******] ibid., pp. 76–78.

[*******] ibid., p. 78.

To be continued