You've probably been persuaded that the Soviet Union collapsed because of Ronald Reagan and his "Star Wars", perestroika or the fall in oil prices. Meanwhile, the truth is different. The decay of the Soviet juggernaut happened because of… vodka.
In 1985, fifty-four-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev took the position of secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the Soviet realities, when the state was governed by old and drunk grandparents, such a "young" leader was associated with change. Bold reforms were expected of Gorbachev.
Imagine a party secretary sitting at his desk analyzing hundreds of pages of long-hidden statistics. He must have been on a sloppy face because the data he read was shocking.
Society on the precipice
In 1985, alcohol sales accounted for 1/4 of the retail trade in the entire Soviet Union . Its annual consumption was 14.9 liters of pure spirit per capita. According to WHO standards, eight liters per person is a threat to the general health of society, so the Soviet man broke all possible records in this respect.
Not surprisingly, the average life expectancy of men in the USSR was sixty-four years - about ten years less than in Western countries. Out of a thousand children born, twenty-six died. In 1985 alone, around 20,000 citizens died from alcohol poisoning.
The breakfast of many Soviet workers was similar ... (photo:К.Артём.1, CC BY-SA 4.0).
In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of accidents, diseases or injuries caused by excessive consumption of alcohol drinks. More than 25 percent of the workers were regularly drunk.
Not only men abused alcohol. Almost 90% of women drank regularly and completely. This caused further pathologies, such as frequent infertility, common abortion, and sexual promiscuity. 84% of Soviet children got drunk before the age of sixteen . Alcohol was the leading cause of 80% of divorce, 80% of road deaths, 74% of homicides, 72% of rapes.
Faced with such a situation, it is understandable that after hearing the facts, Mikhail Gorbachev decided to act.
The article was based on the book by Mark Lawrence Schrad entitled "Empire of vodka. Drunken politics from Lenin to Putin ”(WUJ 2015).
The front of the sober starts a crusade
Gorbachev's policy is commonly associated with reforms carried out under the slogans of perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (openness). The new secretary general, however, began his activities by declaring war on widespread alcoholism.
The leader of the USSR himself was a person shunned from stronger drinks. Even during the lavish banquets of the Brezhnev era, Gorbachev limited himself to two glasses of wine, never again - and then always excused himself from continuing to drink - we find out from the book by Mark Lawrence Schrad “The Empire of Vodka. Drunken politics from Lenin to Putin.
In Gorbachev's immediate vicinity there were several other politicians with a negative attitude towards drinking, for example Andrei Gromyko, Yegor Ligachev or Mikhail Solomiensev. Together, they started the greatest anti-alcohol crusade since Lenin.
Alcohol abuse was a serious problem among children as well. This poster shouted to the parents, "Not a drop!".
Hard times for drunks
The production of alcoholic beverages was drastically reduced with a simultaneous significant increase in prices. It was forbidden to sell and consume alcoholic beverages in means of transport, in sports halls, near schools and hospitals. Trade in spirits could not be carried out until 2 p.m. The liquor stores were only open until seven in the evening, and on weekends they were all closed by law.
Parallel to the legal actions, an intensive propaganda campaign was launched. The most disgraced drunks were kicked out of the party. One of the first victims of the changes was Gorbachev's recent rival to the post of secretary general, Grigory Romanov, who got drunk in public during a congress of the Hungarian Communist Party.
Party members and Komsomol abusers were publicly stigmatized and made a mockery of the crowd. The party's expectations are clear - wrote "Prawda" - The vocation of a communist, and even more so in a managerial position, is incompatible with this vice .
Harsh penalties for making moonshine did not stop the moonshiners (photo:Eupator, CC BY-SA 3.0).
Penalties have been tightened. There was a risk of making the moonshine or even having distillation equipment a gigantic fine of 300 rubles or deportation to a labor camp for two years . Gorbachev also proposed alcoglasnost - he revealed all the hitherto shamefully concealed data on the drunkenness of citizens.
Statistics are not everything
However, it was not statistics, but the economy and public opinion that would decide the fate of reforms. Shortly after the introduction of anti-alcohol legislation, citizens' health indicators started to improve timidly.
The article was based on the book by Mark Lawrence Schrad entitled "Empire of vodka. Drunken politics from Lenin to Putin ”(WUJ 2015).
In 1989, alcohol consumption was reduced to 12.5 liters per capita. The mortality rate of people aged 20–30 decreased by 20%, and the survival rate of infants also improved. The number of deaths caused by alcohol poisoning has decreased by half. In just three years, the average life expectancy of men has increased by three years and that of women by a year . However, the costs of the reforms were lethal for you.
Anti-alcohol defeat on all fronts
Social discontent grew due to limited access to alcohol. The leaders were hated, and Gorbachev himself was nicknamed "the mineral secretary." A statistical resident of Moscow waited in line for vodka for about 90 hours a year! For this reason - as is usually the case in the times of Prohibition and the anti-alcohol crusade - moonshine was spreading.
Contrary to appearances, Gorbatschow vodka has nothing to do with Mikhail Gorbaczow, but has been produced in Germany since 1921 (photo:jaro.p, CC BY-SA 3.0).
Thirsty citizens switched to moonshine, which began to nullify the initial successes in the fight against drunkenness. In 1987, over 40,000 Russians poisoned with illegally drunk alcohol, 11,000 of whom died. As we read in the aforementioned book "Vodka Empire", literally everything was drunk:
Biggest drunkards used substitutes - from mouthwashes, colognes and perfumes to gasoline, rat poison, brake fluid, liquid dressings and even toothpastes for shoes with which bread was spread .
Gorbachev's opponents stigmatized his policy, considering the reforms too drastic and completely ill-considered. This was later admitted by one of the architects of changes, Yegor Ligaczow:
As a nondrinker, I was psychologically unprepared to recognize that someone might not be able to quit drinking if their ability to get alcohol was drastically limited .
Samogon won!
No budget without vodka
The reformers completely forgot in their frenetic zeal about the most important, that is, the finances of the state. Along with the export of oil and natural gas, the sale of alcohol was the largest source of revenues for the USSR budget.
The income loss related to the heroic struggle for the sobriety of the inhabitants amounted to at least 28 billion rubles. This was a sum comparable to the losses caused by the fall in world oil prices and it is this event that is indicated as the main economic cause of the collapse of the USSR.
Yegor Ligaczow, one of the main initiators of the anti-alcohol crusade, had to finally admit that it was a mistake (photo:Klaus Franke, from the Bundesarchiv collection, Bild 183-1989-0913-045 / CC-BY-SA 3.0).
The economic crisis forced the authorities to reprint money. Already in 1989, the anti-alcohol crusade was quietly and discreetly withdrawn. But it was too late. The budget has fallen into the death trap of hyperinflation. The long process of decaying the Soviet empire had begun.
The anti-alcohol reforms of Gorbachev's team did not improve the condition of the people of the USSR, turned them into negative power and led to the bankruptcy of the communist state in the long run.
Source:
Mark Lawrence Schrad, Vodka Empire. Drunken politics from Lenin to Putin , Ed. Of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow 2015.
You can read about drunkenness in the USSR in the book:
Would the Soviet Union become a world superpower if not for vodka? How drunk politics in the 1990s contributed to the fall of communism and to the health problems of society? How could the Kremlin overcome the obstacles related to alcohol abuse and lead to social, economic and democratic prosperity?
The article was based on the book by Mark Lawrence Schrad entitled "Empire of vodka. Drunken politics from Lenin to Putin ”(WUJ 2015).
Schrad takes a close look at the 20th and 21st-century Russian state, where the famous drink replenishes the treasury and enables the manipulation of the people. Viewing Russia's history through the prism of a vodka bottle will help us understand why the "alcohol issue" remains relevant to Russian politics at the highest level today - nearly a century after it was dealt with in almost all other modern countries. Recognizing and tackling the devastating power of vodka's political legacy is perhaps the greatest political challenge facing the current generation of Russia's leaders and possibly the next.