Prof. S. V. Lebedev.

Alcoholic Beverages, Alcohol, and the Alcoholic Fermentation Industry.

Among the questions that invariably arouse interest and at the same time invariably remain unresolved is also the question of the consumption and abuse of alcoholic beverages. Both the one and the other appear to be such ancient and widely disseminated phenomena that many of their characteristic features have become common knowledge. Thanks to this, everyone knows that drunkenness can develop and exist in the most diverse historical epochs, among peoples of any race and in any climate. Moreover, drunkenness, accepted by many peoples as their national vice, does not remain constant, but over the course of time changes in its forms and in the degree of its manifestation. In addition, it is known that the level of modern culture, or civilization, of different countries has in this case only a relative significance, which is not infrequently suppressed by other influences. All this, and much else besides, speaks not only of the extraordinary complexity of this question, but also of the fact that its essence is rooted very deeply either in the very nature of man or in the depths of the totality of those natural-historical conditions in which humanity has developed and lived for centuries. The profound significance and close connection of the question under consideration with the manifold manifestations and interests of man over the course of time have given rise to an extensive literature in this field. However, in the Russian language it proves to be very limited, if one excludes from it the narrowly specialized scientific medical literature and a considerable number of popular articles and essays, some more or less successful and others quite unsuccessful, dealing exclusively with the harm of alcohol and the grievous consequences of drunkenness for health. All this material, in considering the question apart from any connection with economic and social conditions, is in the vast majority of cases extremely one-sided and of little vitality, since it is impossible to speak of the eradication of alcoholism independently of social conditions. Naturally, it also does not touch upon the exceptionally interesting, in essence and in results, experiment—extraordinary in its scale and conditions—of the compulsory sobering-up of the population, which took place in Russia during the last decade in connection with the civil war and the revolution. Meanwhile, these most recent pages in the history of alcohol consumption and the struggle against it are extraordinarily vivid, striking, and full of profound interest and significance for clarifying certain aspects of this difficult and complex question.

Without laying claim to exhaustive completeness, as is already clear from the scope of the present article, the latter has as its task to help those who, by virtue of their position and the nature of their work, have to answer various questions concerning the admissibility of the consumption of alcoholic beverages, the possibility, from the state point of view, of industrial distilling, and, in general, the existence of the technology of alcoholic fermentation production, despite the obvious harm of the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the individual, social, and state sense. Among such persons are, first of all, engineers and technicians directly employed in the production branches of the fermentation industry. Engineers working in factories and coming into contact with the working masses have to encounter these same questions. This also includes teachers and other workers who must give answers and explanations to the most varied—

varied questions of interest to the population. Undoubtedly, among these are questions concerning the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The latter is entirely natural in general, and all the more so now, since during the period of the war and the subsequent years, under the rapidly changing conditions of the country’s life, the possibilities of permitting the population to consume alcoholic beverages were interpreted at different times in very different ways. In this connection, governmental orders and measures often proved outwardly inconsistent and even mutually contradictory. Naturally, such a situation gave rise among broad masses of the population to a whole series of perplexing questions, which in the overwhelming majority of cases remain unanswered to this day and often evoke a number of various, not infrequently harmful, misinterpretations. This circumstance, in connection with what has been noted above, compels us in the present case to present the material set forth below, which may help those interested to understand, at least in its most essential aspects, the enigmatic human striving for alcohol and the manifold and inevitable consequences to which it leads in the sphere of economic-industrial and economic life, in social relations, and, finally, with respect to possible measures for combating alcoholism.

The consumption of alcoholic beverages is almost as old as humanity itself. Behind it lie millennia, over the course of which the conditions and forms of consumption and production of alcoholic beverages changed to a significant extent in connection with the natural-historical, racial, cultural, and other peculiarities of the people and the country in which, in one or another historical epoch, the consumption of intoxicating beverages took place. Each of these forms, to a greater or lesser degree, made it possible to observe certain characteristic aspects of the phenomenon that interests us and the possibilities of combating it. However, with respect to the latter, that form of consumption and production of beverages which developed extremely strongly in Russia after 1914 appears especially interesting and convenient for study.

As is known, with the beginning of the war in the year indicated, a ban was imposed in Russia on the consumption and production of alcohol and other common alcoholic beverages, such as beer, wine, cognac, etc., and this ban was then maintained in subsequent years. Owing to the categorical nature of this prohibition and the inaccessibility of alcohol in any form whatsoever by legal means for the population, the latter found a way out of the situation that had arisen chiefly in illicit distilling and partly in other illegal methods of producing such products as homemade beer, strong braga, mead, and the like. In the majority of cases, because of the technical conditions of production, illicit distilling became the principal channel into which the chief efforts to produce alcohol needed by the population for drinking purposes were directed and where they found broad and successful application.

Thus, in the decade following 1914, the entire drinking question in Russia, complex both in substance and in the forms of production and consumption, in the overwhelming majority of cases took the form of illicit distilling. This focus manifested itself with particular clarity in those isolated provinces and districts into which alcohol from outside could scarcely penetrate for one reason or another. Areas of this kind are of extraordinarily great interest and convenience for elucidating that need of the population for alcohol which manifested itself here in tremendous inventiveness, persistence, and even serious risk connected with the striving for alcohol necessary for intoxicating-

beverages among broad and customary circles of consumers. A characteristic example of such regions is Western Siberia, which for several years remained completely protected from the influx of alcohol from outside; this was the consequence not only of its geographical, ethnographic, and other peculiarities, but also of the political, military, and other upheavals of that time.

Under such conditions in Siberia, with a categorical ban on alcohol, the entire age-old, infinitely complex and difficult question of the consumption of alcohol-containing beverages and of the possibility of attaining unconditional sobriety became concentrated, as if in focus, in illicit distilling. Thus Siberia appears as a characteristic and interesting case, providing a number of graphic examples that illustrate various aspects of the phenomenon of the consumption of intoxicating beverages, as well as the possibilities and conditions of combating it; these are used in the present article in considering the questions under discussion. At the same time, however, it should be borne in mind that illicit distilling, prohibited by law, is by no means a new phenomenon; it has existed for centuries. It has long been closely connected with the wide distribution of alcoholic beverages and arose as a consequence of the state’s striving to concentrate the trade in alcoholic beverages exclusively in its own hands, in order to ensure the fullest possible collection of the excise tax from the population.

Thus, illicit distilling is only part of the general question of the consumption of intoxicating beverages, which from ancient times has invariably everywhere attracted, and continues to attract, the attention of legislators, sociologists, moralists, physicians, and educators. As is well known, they all agree that not only drunkenness, but the consumption of intoxicating beverages in general, causes enormous harm in individual, social, and state respects alike. Yet, despite complete agreement in views on the consequences of this phenomenon, opinions as to the possibility of eliminating this evil are extremely varied and often diametrically opposed.

In dwelling on this circumstance, it should be borne in mind that the abuse of alcohol, called drunkenness, is only part of a general and at the same time widely widespread phenomenon—namely, the use by man of stupefying, stimulating, and, generally speaking, intoxicating substances. In the opinion of Professor Anzhul, there is scarcely any people, from the most highly cultured down to those standing on the lowest stages of mental development, among whom some such substance is not in wide use. Thus, the Negro drinks palm wine; the inhabitant of Nubia—bouza; the Kirghiz and the Tatar—kumiss; the Chinese and Japanese prepare various kinds of vodka from rice; the Votyak brews kumyshka; the Indians of South America, for the same purposes, prepare for themselves from the roots of a special plant an intoxicating potion called “kava”; the Kamchadal drinks a decoction of fly agarics; and, finally, the European has at his disposal hundreds of all sorts of intoxicating beverages, not to mention such comparatively harmless products as tea, coffee, and tobacco. In addition, on the globe there are counted up to one hundred million people who, for the same purpose of stupefying themselves, chew the so-called “betel”; three hundred million eat and smoke “hashish,” prepared from Indian hemp; four hundred million enjoy and ruin themselves with the terrible “opium,” obtained from the poppy.

The circumstance that there is not a single people on the whole globe among whom some stimulating, stupefying, or intoxicating substance is not in use leads to the conviction that man has an innate instinct for alcohol and other stimulants and that, by virtue of this, complete abstinence from intoxicating beverages—especially where centuries stand behind their consumption—would seem to be unthinkable, and therefore

the striving for unconditional sobriety is, as it were, doomed in advance to failure. The opposing view treats drunkenness, and in general the consumption of intoxicating beverages, as the result of licentiousness connected with a profoundly mistaken opinion as to its inevitability, by which the development of drunkenness is supported. In connection with this, it is accepted that this evil can be eliminated by removing all alcoholic beverages from use, summoning society to help by measures of prohibition, and, where this is insufficient, by severe prosecution and harsh punishments for those who do not submit.

The supporters of this view became extraordinarily elated in their dreams of the easy implantation of unconditional sobriety in 1914, when, owing to the war and the mobilization connected with it, alcohol and all vodka products were everywhere withdrawn from use for drinking purposes in Russia. This measure, subsequently extended, made it possible, thanks to the strong and well-organized apparatus of the state wine monopoly, easily and completely to carry out, at first by means of prohibition, the complete withdrawal from use of alcohol in all its forms. As a result of this, for a long time tens of millions of people were deprived of the possibility of obtaining intoxicating beverages. Thus what had appeared to the majority to be wholly impossible unexpectedly came about quite simply: Russia, deprived of alcohol, despite the mass of habitual drunkards and hereditary alcoholics among the population, proved to be completely sober—but sober against its will, and therefore its demand for alcohol very quickly gave birth to the supply of it. First of all, alcohol began to seep into the population by illegal routes, thanks to permissions to use it for technical, medical, and other purposes—for example, for motor transport, and so forth; then contraband alcohol flooded into Russia. At the same time, little by little, clandestine distilling was organized and, having found favorable soil, began to develop rapidly, supplying the population with alcohol and every possible kind of vodka product in enormous quantity and at colossal prices. The prohibitions and persecutions of clandestine distilling and of the secret trade in alcoholic beverages that followed, on the one hand, and the endlessly varied evasions, on the other, gradually created an exceptionally difficult and complex question of formal sobriety—that supposed sobriety, extremely costly for the people and the country, which pours out into the most hideous forms of widespread and dangerous poisoning of the population by the poor-quality products of clandestine distilling and of the profound moral corruption caused by the latter. At the present time, in order to understand the totality of all the varied aspects connected with contemporary clandestine distilling, it is necessary to approach it not as an isolated and independent phenomenon, but as one of the particulars of the general question of the consumption of alcoholic beverages. But in order to be able to orient oneself in this direction, it is necessary to clarify for oneself the stages by which alcohol penetrated into man’s everyday life, and to establish at least the principal grounds by virtue of which, with the passage of time, humanity has been drawn ever more closely and firmly to alcohol.

How widely and deeply contemporary humanity has been seized by alcohol may be seen from the data given below by Prof. Struve¹ on the annual per capita consumption of intoxicating beverages in the principal countries. This consumption is presented in Table No. 1 as an annual average for separate five-year periods, and is expressed as the number of liters² of beer, wine of wine strength, and vodka consumed per year per inhabitant, irrespective of sex.

¹ “Der Verbrauch, alkoholischer Getränke in den Haupt-Kultur-Ländern” Struve, 1907.

² 1 liter equals 1000 cubic centimeters, about 4 teacups.

TABLE No. 1.

In countries	1885–1889: Beer	1885–1889: Grape wine	1885–1889: Vodka	1895–1899: Beer	1895–1899: Grape wine	1895–1899: Vodka	1900–1905: Beer	1900–1905: Grape wine	1900–1905: Vodka
France	21.20	92.20	7.64	24.20	110.80	8.75	33.50	149.20	7.08
Belgium	168.00	3.36	8.90	202.40	4.16	5.84	218.00	4.61	7.38
Netherlands	—	2.80	8.98	—	1.84	8.35	—	2.20	7.88
Italy	0.87	96.20	1.50	0.53	85.80	1.08	0.78	112.00	1.32
Switzerland	37.00	—	—	65.40	66.60	5.82	64.00	68.80	5.10
Denmark	—	—	14.12	93.42	—	14.18	94.50	—	13.90
England and Ireland	124.84	1.66	4.30	141.74	1.82	4.66	138.70	1.50	4.60
Germany	96.96	6.12	8.10	120.82	5.88	8.64	119.70	6.58	8.20
Austria-Hungary	32.00	22.40	8.80	44.40	11.00	0.52	43.20	17.80	10.30
North American United States	44.26	1.25	4.86	58.90	1.40	4.22	68.50	1.58	5.40
Sweden	24.10	—	7.01	46.20	—	7.64	56.60	—	7.78
Russia	3.34	—	6.46	4.18	—	4.84	4.40	—	4.94
Norway	14.93	—	3.10	19.30	—	2.72	16.90	—	3.15

The average per-capita expenditure on alcoholic beverages as a percentage of annual per-capita income, according to Prof. Ozerov¹, varies within broad limits for different countries, but everywhere it represents a considerable magnitude, as can be seen from Table No. 2.

TABLE No. 2.

England	10.5%
France	13.5%
Austria-Hungary	6.9%
Germany	12.8%
Sweden	4.2%
Norway	3.8%
Italy	19.2%
Russia	10.8%

The data presented indicate that the contemporary, most cultured countries are widely gripped by alcohol. With regard to peoples less cultured, and even those standing at the very lowest stages of their development, the same thing is observed. History in this respect shows that even in remote antiquity, millennia before us, alcoholic beverages were already well known and widely distributed—for example, in ancient Egypt, in China, and in other countries. Connected with this are such legendary names as Indra, Dionysus, Noah, and so forth. The cause that brought about so early an appearance and spread of alcoholic beverages lies in the struggle for existence on the basis of nutrition, and is explained by the fact that under natural conditions human life is very poorly provided for by those chance gifts of nature suitable for human nourishment—

for centuries, which are so unevenly distributed depending on climate, soil, and season. Under such conditions nature sets before man two fundamental and unavoidable questions of his existence, behind which stands—whether to be or not to be. The first of these concerns obtaining forms of matter suitable for nourishment; the second, preserving these substances from the destructive forces and influences that can, in a short interval of time, turn valuable food products into something that is poison for man and causes his death. The first of these questions was resolved to a significant degree when humanity rose to the level characterized by the cultivation of cereals.

How man came upon the modest blade of cereal grass, and why he began to cultivate this scarcely noticeable plant, remains unknown to the present day. It is now clear, however, that the choice was a fortunate one. In the substance of cereal grains there is not only, to a considerable extent, everything necessary for human nutrition; in addition, a tremendous vital force is also concealed in it. The latter annually yields billions² of poods of that form of matter which ensures the health, strength, and life of millions of people. Thus, for example, the world production of wheat alone, according to Prof. Regel, amounted to 5.5 billion poods per year during the period 1907–1912.

The symbiosis³ of man and the blade of cereal grass, with the former’s care for the latter over millennia, represents one of the greatest creative works ever produced by humanity. This symbiosis runs like a red thread through the entire existence of man and leaves its deep imprint on the most diverse manifestations of human activity. At the same time, it is the cause that brought to life many of the largest and oldest branches of modern industry, among which belong the manufactures of the technique of alcoholic fermentation, such as brewing, winemaking, and yeast production. The inevitability of the emergence of these industries, and their inseparable connection with the question of the consumption of alcoholic beverages, with all the consequences that follow from this, is of great importance for clarifying many aspects and the essence of the mysterious art of winemaking. In view of this, it is necessary here, at least briefly, to dwell on the causes that established the original and subsequently ever-strengthening connection between man and alcohol. One of the principal causes of this lies in the cultivation of cereals. The basis of this cultivation is man’s striving to use for his nourishment that part of the grain which nature intended for the cereal embryo and which is necessary for the first stage of its development. And although this embryo is infinitely small and weak in comparison with man, under certain conditions this insignificant organism nevertheless proves to be a force with which man has to reckon very, very seriously. This occurs when, under the influence of warmth and moisture, the vital activity of the cereal embryo awakens. Under these conditions the nutritive reserves of the grain are very quickly transformed into root and stem, i.e. vegetative organs, which, as nutritive material for man, are already completely unsuitable. Thus, an excess of moisture and an appropriate temperature make the embryo of the cereal grain a dangerous competitor of man in his struggle for existence on the basis of nutrition. But the same conditions that favor the development of the grain embryo awaken yet another major vital force, and this latter bursts into the relations between plant and man as a principle hostile to both the one and the other. This new vital force turns out to be the boundless world of microorganisms, representatives of which literally pro—

the air, water, and soil everywhere that man comes into contact with them are nourished. The most varied microorganisms are always present in enormous quantities on the surface of every grain as well. But here, in most cases, they are found in their inactive forms, in the form of spores, in which life usually does not manifest itself, but merely preserves the possibility of its manifestation. Thus this is a kind of dead capital of vital energy, which, however, is realized at once as soon as the external factors determining the conditions of existence change in a favorable direction. But for the possibility of development, both of the grain embryo and of the microorganisms located on its surface, warmth and moisture are needed above all. And therefore, when both are present, the life not only of the grain but also of all its microscopic inhabitants is awakened. The infinite diversity and colossal speed of reproduction of microorganisms make it understandable why, under certain conditions, these insignificant beings can in a very short interval of time completely destroy all the grain, not excluding its embryo. The final products of the destructive work of microorganisms, generally speaking, are products wholly unfit for human nutrition. However, the intermediate forms of decomposition of the substance of the grain may have great value both in a nutritive sense and with respect to taste. Such transitional forms usually arise in the grain as the initial result of the joint destructive work caused by the vital activity both of microorganisms and of the awakened embryo of the grain. In both cases, at the very beginning, starch is transformed into sugar, insoluble, tasteless higher proteins into soluble products possessing a definite taste, whereby the grain becomes tasty and digestible. But the awakening of the vital activity of the grain embryo and of its microflora is inevitable wherever appropriate measures are not taken for drying newly ripened and harvested grain, which in such cases, during storage, begins to sprout, grow moldy, heat up, and spoil.

It is evident that humanity, at the level of the first stages of cereal culture, did not know how to store grain properly; for this reason its sprouting was an ordinary phenomenon, as a result of which what is called in the countryside “malted” grain was obtained. This circumstance, the essence of which has just been explained, could not pass unnoticed—too clearly is it expressed, and too serious are the interests it affects. In view of this, the circumstance in question was not only noticed but made use of by humanity very early, since from history we know that many primitive peoples, such as the Iroquois and Delawares, used as food coarsely ground and soaked grain, left in this state for some time before consumption, whereby they obtained, as it were, a sweet jelly. For many peoples of Africa and Asia, historians note the custom—before using grain for food—of burying it and first subjecting it to the action of molds, as a result of which something like a sweet porridge is obtained.

But wherever, in a warm room, even at so-called room temperature, there are sufficiently moist products containing sugar, alcoholic fermentation always and inevitably proceeds to a greater or lesser degree. It is possible to eliminate and arrest it only by rather complex methods developed by modern science and applied at the present time in fermentation technology, in medicine, and in other fields. This indicates that the aforementioned primitive methods of preparing food from starchy and sugary substances—such as the juices of grapes, berries, fruits, honey, the grain of cereals, and similar products—already led primitive people to food products containing alcohol. In the application of bread leaven, known from remote antiquity, for the preparation of baked bread, man, unconsciously but already systematically, began to employ for his purposes the processes of alcoholic fermentation and likewise began systematically to consume alcohol-contain-

food product, which is bread¹), since freshly baked bread prepared with sourdough contains about 0.1% alcohol. Thus, alcohol entered human life already in the deepest antiquity, becoming one of the constant constituent parts of the foundation of human nutrition, as bread has been from time immemorial and remains to this day.

From the standpoint of the modern understanding of the phenomenon and conditions of alcoholic fermentation, the transition from the processes of obtaining bread to the production from starchy products of plant origin of products that are no longer foods but flavoring substances containing alcohol—such as alcoholic beverages from starchy products of plant origin—seems very simple and accessible. To accomplish this, it is only necessary to conduct the processes that take place in the leavening of dough in a more diluted medium.

However, as simple as this transition now appears to us, in reality hundreds and thousands of years were required to bring it about; after their lapse, man learned to dilute the fermenting mass of bread dough and to separate, by decanting or straining, from all that was insoluble a liquid containing alcohol and constituting an alcoholic beverage. This achieved the completion of a complex and prolonged process that led to the transformation of the principal food product into a flavoring substance, a means of subsistence into a means of enjoyment; and as a result, 3000 years before our time, in ancient Egypt there arose one of the oldest branches of the modern technology of alcoholic fermentation, known as “brewing.” Such a transition from bread to beer has its logical grounds, which make this transition not only comprehensible but even inevitable. The reason is that, at a certain stage of his development, man no longer remains satisfied solely with the feeling of satiety, but strives to seek in the process of nutrition a certain share of enjoyment connected with taste sensations. The latter may, along with other means suitable for this purpose, easily be evoked by various products of alcoholic fermentation. If one also takes into account the simplicity of obtaining alcohol-containing beverages, all this makes it understandable why, already in ancient Egypt, brewing figured as a highly developed branch of industry, in many respects approaching modern European brewing. In the successive transition from cereals to leavened baked bread and further to beer, a certain gradualness is observed in the changes in the composition and properties of the initial starchy material. The degree of these changes determines the value of the products obtained, both from the point of view of nutritive value and with respect to their taste properties. At the same time, as alcohol accumulates, their value as foodstuffs is observed to decrease, while their significance in respect of taste increases. Directly in cereal grains and in flour there is no alcohol at all; freshly baked bread contains about 0.1% of it, and beer about 3–4% and more. However, beer, in terms of the quantity of spirit contained in it, did not prove to be the ultimate form of the transformation of grain into alcoholic products perceived by humanity on a par with food. In this respect the thirteenth century, in connection with the discovery of spirit, marked new stages, as a result of which the final stage in this direction was reached. By fermenting germinated—and thereby saccharified—starchy grain and subsequently distilling the fermented liquid, it proved possible to transform cereals not into bread, but into more or less con-

¹) Bread sourdough is a mixture of water and flour, invariably containing a certain quantity of sugar already present in the grain, as well as a known quantity of yeasts, always found among the numerous representatives of the microflora of the grain and passing into the flour when the latter is ground. Once in the dough, the yeasts ferment it, forming alcohol and carbon dioxide, thanks to which the dough becomes porous and easily baked. During baking, the alcohol is removed only in part.

concentrated solutions of alcohol. As a result of this, by the sixteenth century, among the companions of man’s everyday life, alcohol often came to stand alongside grain, bread, and beer. But whereas grain and bread are nutritive substances, and beer a gustatory one, aqueous solutions of alcohol of considerable concentration—such as vodka, bitters, cognacs, liqueurs, and the like—must be regarded only as substances that intoxicate and are harmful to health.

Brewing, winemaking, mead-making, and similar industries very early became widely disseminated; however, alcohol itself was first discovered only in the thirteenth century, when the alchemists Raymond Lull, later Basil Valentine, obtained it as such by distilling beer and wine.

The discovery of alcohol is a historical event little known to most people; but in its significance and in its consequences, both direct and indirect, it undoubtedly has a right to one of the prominent places among very great discoveries. The significance of the discovery of alcohol was manifested above all in the fact that it focused the attention of the investigators of that time on the phenomenon of fermentation. And this provided a certain guiding thread in the effort to arrive at a correct understanding of many phenomena of life. Yet this did not happen at once, and only four centuries after the discovery of alcohol did that unimaginable chaos in views of this phenomenon begin to dissipate, when, for example, many admitted the existence of alcohol as such in all substances capable of fermentation, while fermentation itself was regarded as a purifying process in which the substances contaminating the alcohol supposedly separated from it, collecting in the form of foam and sediment. The incorrectness of this very widespread view, as well as of many other still more absurd opinions, was first clearly refuted in 1696 by the physician Becher, who attempted to distill alcohol from various substances capable of fermentation and did not obtain it. It then became clear that fermentation is possible only in sweet solutions containing sugar, in which the sugar is converted into alcohol; Becher established this from the disappearance of the sweet taste as fermentation developed and from the simultaneous accumulation of alcohol in the fermenting liquid. Through the subsequent work of such luminaries of science as Cavendish, Lavoisier, Thénard, Gay-Lussac, Saussure, Cagniard de Latour, Liebig, Pasteur, Traube, Buchner, and others of that and later times, the essence of alcoholic fermentation was gradually elucidated, and it is now established that alcohol is formed as a consequence of the quantitative decomposition of sugar into alcohol and carbonic acid, caused by a soluble ferment produced by fermenting yeast. Thus the phenomenon of alcoholic fermentation was linked with life and brought within the limits of understanding of definite physical and chemical phenomena. And although a fully exhaustive analysis of the process of alcoholic fermentation has not yet been achieved, in connection with it an extraordinary amount has been accomplished during the last century, both for pure and applied knowledge in physiology, chemistry, medicine, technology, and agronomy. In this respect the significance of the discovery of alcohol is exceptionally great. In the present case it served as a reliable guiding thread through one of the greatest stages of progress and culture, along which the human mind, though slowly, nevertheless steadily moved toward the solution of that problem which has always attracted, and still attracts, the greatest attention of mankind—namely, toward the solution of the problem of life; and in this direction the significance of alcoholic fermentation and of alcohol is still far from exhausted.

Alcohol, having served not only as a conduit of new ideas and scientific views in the field of understanding the phenomena of life, very early, and moreover deeply, entered into man’s everyday life as his constant companion. In this initial period alcohol figured as if in a hidden state, as a negligible in quantity and inconspicuous part of certain important food products. With time, as the alcohol content of nutritive—

the nutritional value of such products sharply decreased; but these transformed food products acquired a new significance—as flavoring substances highly valued by man.

The appearance of alcohol in food products, and their transformation in connection with this into flavoring substances, is one of the essential moments in the history of mankind’s development. This circumstance significantly changes people’s relations with regard to nutrition. New conditions are created under which people develop a striving not to avoid one another, but to draw closer to one another. And this is understandable. Possession of food is a severe necessity for the possibility of existence, and the appearance of competitors for food resources, in the majority of cases, is perceived as a threat to the existence of each fortunate possessor of food; therefore, under natural conditions, both man and animals tend to isolate themselves in the act of feeding.

An entirely different situation is created with the consumption of flavoring substances, such, for example, as beer, wine, mead, and the like. Their use no longer constitutes an unavoidable obligation of existence, requiring tedious, constant labor and effort, but is regarded as a source of pleasant experiences possible only with a surplus of food resources and leisure, freeing one from the burdensome everyday cares. This is a pleasure for the fullness of which the company of people is already essentially necessary, excluding hostile feelings toward one another. On this basis, among every people, even at a very early epoch of their development, there arise such institutions as taverns, inns, public houses, and the like. All these were conceived as places where people gathered to eat, drink, rest, listen to music, and where, at leisure, private and public affairs were discussed. At certain moments in the life of a country such institutions became centers where, at times, public and popular thought beat especially vividly. Thus, toward the end of the existence of the Roman Empire, porticoes and taverns became gathering places for the poor, in connection with which Claudius issued an order to close them. However, not only in taverns and similar public places, but also in domestic life, the consumption of alcohol-containing beverages found a place for itself. Their appearance here was just as natural and understandable as the use of those ordinary food products as a result of whose centuries-long, gradual transformation they had arisen. And therefore, where there was sufficiency and leisure, there also was the consumption of intoxicating beverages, as an entirely normal phenomenon. However, drunkenness in the modern sense of this word did not exist before the fourteenth–fifteenth centuries. It did not exist as a constant, widely spread, chronic, and developing malady corroding the national organism. Of course, abuse of intoxicating beverages became known very long ago, and cases of this kind were repeatedly noted by history, even in very early epochs. However, these were isolated, quickly passing historical moments, usually taking place only in times of state collapse and the accompanying decline in morals.

The wide dissemination of alcohol-containing beverages very early led to the imposition of a duty on the right to produce them. Already in ancient Egypt, according to the testimony of Herodotus, there existed a duty on the preparation of “barley wine,” i.e., beer, called “zythos.” Under these conditions, anyone who had paid the corresponding duty could freely prepare and use alcoholic products as he wished. Such an order was preserved later among most peoples for many subsequent centuries. However, drunkenness in the modern understanding of it did not exist. There were several reasons for this, but the chief among them lay in the absence of accessible, highly alcoholic intoxicating products that made it possible quickly and cheaply to produce strong intoxication. But after the thirteenth century, in connection with the discovery of the possibility of obtaining strong alcohol by distilling it from fermented liquid, the situation changed sharply. The peculiar physiological action of alcohol,

What had already been noted by the alchemists who discovered it was the reason that alcohol became a medicine; because it was not known how to obtain it, until the fifteenth century it was very expensive and was sold only in apothecaries’ shops. The list of diseases for which alcohol was recommended was very long, but the chief property attributed to it was the ability to restore lost youth. It was said to make the old young and long-lived, the weak strong, the thin vigorous, and so forth. This view led the alchemist who discovered alcohol to call it acva vitae, i.e., the water of life. The medicinal and healing properties attributed to spirits contributed to a rapid spread of the demand for spirits. Gradually, the methods being developed for obtaining spirits made them more and more accessible. In connection with this, since at first it was taken as a medicine, people little by little became accustomed to it, and it, ceasing to be a remedy, became a beverage entering into everyday use in the form of vodka, cognac, liqueurs, and so on.

The widespread dissemination of all such products was aided by technology, which, especially in the period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, developed methods for easily, quickly, and cheaply obtaining spirits from grain, potatoes, and other starchy and saccharine accessible products. As a result, a new major branch of alcoholic fermentation arose—namely, distilling. And when this occurred, a new, hitherto little noticed side of alcohol revealed itself and began to be exploited: it possessed the ability to take away from a person his will and his reason. And this turned alcohol, in the many-sided struggle of people for existence, into a terrible instrument of man’s power over man. As soon as this was noticed, hands were at once stretched out toward alcohol from all sides and, in most cases, criminal hands; once in these hands, alcohol in a short time became a source of innumerable crimes, misfortunes, grief, and tears, quickly turning into a heavy popular yoke that destroys man morally, physically, and economically.

The varied and profound influence of alcohol on the individual, on society, and on the state as a whole is based on the physiological action of ethyl alcohol upon the human organism.

Although the sad consequences of drunkenness and the final results of the colossal destruction it causes in man are well known to all, nevertheless the harmful consequences of a small or moderate use of alcoholic beverages, and the physiological essence of this primary evil that forms the basis of drunkenness, are almost unknown to broad circles of the population. On the contrary, among the popular masses there exists an entirely different and, moreover, profoundly erroneous notion, as if such use were of unquestionable benefit. Unfortunately, the idea of the strengthening and nutritive properties of alcohol is supported by many physicians, which is eagerly taken up and popularized by the adherents of intoxication and, spreading rapidly, leads not only to the strengthening but also to the further development of drunkenness. In connection with this, below, in as brief and accessible a form as possible, the essence of the destructive influence of alcohol on man in the physiological respect is considered, as well as the reasons for the incorrect interpretation of the nutritive value and health benefit of alcohol.

The classification of alcohol among food substances has as its chief theoretical justification the view of the organism as a heat engine in which the food introduced liberates, upon burning or oxidation, its hidden, i.e., “nutritive,” chemical energy, which is thereby transformed into heat and mechanical work. Hence also comes the guiding criterion for determining a food substance—the number of calories delivered to the organism when the given substance is burned in it. Such a view was first established by Mayer, who discovered the important law of conservation of energy and the mechanical theory of heat. However, modern science has proved with exhaustive completeness the incorrectness

this proposition in its application to alcohol, considered as a nutritive substance for man. The principal grounds for this are given below. The nutritive significance of a substance is determined not only by its capacity to release heat in the organism when assimilated by the latter, but also by the direct and indirect action of the food taken in on the activity and functional work of muscular, nervous, and other tissues, as well as on individual human organs. In addition, nutritive substances possess the capacity, under the influence of the organism, to undergo a series of preliminary changes which ultimately result either in the formation of new substances, closer in composition to the organism, or else in their conversion into forms of reserve products deposited in various parts of the organism until the need for them appears.

Alcohol, in relation to the human organism, possesses none of these basic properties of nutritive substances. Within the limits of the gastrointestinal tract it undergoes no changes; consequently, the human organism has no adaptations for the preliminary conversion of alcohol into new substances needed by the organism and close to the latter in their composition. The fundamental characteristic difference between alcohol and nutritive substances consists in the fact that, rapidly passing unchanged into the blood and tissues, it is just as rapidly oxidized without any relation to whether the organism at that moment does or does not need the energy that is liberated during the oxidation of alcohol in the organism.

With regard to the physiological action of alcohol on the organism, science has firmly established the following principal propositions: first, that alcohol is a strong protoplasmic poison, acting on every living cell; second, that alcohol is predominantly a nerve poison, i.e. a poison especially strong for nervous tissue, which is extraordinarily receptive and sensitive to it. Connected with these basic propositions is also the organism’s ability rapidly to oxidize the alcohol that enters and penetrates it without change, which is an act of self-defense by means of which the organism protects itself against poisoning. At the present time it has been definitely established that alcohol, even in the most insignificant doses, from the very beginning of its influence on the nervous system, acts as a narcotic poison, exerting a particularly strong effect on the regulatory centers, the consequence of which above all is a weakening of the organism’s precious capacity to orient itself both with respect to all external phenomena and with respect to processes continuously taking place within the organism itself.

Connected with the poisonousness of alcohol for the plasma and for the nervous tissues are the local negative actions of alcoholic beverages on the person and on individual organs. These local actions are reduced above all to irritation of those tissues, those mucous membranes of the oral cavity, pharynx, and stomach with which the intoxicating beverages taken in come into contact. When these beverages are consumed in considerable quantity, not having time to be absorbed in the stomach, they pass into the intestine, irritating it as well. This irritation varies within wide limits depending on the concentration of alcohol in the beverage, the duration of its action, i.e. the amount drunk, and also on the condition of the mucous membrane, etc. Irritation by alcohol of the mucous membranes of the oral cavity imparts to intoxicating beverages the properties of gustatory substances. In connection with this, alcoholic beverages, especially strong ones, find their widest consumption among those classes which are usually compelled to eat cheap, little-tasty food, as occurs, for example, among workers. Strong beverages, when consumed for a long time, by causing severe irritation, lead to catarrhs, i.e. serious disorders that lower the normal taste sensations and perceptions of the mucous membranes, which in turn leads to a disorder of appetite. Alcohol entering the esophagus, stomach, and intestines produces the following disturbances in the process of nutrition: 1) in many cases it makes solid food...

and thereby causes unnecessary work; 2) it spoils the gastric juice already prepared, and 3) it damages part of the gastric glands, lowering their capacity for work. The result is a disorder of gastric digestion.

Rapidly passing through the mucous membranes into the blood, alcohol exerts its pernicious action there as well, both on the red corpuscles and on the white blood cells. The latter are thereby noticeably weakened, becoming less active in their struggle against disease-causing microorganisms that enter the human body. Owing to this, alcohol increases a person’s susceptibility to disease. In the red blood corpuscles alcohol causes hardening, deprives them of the ability to absorb oxygen through the lungs, and promotes the transformation of these corpuscles into fat; this causes obesity of the organism, making strong, muscular people flabby and weak. Nor does alcohol spare the blood vessels themselves, through which the blood is distributed throughout the body, carrying to all organs the nutrients necessary for them, including lime. Under the influence of alcohol the latter is deposited on the walls of the blood vessels. Owing to this, the walls of these vessels, from flexible, elastic, and smooth, become hard, rough, and obstruct the movement of the blood, which greatly burdens the work of the heart.

When a person drinks beer or vodka, the alcohol, having entered the organism, quickly penetrates everywhere, leaving not a single corner untouched. Together with the blood it very soon passes into the brain as well, and an excessive warmth is felt in the head. This is the poisonous alcohol producing intoxication, which is a temporary, more or less severe—depending on the degree of intoxication—paralysis of the brain.

As is known, the brain is divided into:

1. The cerebrum, which is located behind our forehead; in it all our mental faculties are concentrated.

2. The small brain, or cerebellum, situated beneath the cerebrum. Its task is to keep our body in equilibrium and to direct all our movements.

3. The medulla oblongata—situated still lower and governing blood circulation, digestion, and respiration.

Along with the poisoning of the brain by alcohol there also occurs an injury to all the nerves that go from the brain to every part of our body. In connection with this, alcohol causes a general disorder of the entire organism. How quickly alcohol acts is known to very many people, for example from the feeling of dizziness and ringing in the ears caused in persons unaccustomed to alcohol even by the smallest doses of this poison, which is invariably described by the well-known and characteristic expression: “there is a buzzing in the head.”

The successive action of alcohol, in the opinion of Prof. A. Danilevsky, develops in the following order: first the psychic sphere is affected, then the sensory sphere, and afterward the motor sphere. The capacity for judgment, reasoning, self-observation, and self-regulation is depressed first, even by very moderate doses of alcohol. Hence the heightened sense of well-being, the imaginary well-being of the organism, which is based on a false overestimation of one’s powers and abilities.

The picture of the general action of alcohol on a person varies individually and depends essentially on the diverse conditions and peculiarities of each separate instance of alcohol use. In general, younger age, physical fatigue, unsatisfactory nutrition, hunger, and, in general, a diseased condition, and so forth—all this contributes to the greatest destructive action of alcohol on the organism. The general action of alcohol consists of two periods: the first—excitation, and the second—depression. One characteristic and essential influence of alcoholic beverages on the organism deserves attention: it manifests itself sharply in the second period of the general action of alcohol, but begins, however, to develop during the first period, i.e., during alcoholic excitation; this is the influence on the general temperature of the body. It must

It should be noted that the constancy of a person’s general temperature is maintained chiefly by the following two processes taking place in the human organism, namely—heat production and heat loss. Heat production is determined by the vital activity of all our organs and tissues; heat loss occurs chiefly through the skin, in the closest connection with the circulation of blood taking place in it. Alcohol has the ability to lower heat production in the organism and to increase its overall heat loss, i.e., in general it contributes to the cooling of the entire organism. Obviously, the degree of such cooling in each individual case depends on the individual characteristics of the person under consideration, such as: the degree of his intoxication, the general state of his health, his habituation to alcohol, and so forth. At the same time, what is especially important is that the cooling of the organism which develops—dangerous in many cases, for example in winter—is subjectively perceived in a completely distorted way, as a sensation of “warming.” The reason for this lies in the fact that, under the influence of the weakening of tension in one nerve center that governs the expansion and contraction of blood vessels, the so-called chief vasomotor center, the blood vessels of the skin expand first of all. In connection with this, the circulation of blood in it is intensified and the temperature of the skin rises, temporarily increasing noticeably and thereby leading into dangerous error the chilled person who wishes to warm himself and resorts to the aid of alcohol, since, not to mention the general negative effect of alcohol on the organism, the latter in fact begins to become still more chilled. Only what has just been noted makes understandable why the famous investigator of the polar regions—Nansen—did not allow the crew of his ship to take strong drinks with them when setting out on a northern expedition.

Alongside the imaginary property of warming a person, alcohol in the form of such drinks as light wine, beer, etc., is also quite wrongly credited with the ability to quench thirst. The reason for this evident misconception is that alcohol, even in the form of very weak solutions, has the ability to dehydrate animal and plant tissues. Thus, beer and wine, by drying the mucous membranes and glands of the digestive tract, cause a new sensation of thirst, which leads to repeated consumption of the intoxicating drink, causing a new excitation of thirst. This explains why, to quench even the strongest thirst, 2–3 glasses of water are sufficient, whereas one who uses beer for the same purpose drinks 3–4 bottles of it. The widespread view of the nutritional value of beer, called by brewers “liquid bread,” is in no way consistent with the scientific data available at the present time. This was already noted by the famous chemist Liebig, who pointed out that a handful of flour is far more nutritious than 4 bottles of the best Bavarian beer. Among other things, one of the negative aspects of beer is the enormous content of water in it (about 90%), which in many who drink it leads to a considerable burdening of the kidneys and especially of the heart. The latter becomes greatly enlarged, weakens, and reveals a disorder designated in medicine by the characteristic name “beer heart,” widely prevalent in Germany and in general in countries with developed brewing.

The harmful influence of grape wines was known already to the ancient Romans, whose old saying ran: “Calido jecori vina inimica,” i.e.—“wine is the enemy of the liver.” The predominant damage to the liver from wine, i.e. cirrhosis, shriveling of the liver, leads to abdominal dropsy. This circumstance is well known in wine-growing France, which noted it even in the popular saying: “qui a vescu dans le vin, meurt dans l’eau”—“he who lives with wine dies with water,” more precisely—with dropsy.

Alongside the brain and the nervous system, one of the first organs to take upon itself the heavy blows of hostile alcohol is the liver. As is known, the liver is the laboratory where are created and distributed do-

substances foreign to the organism, and partly substances formed within it. The liver takes the most direct part in the process of blood formation and nutrition of the organism; it also serves as a storehouse of manufactured substances, and in it is formed the bile necessary for digestion, which flows through a special gland into the intestine, where the bile breaks down the fat of food, facilitating its passage into the blood.

All these varied and important functions of the liver are performed by it thanks to the fact that it consists of special cells carrying out all the complex processes noted above. The alcohol of intoxicating beverages, however, when it enters the liver, causes its fatty degeneration, thereby destroying these highly responsible tissues of the liver and thus weakening and undermining its work, which inevitably leads to disorder of the organism and to its severe suffering.

Alcohol has an equally negative effect on the kidneys, promoting their fatty degeneration or hardening, which disrupts their function. A disorder of this organ, whose role may be compared with a sieve that does not let into the blood, and that removes by means of the urinary bladder from the organism, all those substances that are useless or harmful to it, is obviously a serious threat to human health.

What has been set forth shows how deeply harmful is the influence of alcohol on individual human organs. Obviously, the destructive effect of intoxicating beverages on physical and mental capacities is also connected with this. Modern medicine possesses instruments and methods that make it possible to establish exact numerical measurements of physical and mental work and of its changes under the influence of the most insignificant doses of alcohol introduced into the organism in the form of various intoxicating beverages drunk by a person. Such a possibility is provided, for example, by the ergograph, which makes it possible to measure a person’s muscular work. The ergograph consists of a balance beam, at one end of which a definite load is placed, while at the other a ring is suspended. Placing a finger in this ring and successively pressing on it, thereby causing the load on the balance to rise and fall, one can perform a definite amount of work. This work is automatically recorded by a self-recording device attached to the balance, marking the number of lifts made and the height of each of them with a series of successive strokes. The length of each of them corresponds to the height of an individual lifting of the load. With a definite weight of the load on the ergograph, this makes possible an exact accounting of the work performed. Measurement by such an ergograph of muscular work, 10 minutes after the intake of three deciliters, i.e. one glass of beer, corresponding to about 15 grams of alcohol, revealed, in the comparative experiments of Dr. Frey, a decrease in work from 5,896 to 3,276 kilogram-meters. At the same time, it is very important to note that the subjective sensation of a rise in strength after taking beer here clearly did not correspond to the decline in strength associated with the self-deception of being dulled by the intake of alcohol. For a clear comparison of working capacity before and after the intake of alcohol, the indicated experiment is presented graphically in drawing No. 1, with two diagrams of the experiment after the intake of beer and one control experiment being shown.

The question of the influence of the very smallest doses of alcohol on the depression of brain activity in general and, in particular, on purely mental work has been studied very extensively; as a result, it has been established by strictly scientific experimental methods that cerebral and mental activity is noticeably and extremely rapidly weakened by doses as insignificant by everyday standards as 7.5–10 grams of strongly diluted alcohol. The degree and duration of the reduction in activity correspond to the amount of alcohol drunk. Subsequent doses of it cause still greater weakening than the initial ones. Where work involving movements is concerned, as, for example, the work of a typesetter, typing on a machine, etc., there is observed mi-

...there is a marked facilitation of movements and, consequently, as if an increase in labor productivity. However, this is associated with an inevitable lowering of the quality of the work. The same is observed in reading, adding, and memorizing numbers, despite the false subjective sensation of increased working capacity. Experiments with memorizing and adding numbers are extremely instructive and convenient for a visual illustration of the weakening action of alcohol on mental activity; therefore the results of such experiments are presented below graphically in the diagrams of Figures Nos. II and III. The experiment consists in the daily memorization of certain digits over a fixed interval of time and in recording this work. It is obvious that, thanks to practice, the ability to memorize develops day by day up to a certain limit. When the results become stable, the experiments are continued with the preliminary daily administration of alcohol in the amount of 7.5–10 grams in a strongly diluted state, for example, in the form of about one glass of beer. In this case there is immediately observed a sharp decrease in the results of memorization, which in the following days, with repeated administrations of the same amount, causes a further noticeable decline. With cessation of the administration of alcohol, the effect of memorization immediately rises. This rise in the following days increases noticeably as the residual action of alcohol weakens, which is, as it were, sobering up. The results of such an experiment are presented by the diagram in Figure No. II. The diagram in Figure No. III gives the results of an analogous experiment with mental addition of numbers. More complex cerebral activity suffers, under the influence of the same doses of alcohol, much greater damage. The state of habituation of the organism to alcohol is regarded by most investigators, as with morphine, as a special kind of already chronic disease.

In connection with the influence of alcohol on mental activity, in the first stages of its action on the organism there is also the typical picture of slight intoxication, expressed in an inclination toward stereotyped generalizations, shallow witticisms, interference in others’ speech and conversations.

To this should also be referred the state of extraordinary good spirits, heightened sense of well-being, a tendency to gesticulation, causeless laughter, and the like—manifestations that are the consequence of a weakening of cerebral activity and of the regulating influence of the higher inhibitory centers.

The saddest aspects of the action of alcohol on man are the hereditary manifestations of alcoholism. At the present time there is abundant material, treated in a strictly scientific manner, on the question of the influence of alcoholism in parents on their offspring. This material testifies that abuse of alcohol by parents is invariably accompanied by degeneration of the offspring. Among the offspring of alcoholics one often observes generally weak physical development of the organism, a tendency to such serious diseases as rickets, tuberculosis, epilepsy, and others, as well as a tendency to mental disorders, sexual licentiousness leading, in the female generation, to prostitution, and a morbid inclination toward crime. As an example, Table No. 3 gives, according to Prof. Legrain, the results of an extensive investigation of the vitality of offspring depending on the parents’ tendency toward alcohol.

TABLE No. 3.

Parents and number examined	CHILDREN: a) Survived	CHILDREN: b) Died	CHILDREN: c) Miscarriages
A) Completely non-drinking (3695 persons).	86.55%	13.45%	1.1%
B) Moderate drinkers (6673 persons)....	76.83%	23.17%	5.27%
C) Immoderate drinkers (9640 persons)...	67.96%	32.02%	7.11%

A logical and inevitable consequence of all that has been noted concerning the physiological influence of alcohol on man is the close connection between alcoholism and crime. Crime is a complex social phenomenon, conditioned by a whole series of causes, very diverse in their character and in their origin. Among them, one of the prominent places is occupied by alcoholism, which, in connection with degeneration, is one of the most outstanding factors of crime. The reasons are clear: under the influence of alcohol, consciousness becomes clouded, psychic excitability increases, disorder develops in the sphere of mental activity. A person becomes easily susceptible to the influence of a momentary mood, easily loses mental equilibrium, easily falls into a state of anger, and is quickly seized by the desire to commit an act of some kind of violence, revenge, etc.

The well-known fact that a mass of crimes are committed under the influence of intoxication is very clearly illustrated by the diagram in drawing No. IV, which, on the basis of official statistics, depicts the fluctuation in the number of crimes committed by days of the week in connection with the consumption of intoxicating beverages on holidays and weekdays in two large European capital cities.

Scientifically grounded conclusions, with indisputable evidence, compel us to recognize, from the standpoint of physiology, that complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages is an indispensable condition for the health, capacity for work, clarity of thought, and firm will of every person. The obligatoriness of this must be especially categorical in connection with the most sorrowful side of the alcohol question, associated with the hereditary influence of alcoholism. Such are the logical demands of human nature. However, real life resolves this question in practice in quite a different way. The insidious, enticing, and charming power of alcohol—this banisher of cares, anxieties, and sorrows, which lulls above all the will and self-criticism—is that fertile soil upon which, in connection with natural-historical, legal, social, and other conditions, alcohol has, over the course of centuries, unfailingly made its victorious march, becoming a companion of the everyday life of many millions of people while at the same time being the most evil enemy of humanity.

The wide dissemination and encouragement of the consumption of intoxicating beverages, in connection with the levying of duties upon them, became, in the course of time, a source of large state revenue. This circumstance, taken together with what has been indicated earlier, was the reason why one of the most difficult questions very early confronted humanity: the question of the excessive consumption of intoxicating beverages and of the consequences flowing from it both for the individual person and for society as a whole. The complexity and difficulty of resolving this question increased over time still further because the production technology of alcoholic fermentation, gradually growing, turned into a major factor in the economic and industrial life of the country, encompassing thousands of very large plants scattered everywhere, served directly and indirectly by an enormous number of workers and employees, measured in the hundreds of thousands. World production of spirits per year had reached, by 1910, more than 400 million vedros of spirits of 40% strength (vodka). World beer production for the period 1904–1907 was about 2 billion vedros per year. The average quantity of natural grape wine produced in the period 1903–1905 was about 160 million vedros per year. Russia accounts for more than 100 million vedros of spirits of 40% strength, about 80 million vedros of beer, and 25–30 million vedros of natural grape wine.

The excessive consumption of intoxicating beverages and the enormous harm connected with it, inflicted upon humanity by alcohol, have more than once prompted the thought of the necessity of completely removing from use the primary cause of this evil—namely, spirits in the various forms of alcoholic beverages—and, in connection with this,

there arose the idea of the complete destruction of the entire technical apparatus producing these products, i.e. of the entire industry and technology of alcoholic fermentation; moreover, in view of the fact that distilling gives, as it were, the product most harmful in its action, the idea was pursued with particular insistence that this branch of fermentation production must be destroyed first of all.

However, quite apart from the technical difficulties of carrying out this task, owing to the long-standing and large-scale character of this branch of industry, it should be noted here that this purely theoretical view takes no account whatever of the industrial and economic significance that distilling has for the country and, secondly, that it completely ignores the role which alcohol, as such, plays at the present time. It must not be forgotten that, indirectly, alcohol has entered very deeply into the life of modern man, and from the most varied sides: for example, as a raw material for technical manufactures, as a constituent part of chemical and medical preparations, as a necessary means in many scientific investigations, etc. One need only recall vinegar, ether, chloroform, rubber, lacquers, pharmaceutical preparations, and much else obtained from alcohol or with its aid, in order to picture to oneself that infinite variety of useful products which owe their origin to alcohol and which may be obtained from it in the future.

Since the beginning of the present century the demand for alcohol for industrial and technical purposes has begun to grow strongly. By the beginning of the war, the consumption of alcohol for industrial purposes, expressed as percentages of its total production, was as follows: for Russia—6%, France—21%, Germany—37%. This demand increased greatly over the years, as shown in the table below² for 1900 and 1910 in per-capita consumption of alcohol for technical purposes, in liters of absolute alcohol per year:

Years:	Russia	Germany	France
1900	0.1 l.	1.1 l.	0.6 l.
1910	0.3 l.	1.9 l.	1.6 l.

An especially strong increase is observed in Russia, as is evident from the following data, which express, by year, the expenditure of alcohol not for drinking purposes. The figures are given in millions of liters of absolute alcohol:

Years:	1907	1910	1913	1914	1915
Expenditure:	19.0	33.0	43.5	50.4	71.6

Thus, over 8 years consumption increased 3.7-fold, with the use of alcohol for heating, lighting, and as a source of energy in engines acquiring notable significance. This makes it evident that, even with the establishment of unconditional sobriety, the production of alcohol as such will not only not disappear but, contrary to views often expressed now, will over time acquire still greater importance and will develop, contributing to the prosperity and economic growth of those countries where this production will take place. The possibility of this proposition was proved and put into practice in Germany by Professors Märcker and Delbrück. Their great merit consisted in the fact that they closely linked distilling with agriculture, showing that the chief value of this branch of industry lies not even in the alcohol obtained thereby, but in the fact that distilling, having grown upon the agricultural organism at a certain stage of the latter’s development, supplements it, develops

and gives it new strength, preserving its productive power. This is determined by the fact that, in the presence of distilling, agriculture carries beyond its own limits only what constitutes grain, potatoes, sugar beet, etc., and only alcohol at the expense of starch and other carbohydrates contained in them. But these chemical compounds are, relatively speaking, low-value products of agriculture as an active productive factor of the country, if only because the unlimited supply of these compounds is provided by the energy of the sun, by the vital activity of chlorophyll-containing plants, and by the enormous quantity of carbonic acid and water invariably present in the atmosphere and in the soil. Everything, however, that constitutes the chief strength of agriculture—namely nitrogen-containing substances, phosphoric acid, potash salts, and similar chemical compounds, which annually pass from the soil into the harvest and concentrate in themselves the productive force of the soil—under such conditions remains in agriculture in the form of production wastes, which go to feed livestock and, chiefly, are transformed into manure returned to the soil. Thanks to this, the production of alcohol leads to the fact that only the necessary part of the important fertilizing capital goes aside in the form of costly animal products, such as meat, milk, butter, leather, eggs, etc. The whole main mass of it remains in place, thereby ensuring the success and further development of the agricultural organism. The significance of distilling in this sense is briefly and clearly expressed in the words of Märcker, who said that “agriculture always remains an unpaid debtor to distilling for the spent wash.”

From the totality of what has been set forth above, the following basic propositions follow concerning the consumption and production of alcohol-containing beverages and alcohol:

1) The consumption of alcoholic beverages is a consequence of the natural-historical conditions of the existence and development of mankind.

2) The causes of the consumption of alcohol-containing beverages are: first—the striving for taste sensations; second—the accessibility of preparing these products.

3) The centuries-old antiquity of the consumption of alcoholic beverages creates a hereditary inclination toward them among the masses of the people.

4) The wide dissemination of alcoholic beverages since the remote past has called forth individual and state interest in their dissemination, in the sense of the possibility of deriving income from this need.

5) The material, moral, and physical harm inflicted by the consumption of spirituous beverages in individual, social, and state respects has long since impelled state authority to take account of this phenomenon and, from time to time, to strive for its weakening.

6) The production of alcoholic beverages and alcohol at the present time is represented by the largest branches of modern industry, closely connected with the economic, agricultural, and industrial life of the country.

Such are the general propositions concerning the consumption of alcoholic beverages and the manifold consequences connected with them.

In considering the physiological action of alcohol and intoxicating beverages it has already been clarified how deeply and harmfully it affects the physical and mental powers and the will of man. This circumstance, in connection with the fact that an individual person, by the very essence of his nature, is unthinkable outside society, and that between society and each separate personality included in it there exists a certain constant and manifold interaction, indicates that the harm individually inflicted by alcohol is far from ...

is not indifferent for society as a whole, to say nothing of those cases when the role within it of particular persons, by virtue of their special position and the work they perform, is especially significant. What has just been noted, given the age-old and widespread consumption of intoxicating beverages, compels one to recognize that alcohol at the present time constitutes not only an individual but also a social evil. In view of this, it is obvious that, when dealing with alcoholism and the possibility of combating it, one cannot confine oneself to the sphere of interests of man merely as a self-sufficient unit. The roots of alcoholism, passing through individual persons, have for centuries already penetrated deeply into society, not only meeting there with no proper resistance, but finding here, to a high degree, favorable soil for their maintenance and further development. Therefore the question of combating alcoholism is possible only from the standpoint of treating this phenomenon as a public, social evil. In this connection it is necessary, alongside what has been established concerning the physiological effect of alcohol on man, to note here also the basic propositions concerning society, the interrelations within it, and certain theses arising from this that are essential for the question under consideration.

As is known, the basis of the existence of society is material production and the means of the latter, without which there can be neither social consciousness nor the spiritual life of society. Thus, the concept of “society” includes, on the one hand, the aggregate of people united by productive labor, and, on the other, the means of production, understanding by the latter not only the material instruments of production, but also the organization of labor, the ideas of production, and those scientific and technical achievements upon which production is founded and develops, and so forth.

Cooperation among people is possible both on the basis of a conscious and of an unconscious labor connection among individual persons, which is clearly manifested in that society whose name is humanity as a whole. The basis of the connection between people entering into society, in addition to participation in joint productive labor, is also participation in the economic life of society, which represents a function of labor-productive work. At the same time, the rights of each member of society to its material product are determined by the character and degree of participation in the common productive labor. As production develops, and consequently society itself, the difference increases in the character and degree of participation of its individual members in the common productive process. In this, some agents—namely, workers in the sphere of the ideas of production, organization, management, and so forth—acquire predominant significance in comparison with others, namely with the representatives of purely physical labor. The latter, with the development of technology, gradually approach, in the character of their work and in their significance in production, mechanical automata. Since the productive process is accompanied by a parallel process of distribution of material goods acquired by the collective labor of the whole society, this determines the divergence also in the economic position of individual persons and entire groups among the members of society, who take unequal part in the productive process and therefore receive unequal rights to the material goods connected with it. The difference just noted in roles in the process of production serves as the basis for the division of people into social classes, into the essence of whose interrelations there already enter elements of domination, subordination, and the command of capital connected with the means of production. And since from how people produce there follows also how they distribute the means of labor, there arise from this the striving of one part of society, dominant by virtue of its importance in the productive process, to appropriate the means of production and to turn them into instruments for the exploitation of another part of society, consisting predominantly of representatives of physical labor. Thus there arise a ruling class and a ruled class, and together with this there appears also

the contradiction of the interests of these two principal classes of society, which leads to so-called “class interests,” including the striving of each class to improve the conditions of its existence by increasing its material share in the division of the mass of products of the given society. Gradually developing, class interests unfold into an entire system encompassing the most diverse areas of social life. The consequence of the clash of class interests is class struggle, which reveals numerous incoherences, maladjustments, and contradictions, the bearer of which is so complex a system as human society. It is obvious that if society exists, then within it a certain equilibrium is maintained between the forces striving to destroy it and the forces that support it. Everything that contributes to the disturbance of this equilibrium and intensifies the contradictions and incoherences of the given society contributes to the destruction of the latter.

By what forces, then, is the life of society moved? It is obvious that all social phenomena occur through the will of people, and this will, connected with the mental and physical powers of man, appears as the chief mover of the whole life of society. And therefore everything that weakens the will of people—everything of this kind runs counter to the interests of society. Among such factors must be included alcohol in the form of intoxicating beverages, whose enormous and negative influence on man has already been discussed above. Now, in this connection, it is essential to clarify how alcohol is reflected, through individual members of society, upon the latter as a whole, as well as upon its separate classes; and also to establish what promotes the spread of alcohol consumption within it, and wherein, in this case, its negative influence on society is expressed.

For this it is necessary to ascertain how alcohol affects the principal driving forces of society, i.e. the will of people in their mutual relations under the conditions of social life. In dwelling on this, however, it must be borne in mind that the influence of each factor is determined not only by the character and strength of its action, but also by that upon which it extends its action. Therefore, in the question of the influence of the consumption of alcoholic beverages on society, one must also take into account what the latter represents.

Therefore, in examining the question posed, we shall analyze it, on the one hand, as applied to a socialist, unorganized society; on the other—in connection with an organized communist society.

In the first case, social phenomena result from the chance interweaving of individual, mutually uncoordinated and often contradictory wills and actions, not regulated by any unifying principle leading toward a single goal for all members of society. It is obvious that, as a result of such chance and infinitely varied collisions, in the final outcome there nevertheless emerges some resultant force, formulated in certain legal, economic, legislative, and other norms obligatory in the given society and, as it were, expressing the collective will of all its members. Naturally, under such conditions this resultant force, reflected in the manifold manifestations of the life of such a society, not only cannot coincide with the will and striving of its individual members, but in the vast majority of cases runs directly counter to them.

The inevitable consequence of such a situation is the striving of the majority to oppose this spontaneously formed, so to speak, “imaginary will” of society. The means of such resistance, and at the same time the means that makes it possible for an individual member of society to realize in life his individual aspirations, appears to be the subordination to oneself of the will of other co-members in as large a number as possible, thereby turning them into an instrument of one’s own struggle against society and its individual members. To what extent, in this case, alcohol proves to be a suitable means in the form

…the dangers of alcoholic beverages can be seen from what the history of drinking in general, and in Russia in particular, shows—for example, in the case of the buyouts. This case vividly demonstrated what the individual will of a single member of society, armed with alcohol, can do: how easily it enslaves not only thousands and tens of thousands of members of society like itself, but also gains the ability to subordinate to itself the will of the entire governmental apparatus, acquiring the right to dispose of the will of individual representatives of authority and of whole governmental bodies, up to and including the military force.

What has been set forth above indicates that the conditions of an unorganized society promote the spread of alcoholism, turning alcohol in the hands of separate individuals into a dangerous means of exploitation of some members of society by others, which causes not only individual harm but also profound social harm. Under the influence of this, society gradually begins to unite against an influence hostile to it. However, the awareness of the harm and oppression of alcohol, leading to active struggle against this social evil, is achieved, like the struggle itself—judging by the vivid examples of history—at too high a price, since alcoholism easily turns into a persistent hereditary affliction, closely intertwined with the most varied manifestations of the life of society.

The organization of society is possible also in a form directly opposite to the case of unorganized society just considered—namely, a communistically organized society, where there should be no contradiction between the interests of the individual and of society as a whole, where social phenomena should express the actual, coordinated collective will of all members of society, where people should be masters of their own decisions, equally close and comprehensible to all and to each in such a society. It is obvious that in this case the consumption of alcoholic beverages, by the very essence of the organization of society, cannot turn into a means of exploitation harmful to it, by some against others. In addition, the possibility of the spread of alcohol consumption would in such a society be reduced to a minimum by virtue of the awareness of its harm; in connection with this, such a society would direct all its efforts toward an all-round struggle against alcoholism as an abnormal phenomenon dangerous in every respect.

In a class society, alcohol naturally falls into the hands of the ruling class, turning chiefly against the subordinate classes, consisting mainly of representatives of physical labor—that is, of workers and peasants. The spread of the consumption of alcoholic beverages, of course, also occurs in the remaining classes of society; however, the sad consequences of this evil are reflected with particular severity upon the working class, undermining in many ways and deeply its strength and its possibilities of a successful struggle for its existence and for its better future. In this connection it seems of interest to dwell on the question of the causes that impel the working class to consume alcoholic beverages and on how this consumption affects the interests of the working class, the conditions of its existence, and its relations with the other classes of society.

In considering the physiological effect of alcohol on the human organism, those features of alcohol that attract people to it have already been clarified. This is, so to speak, one of the general causes of the consumption of alcoholic beverages. However, besides these, there are also other causes, lying in economic and social conditions, and therefore not the same for different classes.

As early as 1860 the famous chemist and founder of physiology—Liebig—wrote: “Only by way of exception can a well-nourished person become a drunkard. But if a man, by his labor, earns less than is needed to acquire the food necessary for restoring his working strength, then, in connection with an irresistible natural necessity, he seeks salvation in …”

vodka.” In his book The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels writes the following on the same question: “All manner of violations and temptations encourage workers toward drunkenness. Vodka is for them almost the sole source of joy, and the whole setting of their existence brings this source close to them. Tired and half-asleep, the worker returns in the evening to his dwelling, deprived of every comfort, damp, cheerless, and dirty. He needs something to cheer himself up, something to soften the burden of work and the expectation of the next working day... His organism, weakened by bad air and poor nutrition, insistently demands some excitation from without; his need for company can be satisfied only in the tavern, since there is no other place where he could meet with his friends—is it possible, under all these conditions, that the worker should not be drawn to vodka and be able to resist temptation?... On the contrary, irresistible physical and moral conditions draw broad strata of workers into drunkenness... Drunkenness ceases to be a vice, responsibility for which falls upon its bearer; it is an inevitable phenomenon, a necessary consequence of certain conditions, in relation to which the worker is a will-less object.” In addition to these two opinions, so concordant in substance and entirely different in the position of the persons who expressed them, one should add one more authoritative opinion on the same question, that of factory inspector Dr. Fuchs, who stated at the 19th congress of the “German League for the Struggle against Spirituous Beverages” in 1902 the following: “The modern economic impoverishment causes an increase in alcohol consumption. Poor housing conditions, low wages, dangerous working conditions—this is what drives workers into taverns; the relative insufficiency of educational institutions drives them there as well.”

Of enormous significance in the worker’s inclination toward alcohol, in the opinion of the majority, is nervous overfatigue at work. Its cause lies not only in the length of the working day, but also in the character of the work itself, which requires intense attention. The latter is especially strongly connected with the continuously growing mechanization of labor, when the worker, in many cases, becomes a mechanical automaton, as it were an appendage of the machine, which deprives labor of inner content and interest for its performance. At the same time this same circumstance, given the usual colossal productivity of mechanized production, requires uninterruptedly strained attention from the worker, since the slightest oversight leads to mass spoilage of material and, consequently, is connected with the threat of a fine and even the loss of his place. “Nervous overfatigue,” says Dr. Wurm, “leads to such dulling of cerebral activity that by evening the worker loses interest in everything in the world... Thus, it is not simply physical but nervous overfatigue that creates a predisposition to alcohol. And to this is added a whole series of other causes, responsibility for which falls upon the entrepreneurs and the authorities.” Such causes include the poor arrangement of workers’ premises, causing heat, dust, and in general the lack of protection of workers from various unfavorable influences connected with the processes reproduced in production; and, in outdoor work, the absence of arrangements and devices for protection from bad weather, cold, wind, etc. In connection with this, workers not infrequently resort to alcoholic beverages during the work itself, which greatly increases occupational risk. Apart from these latter, still relatively rare cases, the consumption of intoxicating beverages in nonworking time appears as an ordinary phenomenon, toward which the working class relates as normal and even desirable. In connection with this, certain prejudices have arisen, deeply and firmly rooted among the broad masses. Among these, for example, is the conviction that certain especially difficult jobs cannot be performed without vodka; that drinking appears to be an absolutely necessary condition of every celebration, holiday, beginning and end of a task.

and so on. Abstinence from alcohol is treated as a kind of asceticism, a voluntary renunciation of the joys of life; while the ability to drink a great deal of spirits is regarded as daring, bravado, and an expression of strength. On this basis there even arises a peculiar contest over who can “outdrink” whom, i.e., who can drink more spirits. This attitude of the masses toward the consumption of intoxicating beverages is reinforced by numerous old folk sayings, for example the following: “drunk but clever—there are two merits in him,” “a drunk man will sober up—he will be fit for the job,” “drunk, yet intelligent—a sensible man,” and so forth.

From the foregoing it follows that the consumption of alcoholic beverages among the working class is not caused by any special and independent reason, but appears as an expression of a deep chronic malady of the whole of society, at whose base, for the working class, lie above all material insecurity and abnormal working conditions, and, generally speaking, the unsatisfactory economic and social conditions of this class. Therefore the possibility for the working class to free itself from the heavy yoke of alcoholism is directly connected with the struggle for its professional and class interests, and first of all requires changes in working conditions.

The consequences of drunkenness in the final result are well known to everyone. Everyone knows that drunkenness leads the worker to illness and poverty, cripples him physically and morally, and makes him unfit not only for work but also for life and society. The first to suffer from this, naturally, are the wife and children of the man who has made drunkenness his habit. And no earnings, no means, will save such a person from poverty. Impoverishment, family breakdown, savage fistfights, often going as far as court proceedings—all this is the usual result of passion for wine.

Despite all this, drunkenness among the working people has become so commonplace a phenomenon that it surprises and outrages no one. Its ordinariness is even reinforced by corresponding folk sayings, such as: “Drink, do not be timid; drink wine, beat your wife, fear nothing,” “if he is not rowdy, then he is not drunk,” “today he is drunk, no great fault,” “to drink is sorrow, but not to drink is twice as much,” and so on and so forth. If one takes into account the heredity of alcoholism, it becomes clear that an individual affliction becomes a disease of the class and of the whole of society. In connection with this there arises the necessity of fighting not only the very phenomenon of consumption and the inclination toward alcohol, but also, first, insofar as possible, of mitigating for the family and for society the grave consequences of drunkenness; second, of preventing the possibility of the development of alcoholism both in the present and in subsequent generations, which is achieved through a certain physical and mental upbringing. Naturally, concern for this must begin with the new generations from the earliest childhood and during the school age, strengthening the child’s health and systematically explaining to him already in school—to boys as future workers and to girls, as future mothers, which is of still greater importance—the causes, consequences, and all the harm of consuming alcohol.

As for influencing those suffering from alcoholism themselves, the possibility of this, apart from removing the immediate causes that give rise to the craving for intoxicants, and not to mention the means of medicine, should be sought in individual appeals to the sense of duty toward family and society, in awakening consciousness of the full ruinousness of this passion, and, finally, in explaining the profound error of the usual indulgent attitude toward drunkenness and the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Essential significance and services to the anti-alcohol movement can, as experience abroad has shown, be rendered by trade unions. The struggle against alcoholism within the limits of one’s own union must be included among their activities.

Turning to the question of the influence of alcoholism on the professional movement, one should cite Adler’s views on this matter, expressed by him at the congress of Austrian trade unions in 1907. “Alcohol,” says Adler, “is a poison that destroys our most important weapon—the brain and the nervous system, with the help of which we create everything that, as a party and in particular as trade unions, we are capable of creating.” Adler further explains this thought in the following address to the delegates, or, as he says, to the “authorized representatives” of the trade unions at the aforementioned congress: “The more spiritual and physical strength the proletariat has for the struggle, the closer it is to its goal. This applies not only to the whole class, but above all to the individual participants in the movement, to the authorized workers. Every authorized representative in his own sphere bears heavy duties; the burden and responsibility that rests on each is not light; often it rises to a tragic height. In some cases what is required is the ability to decide a question quickly; in others—cool-headed deliberation, but always, in doing so, complete self-control. Now ask yourselves: if you use alcohol, are you always capable of showing this self-control? Here we are not speaking of sick alcoholics; these are already unfortunate people, this is degeneration. But recall cases from your own activity, recall important meetings where difficult and responsible questions were discussed, and answer: has it not happened that unsound resolutions were adopted only because people were too excited, their heads were clouded, and they were not in a state to control themselves?”

All that has been said indicates that alcohol has profound significance not only for the inner life of the working class, but also for its relations with the other classes of society. At the same time, alcohol contributes its components to the sphere of the worker’s class interests, setting definite goals and tasks in the class struggle, essential not only for the given class but also for society as a whole. It is evident that class interests, both in general and in the relation under consideration, do not represent something unconditionally permanent. Qualitatively and quantitatively they change with changes in the relations of the given class to society. In this connection there arises the question of how the interests of the working class and its tasks in the struggle against alcoholism change when, from a subordinate class, it becomes the ruling class of society, standing directly at the helm of power, as is now the case in the USSR.

In posing the question, one may distinguish two cases: first, the case when the working class has only just come to power; and second, when it has for a long time, i.e., for such an extended period that more than one generation has already succeeded another, remained dominant, invariably holding power.

Without touching for the time being on the second case, as still too theoretical—since it is not yet possible to foresee the forms and relations that may then prevail in society—let us dwell on the first case, i.e., on one in which the working class has only recently, only a few years ago, come to power.

In considering, in this case, the conditions for the working class’s struggle against alcoholism, it is necessary first of all to establish what has been preserved and what has changed in these conditions, as compared with the former ones, during the transition of the working class from a subordinate to a dominant position.

The physiological effect of alcohol on the human organism remains unchanged. The economic conditions of the country, as well as of the working class itself in the mass, remain little changed, since these conditions are too complex and deep in their roots, penetrating the entire life of the country and the people in all their totality, for them to be able to change appreciably in so short a period as a few years, especially after a colossal war and a grandiose revolution. With the former composition of society preserved in the form of tens of millions of the country’s population and, in particular, of the working class and its nearest—

...of whose generation, the physical and spiritual forces of this society, its level of culture, psychology, and so forth remain unchanged, as does a certain heredity that includes a pathological inclination toward alcohol, with all the consequences arising from it.

Among the changed conditions are: the reduction of working time and the introduction of the eight-hour working day; the provision to the working people of broad opportunities for association in the favorable conditions of clubs, rest homes, and so forth; the activity of trade unions; broad access to schools; the work of cultural education; the destruction of the apparatus that made it possible, by legal means, widely and universally to satisfy the population’s deeply rooted need for alcoholic beverages; and the broad and universal development of clandestine distilling, with all its economic, moral, and other consequences. Among these should be included: first, the appearance of a new variety of alcoholics unknown to the prewar period—namely, children and adolescents who came into contact with the production of moonshine or with its distribution; second, the wide popularization among the population, over the past years, of the technique—or, more precisely, the methods—of preparing by domestic and artisanal means alcoholic beverages with an alcohol concentration ranging from a negligible one, corresponding to kvass, to one considerably exceeding the alcohol content of ordinary beer and even wine. This popularization of methods for producing intoxicating beverages, widely disseminated among the population, was universal in Russia over a number of years during the period of compulsory formal sobriety. As a result, one may say, with hardly any risk of exaggeration, that at the present time in almost any family, regardless of its position and material circumstances, people are able to prepare by household means, from sugar, yeast, raisins, or from malt and flour, and so forth, of course not wine or beer in the usual sense of these words, but in any case a sufficiently strong intoxicating, and therefore pernicious, drink, usually known by the name “kvass,” which inspires no apprehension, and therefore is often supplied in any quantity not only to adults but also to children.

Among the new conditions for the spread of alcoholism in the modern USSR should also be counted the grave experiences and nervous shocks that masses of people had to undergo during the war and the revolution, which strongly affected their nervous system and psyche, as a result of which many of them developed a morbidly exaggerated inclination toward alcohol.

If we set aside the comparison of the conditions for the struggle against alcoholism in the prewar period, that is, before 1914, and at the present time, it must be admitted that, alongside certain circumstances that facilitate this task, a very large number of new complications and difficulties have appeared on the path to its fulfillment. In this connection, the consumption of alcoholic beverages, as before and now, remains a serious threat to humanity, and a continuous and persistent struggle against it must stand before people as the next important and urgent task.

However, in this connection there arises first of all a quite natural question: to what extent can such a struggle count on success, and how firmly does alcoholism maintain itself in individual countries and among individual peoples in different historical epochs? Obviously, the history of individual peoples may shed some light on this question. Among the various peoples, in the present case those that have behind them considerable antiquity and have attained over time a sufficient degree of culture are of interest. By comparing the attitude of such peoples in antiquity and in later periods of their existence toward alcohol, as I. Ya. Nakhul does, one may find some illumination of the question posed. Among such peoples may be counted the Chinese. As is known, the Chinese are one of the most ancient peoples, whose attitude toward the consumption of alcoholic beverages is very fully depicted...

such a monument of antiquity as the edict of 1116 B.C., called the “Proclamation on Drunkenness.” This most interesting document says: “Our people are, to the highest degree, corrupted and have lost their virtue, which must be ascribed to intemperance in intoxicating beverages. Meanwhile, the destruction of states, great and small, must invariably be ascribed to the very same cause.” Pointing to the extraordinary spread among the Chinese in that epoch of a passion for intoxicating beverages, the “Proclamation on Drunkenness” notes that both the upper classes and the common people suffered equally from this vice. In view of its perniciousness, the edict threatens the intemperate with death and recommends limiting the use of intoxicating beverages only to the performance of religious rites. The Chinese have yet another ancient monument, called the “Book of Poetry,” which also concerns the spread of drunkenness in China in the same historical period. This historical document, describing the social and religious life of that same time, indicates that drunkenness was then so widespread in China that it threatened even the fall of the empire itself. On the basis of these two documents and other data one may think that vodka—or, more precisely, strong spirituous drinks analogous to it—were discovered by the Chinese and were widely used many centuries before its appearance in Europe. The consumption of these beverages formed part of religious ceremonies. The prevalence among the Chinese of the pernicious passion for intoxicating beverages in later times is attested by the famous lawgivers and sages of China, namely Confucius in the fifth century and Mencius in the third century before the beginning of our era. Such was the situation in ancient China. As for modern China, according to such an authority as Samuelson, it presents, in the respect under consideration, an entirely different picture. “Many assert without hesitation,” says Samuelson, “that drunkenness is a sin unknown in China at the present time.” This is also confirmed by Baer in the following words: “China is a country of moderation, and the vice of drunkenness in the Celestial Empire is persecuted to the highest degree.”

No less sharp a change occurred in the consumption of alcoholic beverages from antiquity among the Aryans, who are the ancestors of our Europeans. The most ancient monuments left by these peoples are their sacred books—the “Rig-Veda,” consisting of solemn hymns depicting the religious and moral condition of these peoples over a period of twelve centuries before the beginning of our era. Moreover, in these hymns and in the appeals in them to the gods, especially to the beloved god Indra—this Indian Dionysus, Bacchus—drunkenness is constantly not only praised, but its apology and defense are presented, treating intoxication as a blessed state of gods and men. In accordance with this, the chief ceremony of the ancient Brahmins, called “soma,” consisted in libations of a strongly intoxicating sacrificial drink of the same name. The sacrifice was connected with the drinking of soma by priests and sacrificers, which usually led to the intoxication of the majority. Thus drunkenness was elevated into a cult. The grievous consequences of such a state of affairs are already noted in the sixth century before the beginning of our era in the laws of Manu, which contain a whole series of prohibitions against drunkenness and threaten severe punishments for it. No less subject to the vice under consideration were the closest relatives of the Aryans, the ancient Persians, who were famous for their attachment to stimulating drinks, as Herodotus also notes. How unlike the modern peoples of India are to their ancient ancestors may be seen from the following words of Samuelson: “All writers consider that the peoples of India are now a comparatively temperate race, and this opinion prevails among all Europeans who have long lived in India. Drunkenness is encountered here only in certain districts, and then only in the lower classes”; the population as a whole, according to Samuelson, is “remarkably sober.” The chief cause of so striking a transition from unrestrained

the transition from drunkenness to a sharply expressed abstinence from alcohol among the Chinese and Indians is attributed by most researchers, to a considerable extent, to the influence of the religions of Islam and Buddhism, which prohibit the consumption of alcohol.

Turning to the more cultured peoples of antiquity, such as the Greeks and Romans, one must here also note the same intemperance with regard to wine, though one that was even poetically glorified. Dionysus, Bacchus—these are the great gods of wine, for whom special festivals were arranged, called Saturnalia, which degenerated in ancient Greece and Rome into days of continuous and disgraceful drunkenness. In connection with such an attitude toward alcohol, a decline of morals developed. It is known to what incredible limits debauchery reached in Rome in the imperial period, on the eve of the invasion of the barbarians into Italy. The Roman feasts of that time are very indicative in this respect, among which the “Lucullan” feasts became a synonym for drunkenness and gluttony. These feasts, in their excesses, apparently far surpassed everything of which humanity had ever been guilty in the sense of intemperance. Such was the state of Roman society in the last days of its existence, with its proud, sated, and depraved patricians, with its hungry and debauched plebeians, all alike suffering from an excessive addiction to alcohol, which contributed not a little to the fall of the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, the descendants of the ancient Greeks, as well as all the direct and indirect descendants of the ancient Romans, i.e., the peoples of the Latin race, such as Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese—all of them, according to the definition of the German classical investigator of alcoholism, Baer, present a clear example of peoples of exceptional moderation in the consumption of alcoholic beverages, among whom drunkenness in the mass is a very rare phenomenon. The same must be said of the Germans of the modern era. Despite the very large quantity of various intoxicating beverages they absorb, Germany is by all accounted among the most moderate countries of Europe, where drunkards are a rarity. And if, several centuries ago and during the period of Rome’s conquest, drunkenness was a generally recognized national vice of the Germans, then already from the eighth century attempts by legislation appear to suppress drunkenness in Germany. These efforts at first remained fruitless for a long time, while the extreme naïveté of the measures undertaken at the same time very vividly testified to the degree to which drunkenness was widespread at that time. Thus, for example, under Charlemagne a law appears forbidding litigants and witnesses to appear in court drunk, while at the same time ordering judges to sit only when completely sober. A considerable weakening of the abuse of alcoholic beverages begins to be noticed from the middle of the seventeenth century, in connection with the end of the severe war, and in the eighteenth century, with the development of the country’s prosperity and the government’s concern for the broad implantation of education among the popular masses, the sobering of the German nation gradually begins, and a gradual and significant suppression of drunkenness is observed in Germany.

From what has been presented it is evident that, over time, many peoples gradually recovered from the fatal passion for alcohol. This, however, takes place over the course of many centuries. The change that occurred in all the cases considered with respect to the consumption of alcoholic beverages is so great and demonstrative that its positive results are entirely obvious. This fact is of great significance, definitively establishing the possibility of combating the consumption of alcohol. However, from the practical side, what is important in this question is not only the very possibility of popular sobering, but also the conditions, the degree of achievement, and the duration of the period necessary for it. In this respect, all the historical examples cited are characterized: first, by an extraordinarily long duration of time, measured in many centuries, during which the indicated change took place; second, by the fact that the measure of this change was not quantitative,

and qualitative accounting, connected with the comparison of the totality of manifestations of the entire life of a people before and after the change that has taken place; and, third, that the degree of the spread of drunkenness among the people serves as the external characteristic for comparison.

Let us dwell on these conditions not from the point of view of the theoretical question in general of the possibility of combating alcoholism in any, even very remote, historical epoch, but let us consider these conditions from the angle of their relation to the vital interests and tasks of the current struggle against alcoholism, which seeks to clarify the possibility of practical measures ensuring the attainment of positive results not after hundreds of years, but in the near future, at least within the lifetime of the one or two generations closest to the present. From the indicated point of view, the conditions for combating alcoholism, as regards its duration under the conditions of life of modern people, should now change, in comparison with the past, for the better. The reason for this lies in the cultural, technical, and other achievements of humanity, which especially during the last century have provided so many rich and varied possibilities for broad and easy communication among people. Of great importance also is the clarification of the nature of the action and harm of alcohol, even when it is consumed moderately. Among the causes acting in the opposite direction must be included the altered, gradually deepening and developing over time in each of the succeeding generations, hereditary abnormality—the inclination toward alcohol with all the negative consequences connected with it.

In view of the enormous duration of the historical periods during which, in the past, the sobering-up of peoples took place, the external sign of this sobering-up, as has already been indicated, was usually the totality of all manifestations of the life of a people, invariably becoming quickly animated and reviving with the weakening of the heavy yoke of alcoholism. This kind of accounting for the phenomenon under consideration, moreover for a brief period of time, under the conditions of the present and the centuries immediately following it, proves to be completely inapplicable. The reason for this is that the life of every modern cultured people is not something self-sufficient and isolated, but constitutes an integral part of the life of all humanity as a whole, while at the same time being a very complex phenomenon in which natural-historical, economic, social, political, and other conditions characteristic of a given people in the epoch under consideration are intertwined into the closest knot. In this connection, in order to ascertain the degree of development or weakening of alcoholism among individual peoples during one or another historical period, it is necessary to apply some quantitative characteristic expressing with sufficient accuracy the magnitude of the people’s inclination toward the consumption of alcohol at one time or another.

As such a characteristic, in the majority of cases the spread of drunkenness is adopted. By this is usually understood the abuse of alcohol, as distinct from its moderate consumption. It is obvious that this characteristic suffers from very great conventionality and, consequently, from the extreme inaccuracy of the conclusions possible on its basis. The first reason—namely, the conventionality of the very concept “drunk”—is sufficiently clear, since its application in practice is connected with a broad and very diverse interpretation. The second reason is that direct actual accounting of drunk persons is completely impracticable, since all those who become intoxicated at home or even outside the home environment but do not cause scandals, breaches of public order, etc., are not subject to, and cannot even come under, the existing police accounting. Finally, the very number of those arrested for drunkenness is determined by many very diverse external circumstances that are not at all taken into account, such as: the level of culture of the person who has become drunk and of the society where this occurred, the conditions that caused the intoxication, its degree, and the juridical and factual severity of prosecution.

drunkenness, etc. In addition, it must be noted that in some countries a great deal is drunk in general, but without manifestations of signs of drunkenness in the usual understanding of the term; other countries, with a considerably smaller consumption, exhibit far more so-called “drunkenness.” Germany belonged to the former, Russia to the latter. England drinks far more than Ireland, whereas drunkenness, according to the generally accepted opinion, is observed more strongly in Ireland.

The method of determining the magnitude of a people’s inclination toward alcohol by the number of registered intoxicated persons suffers from still less precision. With such a method of accounting, its basis again remains the phenomenon of “drunkenness,” but only in its extreme form, set in opposition, as it were, to the “normal” consumption of intoxicating drinks. Yet, as has already been clarified above, there can essentially be no such “normal” consumption, in view of the physiological action of alcohol on the human being. In connection with this, in the area under consideration, the erroneousness of all methods of accounting based on the sign of “drunkenness” lies not only in the technical impossibility of counting all drunken persons with sufficient accuracy, but also in the false understanding of the phenomenon itself—“drunkenness”—as the sole, and moreover quite definite, form of abuse of alcoholic beverages. After all that has been set forth above, it is already clear that “drunkenness” appears not as an independent phenomenon of alcohol abuse, but merely as its consequence, expressed in a deep chronic, national, and at the same time hereditary ailment, manifested in a morbid inclination toward alcohol exaggerated to an extreme degree among the people. Obviously, the degree of this inclination is expressed by the total quantity of all beverages consumed by the people in their entirety, regardless of who consumes them, how, and what is consumed. Thus, according to the data available at present, the average per capita total consumption of alcohol in all its forms used by a given people may for the time being be taken as the best scale for measuring the degree and depth of the alcoholism of one or another people in the modern age and in the time nearest to it.

This method, of course, has its shortcomings and weak points. Among them should be counted first of all the fact that this method takes no account whatsoever of changes in the intoxicating effect of beverages, not only in connection with changes in the concentration of spirit in them, but also depending on the presence of other substances entering into their composition. Meanwhile, the beverages characteristic of different peoples are very unlike one another in their composition, and therefore the intoxicating effect of each of them proves to differ individually from the others, even with one and the same quantity of alcohol drunk in the form of these beverages. Nor does the method under consideration take into account such an essential aspect as the conditions of using beverages, usually established and firmly maintained among each people; thus, for example, in Germany people drink regularly, evenly, and in comparatively small doses; in Russia they usually drink with interruptions, often long ones, but in the overwhelming majority of cases they drink a great deal, and often to excess; in England, Sweden, and the United States of America they drink vodka, there called “whiskey,” after meals, whereas in Russia usually on an empty stomach. Obviously, under such conditions one and the same quantity of alcohol drunk by a people causes far more harm in Russia than in the other countries named.

Without dwelling further on the other weak points of the indicated method of accounting for the consumption of alcoholic beverages, it should be said that, of all the others available, it nevertheless remains for the time being the most perfect. In this connection, to clarify the question of how stable the inclination toward alcohol is among certain most cultured modern peoples, and moreover over a relatively short period of several decades and under conditions close to our own time, the data of Prof. Struve, already cited in Table No. 3, may serve. These data speak of changes in the average per capita consumption

of alcoholic beverages in the principal civilized countries of Europe and America during the period from 1885 to 1905. For clarity, the same data are presented graphically in Chart No. V, where the average per capita consumption of wine, vodka, and beer is compared for two five-year periods: from 1885 to 1889 and from 1900 to 1905. These extremely interesting data definitely indicate that in the modern era the inclination of civilized peoples toward alcohol is, within certain limits, changing: developing among some, remaining quantitatively the same among others, and, finally, diminishing among still others. Comparing this with the conclusions that follow from the diverse historical examples, in their place, of significant segments of various peoples over many centuries of their existence from antiquity onward, one must arrive at the definite conclusion that the consumption of alcoholic beverages changes continuously over time, not only in the distant past but also in the present.

Representing, as a whole, the product of the various conditions of humanity’s existence that change over time, the consumption of alcoholic beverages proves to be an extremely complex phenomenon, very sensitively responding not only to major but also to comparatively minor phenomena in the separate manifestations of the life of one people or another. This suggests that the consumption of alcoholic beverages, like any complex social phenomenon, may be subject to the influence of some factors to a greater extent than others. And this already provides grounds for the possibility of combating this evil. However, so far, among the overwhelming majority of peoples, the factors that promote the growth of alcoholism and suppress the influence of factors acting in the opposite direction—that is, favoring a reduction in alcohol consumption—predominate. Nevertheless, over time, especially beginning with the eighteenth century, the latter have also grown both qualitatively and quantitatively. One of the principal reasons for this, alongside cultural achievements, lies in the continuous development of the grave consequences of alcoholism, transmitted hereditarily from generation to generation and felt ever more acutely by humanity. In connection with this, there steadily, though invariably, increases in society and among the popular masses the striving for a real struggle against the consumption of alcoholic beverages as the primary cause of all the misfortunes and evils caused by alcohol. Thus, from the eighteenth century onward, a new major internal social force grows—namely, protest and the striving to struggle against drunkenness. In connection with this, numerous temperance societies arise and grow, and at the same time there appear strong, active opponents of alcohol consumption. Reaching the point of extreme enthusiasm, such preachers of temperance, by their fanaticism, not infrequently carry away tens of thousands of people, wresting them from the power of the fatal passion for alcohol that has seized them. In the case when the most active part of society clearly understands all the harm of alcoholism, and when it is sufficiently educated, energetic, and so devoted to the interests of the homeland and the people as to undertake, in a purposeful manner, the struggle against alcoholism, such a social force can be very great in its significance for preparing the broad masses of the people for sobering up and for creating the conditions for the implementation of more vigorous measures of struggle by means already available to the authorities and the state. What society can do in this case, in the person of those of its representatives who are most prominent in this direction, is vividly attested by the names of such persistent preachers and ardent practical fighters for temperance as Bishop Manning in England, Father Mathew in Ireland, Wieselgren in Sweden, and others. Such individuals, together with the activity of temperance societies, not only, as has already been noted, prepared the proper ground for practical measures of a local character, but often also brought about—as, for example, in America, Sweden, and Norway—the emergence of entirely new forms of legislation, broadly encompassing the possibility of combating alcoholism on a state scale. An example of this may be the so remarkable

and entirely viable up to the present day, the so-called “Gothenburg system” of combating alcoholism, which arose in Sweden and served as a model for the expedient conduct of the struggle against alcohol consumption in other countries as well. The essence of this system comes down to removing the liquor trade from the hands of private interested persons and to depriving this business of the side associated with income, with profit. In 1866, in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, at the initiative of the well-known philanthropist Wieselgren, the “Gothenburg Joint-Stock Liquor Company” was established. The basic principle of this company was the absence of gain and the direction of all the enterprise’s activity exclusively to the benefit of the population and to the struggle against alcoholism, for which the profit received was spent. Having been supported in its beginnings by the municipal administration and having received a liquor monopoly in Gothenburg, the Company reduced, over 20 years, the number of places selling alcoholic beverages to 27% of their original number. The remaining drinking establishments were arranged so as to promote not the consumption of alcohol, but the diversion of the population from it. The availability of cheap, good restaurants with a large selection of accessible and pleasant nonalcoholic drinks, excellently furnished reading rooms, the prohibition of serving spirits to intoxicated persons, and so forth—these are the simple measures that the old system has used so successfully. The aggregate of all these measures led to the fact that over 20 years the per capita consumption of alcohol in Sweden decreased by more than half, while the price of vodka doubled during this time.

In its proper place above, the basic principles of the consumption and production of alcoholic beverages have already been explained. Naturally, these general principles change somewhat with respect to individual countries, acquiring in one direction or another their own individual features.

In this respect Russia presents a very colorful and rather varied picture of the history of the development of the liquor business, with characteristic and striking pages, treating this question—so important for the life of the country—very differently at different historical moments. Among the characteristic features of the life of the Russian people, even in the distant past, intoxicating drinks already had very great significance. Every communal affair, forming the basis of the life of the people, invariably began with a “feast,” with its unfailing obligatory companions, “barley and honey drinks.” The Slavs brought them with them from their Aryan homeland, and from that time, over the course of centuries, they invariably produced “intoxicating braga,” “velvety beer, aged meads, and honey kvasses.” All sorts of intoxicating drinks “everyone brewed for himself; in other cases they brewed them by families,” by the community, and then there was already “communal braga,” “communal beer.” According to the words placed by the ancient Russian chronicler in the mouth of Prince Vladimir, the significance of intoxicating drinks was defined thus: “For Rus’ there is joy in drinking; it cannot be without it.”

Thus, until the middle of the sixteenth century, the whole Russian Land lived, freely brewing the drinks it needed and paying for this a duty on malt, hops, and honey, which was called the “braga duty.” Having paid the duty, everyone calmly brewed alcoholic beverages for himself and used them either at home among the family, or at a brotherhood feast, or in a tavern¹. However, there was no drunkenness in pre-Muscovite Rus’; it did not exist as a chronic, slowly but invariably growing national malady, deeply corroding the national organism. This period lasted until the sixteenth century, when the situation of the liquor business in Rus’ changed sharply. In this century vodka appeared in Rus’, and then later, under Tsar Ivan the Terrible, there was introduced, first in Moscow for the oprichniks, and then throughout the whole tsardom—

¹ The word “to keep a tavern” occurs in the sense of petty retail trade already in the Russkaya Pravda at the end of the thirteenth century.

borrowed from Kazan from the Tatars: “kabak,” i.e., a place for the sale of vodka and other intoxicating beverages. With the appearance of kabaks there also appeared the tax-farms. The Moscow, i.e. “tsar’s kabak,” differed from the Tatar one, where one could eat and drink, as in any inn, in that here “it was ordered only to drink,” and moreover only one class of people was to drink, i.e. peasants and townsmen, since at that time they were deprived of the right freely to make intoxicating beverages at home. Besides the tsar, boyars could also own kabaks.

From the time of Ivan the Terrible it became customary, as a reward for services, to “grant a kabak.” The storing for sale and the trade in tavern wine were forbidden to the people and were punished with cruel fines and whippings. At the same time the population was obliged to set up kabaks at its own expense. Wine was prepared at distilleries attached to the kabaks, or was supplied by tax-farmers.

Thus the “tsar’s kabak” concentrated in itself the entire trade in spirituous beverages for the people; it became the place where state drinking revenues were collected. Supervision over the regularity of trade and over the receipt of the treasury’s revenue was entrusted first to the tsar’s governors, and then to the prikazy. For the direct management of trade in the kabaks, the population had to elect a “headman” and a “tselovalnik.” The chief duty of this kabak administration was to collect the “kabak revenue,” fixed on the basis of previous years, with an “obligatory profit over previous years.” To fulfill this task the tselovalniks were allowed “to act fearlessly, and for profit to expect the sovereign’s favors.”¹ And the tselovalniks acted accordingly, as is evident, for example, from a report to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich by one of them—Andrei Obraztsov—who wrote the following: “I, sovereign, spared no one; I managed thy sovereign revenues, and mercilessly beat men to death.” Every shortfall was entered as arrears, and the elected men had to go to prison; and when nothing more could be taken from the elected men, justice turned upon the electors. In kabak shortfalls the treasury was inexorable. On entering the management of a kabak, the elected men found themselves bound by an entire system of obligations and oaths, including an oath with kissing of the cross, whence came the very name “tselovalnik.” Moreover they were charged with collecting from the people the treasury’s ever-increasing kabak revenue. Thanks to all this, the headmen and tselovalniks proved to be enslaved kabak servants. Under such conditions, only those men were elected who had nothing to lose and who ruthlessly and systematically ruined and corrupted the people. The second business of the kabak elected officials was the persecution of illicit tavern-keeping and the collection of tavern duties. “Therefore the kabak headmen and tselovalniks, and later, from the seventeenth century, the tavern collectors, received the right of supervision over the social and domestic life of the people, the right to enter into its family life with search and violence, ‘bringing shame and insult to human dignity.’”²

The profoundly sorrowful phenomenon of the forcible introduction of the kabak into Russia proved monstrous in its consequences, which affected the people throughout all its subsequent history. The whole kabak way of life, all the institutions connected with it, with the bringing-in of drinks, with entry in a book—when and how much to drink, etc.—all this was wholly unexpected and wholly alien to the Russian people, who for centuries had been accustomed to the free preparation and use of intoxicating beverages, which in Rus’ in certain cases were considered as ordinary and necessary as bread. The people did not wish, and could not, reconcile themselves to an order alien to them, and persistently did everything in order to live their old, customary tavern life, which was now regarded as a grave crime knowing no leniency. Yet the Russian people stubbornly did not submit to the new order and continued as before to distill wine at home, to brew

² Ibid., p. 71.
¹ Pryzhov, History of Kabaks in Russia, p. 70.

mead and braga, considering this to be their lawful right, confirmed by the ages. As a result, a new form of crime appeared—secret distilling and the prohibited trade in intoxicating beverages, of which a good half of Russia proved guilty, suffering for it over the course of almost the next three centuries severe punishments, extending even to the cutting off of hands and exile to Siberia. Thus there arose in Russia “secret distilling,” and along with it “secret tavern-keeping.” The primary cause of both was the kabak, which played an exceptionally large role in the implantation and development of alcoholism in Russia.

From 1712 onward, tax-farms gradually began to be introduced, i.e. the leasing at auction of kabaks, with the transfer to particular persons of all the duties and rights connected with the government kabak. Tax-farms were granted to persons of standing, landowners, merchants, and foreigners. Peasants were deprived of this right. From 1787 the tax-farm spread to Siberia, and from 1797 a single tax-farm system was definitively established throughout all Russia; moreover, nobles were granted the right to distill at home up to 90 vedros per year for domestic use.

The tax-farms constrained in every possible way and sought to drive out, as competitors to their product, brewing and mead-making, while the population was insistently urged to drink instead the so-called “pennik”—again vodka, but already in the form of cordials, infusions on berries, herbs, and the like. The tax-farms, being a source of major revenue for the treasury, enjoyed special protection from the government. This opened unlimited scope for the domination of the tax-farmers and for the spread of their kabaks across the Russian land. By 1852 there were 77,836 of them; in 1859—87,388; and by 1866 about 500,000. The treasury’s revenues from the tax-farms grew and over 140 years increased 335-fold. At the auctions of 1835–39 the tax-farm sum reached more than 91 million rubles. In the period 1859–1863 it had already risen to 127 million. The tax-farmers themselves received still greater income, extracting personally for their own benefit, during that same time, more than 600 million rubles, despite the fact that the entire police force and all officials connected with the drinking trade, including governors, were on salaries or received periodic payments from the tax-farmers. In exchange for all this, the latter were granted the unrestricted right to ruin the people, squeezing from them with vodka their last means and strength.

In this fatal time of the tax-farms for the Russian people, during the period of terrible popular drunkenness, there took shape the image—almost unknown among the people until the middle of the eighteenth century—of Yarilo, the god of vodka, this Great Russian Bacchus. In this same period, after the temporary transformation² and the subsequent new appearance of the tax-farms, on the soil of the unrestrained cultivation of popular drunkenness, there appeared the terrible and hitherto unheard-of illness of zapoi—drinking bouts. Receiving the right to a monopoly of the kabaks, the tax-farmers simultaneously received the right to persecute secret tavern-keeping and secret distilling. For these purposes, the so-called “tavern offices,” which spread everywhere, were established, intended for the elimination of secret tavern-keeping. At the service of these offices, by order of the authorities, the police and even military forces were always ready. Nevertheless, despite the cruel persecutions, tavern-keeping not only did not cease but increased. In addition to the historically formed inclination toward tavern-keeping and the home production of spirituous beverages, at this time still new causes appeared for the attraction to secret distilling and prohibited trade: first, tax-farm vodka was too expensive for the people; second, hatred of the tax-farms repelled people from the kabaks; third—

the habitual inclination toward vodka, fostered among the population by the tax-farmers, created an acute need for spirits, which, in view of all that has been noted, had to be obtained by forbidden means.

As the country’s strength, drained away by vodka, was exhausted, the insolence and heedlessness of the tax-farmers grew; and together with it there increased popular hatred, as well as the protest of society and of individual representatives of authority against the tax-farming system. The constant cheating of the purchaser, the dilution of vodka, the addition to it of intoxicating, often poisonous spices in order to create the impression of strength in diluted vodka—all this, with the passage of time, became a common phenomenon among the tax-farmers. To all the negative aspects of the tax-farms, by the beginning of the nineteenth century there was added one more circumstance that considerably diminished the government’s sympathy for them. This was the deliberate accumulation of arrears. Already by 1818 the debts had reached 18 million rubles. Beginning in the fifties of the last century, among the people, in society, and within the government itself, the idea of the necessity of combating drunkenness appeared and spread. Heated discussions began about the necessity of sobriety; local communal verdicts condemning drunkenness appeared; temperance societies arose; and among the common people the “pledge not to drink” spread. All this, in connection with the general current of the country’s life, led in the sixties of the last century, finally, to the abolition of the hated tax-farms and to the introduction, from January 1, 1863, of a new potable-liquor system, the so-called “excise system,” approved as early as June 4, 1861, and gradually extended to all of Russia.

The essence of the excise system was as follows: spirits and vodka produced at distilleries are subject to excise, i.e., to a special tax in a definite amount per unit.¹) The excise is paid on the spirits distilled at the plant, as it is released for sale. On spirits exported abroad, the excise is remitted, and, as an encouragement, the sender receives, excise-free, a further definite quantity of it in the form of an export bounty. Spirits used for burning and for technical purposes are exempt from excise. Independently of the excise, distilleries pay a patent fee.

The right of distillation was left with the estates to which it had belonged, i.e., with landowners, nobles, and officials. In Siberia the right of distillation was granted to all ranks and estates.

Trade in strong drinks is an object of free enterprise, provided that a definite patent fee is paid into the treasury. To supervise the proper receipt of excise and patent fees from factories and places of sale, administrations of excise duties were established, with the corresponding administrative and technical personnel; taken as a whole, these constituted a very solid and technically strong organization.

With liberation from the oppression of the tax-farms, breweries also began to develop rapidly.

Thus, the excise system introduced in 1863, in its technical structure, differed sharply—and in a positive direction—from the preceding system of treasury administration connected with tax-farming. Before 1863, the source of income was the treasury’s regalian right to trade in alcoholic beverages. The liquor trade was a monopoly of the treasury, and income from it was obtained either directly or by leasing it out.

Under the excise system, the source of income is the taxation of the object of consumption itself, i.e., the alcoholic beverages released by the factories; their production and trade constitute an object of free enterprise and are subjected to free competition, with only the condition of paying a patent fee into the treasury. The significance of the excise system is extraordinarily great in that it eliminated abuses, boundless predation, and pi—

¹) The unit of assessment is taken to be one degree of absolute alcohol, i.e., one sotka of a treasury vedro of anhydrous alcohol.

encouragement of drunkenness under the preceding tax-farming arrangements. But its weak side was that it did not itself actively take any measures to reduce popular drunkenness, leaving this phenomenon to itself and being interested only in the possibility of collecting the drinking tax from the population fully and at lower cost.

The granting of private initiative and free competition in the trade in alcoholic beverages very soon led to great unevenness in the distribution of private wine trade across the territory of the country and, in places, created monopolies of individual entrepreneurs, which in turn led to abuses with the vodka being sold. As a result of this, clandestine distilling reappeared, beginning to develop rapidly in places not covered by legal trade or where this legal trade was associated with abuses. All this aroused dissatisfaction with the excise system and the idea of the need to replace it.

For the purpose of reconciling fiscal interests with moral interests, and in an effort to limit popular drunkenness, a state wine monopoly began to be introduced in 1895. Its basic provisions were as follows: 1) the removal of the drinking trade in vodka from the hands of private persons; 2) the abolition of tavern trade in vodka, so that its consumption would be made domestic and thereby placed under family supervision, which, it was assumed, was to reduce drunkenness; 3) the subjection of all private establishments trading in alcoholic beverages to regulation, in order to weaken their harmful influence on the population; 4) in order to render vodka harmless, the use in its manufacture only of alcohol of high purification; 5) for the purpose of exerting a moral influence on the people, the establishment, at the expense of drinking revenues, of temperance guardianships with tea rooms, reading rooms, and libraries.

The state wine monopoly, combined with a strong, well-constructed technical apparatus of excise administrations, concentrated in the hands of the state all trade and distribution, for the enormous majority of the population of Russia, of the single alcoholic beverage—namely vodka. Thanks to this, the population’s need for alcohol became easily measurable, and its satisfaction became entirely accessible to the authorities for regulation. The uniform distribution of vodka sales, bringing it closer to consumption, its high quality and the lowering of its cost owing to technical improvements in its production, reduced the population’s expenditure on alcohol and significantly curtailed clandestine distilling. The establishment of less harmful types of drinking establishments, the standardization and some restriction of the conditions in them, the regulation and distribution of points of sale across the territory, and so forth—all this contributed to a considerable degree to reducing vodka consumption in Russia.

To what extent and in what sequence the results of the striving toward popular sobriety were achieved may be seen from the illustrative diagram of the Statistical Department of the Main Administration of Indirect Taxes² for the 40-year period immediately following the abolition of the tax-farming system. This diagram presents, by year, the average per capita consumption in Russia of vodka, in connection with excise rates and the grain harvest per head of both sexes for the period 1863–1903 (see diagram).

These results are very significant. Thus, the state wine monopoly proved to be a rational measure in the development of the question of reducing alcoholism in Russia. Possessing undoubtedly major merits, the state wine monopoly also had its weak and erroneous sides from the standpoint of the interests of the state and the people, which greatly devalued it and therefore required substantial corrections and additions for the development of this system.

The weak side was the guardianship of popular sobriety not in conception, but in implementation. Too little attention and too few resources were devoted to this side, as a result of which the temperance guardianships languished and did not develop, while drinking revenues rose noticeably, reaching, for example, by 1912 more than 26% of the entire sum of the state’s ordinary revenues. And although the growth of drinking revenue was due chiefly to the increase in the excise taxation of alcohol (see the diagram) and to the natural increase of the population, nevertheless such a situation was profoundly abnormal. It was a fundamental, principled error of the system, which caused natural dissatisfaction with it. At the same time it was quite justifiably pointed out that drinking revenues, however large, are in fact not revenues of the state, but only indicators of immeasurably greater losses of the country’s and the people’s real, physical, and moral values, lost not only by the present generation but also by subsequent generations poisoned and weakened by an inherited, inculcated pernicious inclination toward alcohol. In connection with this there arose the idea of the necessity of a different drinking system, under which the well-being of the state budget would be entirely independent of the country’s drinking revenues, while the admission of such state revenues would be regarded as encouraging popular drunkenness.

From the beginning of the present century, protest against the consumption of alcoholic beverages and against the government’s seeming encouragement of drunkenness began to grow rapidly in Russia. In connection with the general course of life in the country after 1905, the government was already compelled to take public opinion into account, and therefore on January 30, 1914, by an Imperial rescript to the Minister of Finance, “the strengthening of popular sobriety in Russia was recognized as one of the most important and urgent tasks.” And the war that then began led, on August 22, 1914, to the Imperial command “on the universal cessation in the Empire of the sale, for drinking consumption, of alcohol, grain wine, and vodka products”²). The positive results of this categorical measure in the first months after its introduction brought forward the question of the definitive prohibition of the consumption of all alcoholic beverages without exception. And in July 1916 a corresponding bill was passed through the State Duma and adopted. Thus, in the period 1914–1916, Russia entered upon the path of unconditional formal sobriety. To what extent the latter was actually achieved appears highly important and interesting to establish, for the purpose either of consolidating and developing in life those practical methods which had been outlined by the said bill and applied in the period that had elapsed, or else of rejecting them as erroneous and not achieving their aim. It is obvious that fully clarifying this would require years of peaceful life in the country, and enormous legislative work embodying in definite legal norms the totality of all the numerous and varied interrelations connected with this new order. The events that unfolded in connection with the war and the revolution, however, excluded the possibility of normal development and implementation of this measure. Yet however changeable the conditions of the country’s life may have been in the years that followed, the general situation of the question under consideration remained unchanged: in the majority of cases the population was in fact deprived of officially permitted alcoholic beverages. Only briefly and in places did alcohol reach the consumer by legal routes.

What, then, did this new situation for Russia lead to?

This is a question on which it is already time to dwell, since almost a decade of persistent experience in the stubborn struggle against the consumption and abuse of alcoholic beverages, carried out on an all-Russian scale, now provides rich new, exceptionally interesting material and a very large number of indications—

²) The consumption of grape wines and beer, with certain restrictions, was permitted in the cities by resolutions of the Council of Ministers of 9/VII and 11/IX 1914.

...than that with which the true life of the country’s many-million population responded to the measures undertaken. For clarity regarding the achievements obtained and the conclusions possible, there is compared below, on the one hand, the official data on the permitted consumption of vodka in the former Russian Empire before 1914, and, on the other hand, such official data, in the form of a summary of the Gostorg questionnaire, on the consumption in 1923 by the population of “samogon,” i.e., the products of clandestine distillation. This questionnaire covered 48 gubernias, oblasts, and republics of the RSFSR with 64.3 million rural population.

According to the data of Statistics of Productions Subject to Excise Duty for 1913², it follows that in 1913 the entire population of the Russian Empire consumed 105,969,000 vedros of treasury wine, i.e., vodka, with a strength of 40% per vedro. This consumption amounted on average to 0.62 vedro per capita per year. The recalculation made according to the data of V. M. Chetyrkin³, for determining the absolute and relative quantities that would characterize consumption in 1913 by the population located on the present territory of the Union of Republics, gives the following results:

TABLE No. 4.

Regional distribution of the consumption of grain wine for 1913

(within the present borders of the USSR, excluding the Far Eastern Region and Transcaucasia).

NAME OF REGIONS	Total consumed, in vedros	Population, in millions of persons	Per-capita consumption, in vedros
Central agricultural region	13.663.462	18.96	0.72
Central industrial region	14.105.667	13.20	1.06
Lakeside region	7.212.321	6.08	1.19
Northern	1.357.645	2.16	0.63
Middle Volga	7.052.620	11.56	0.61
Lower Volga	872.962	1.26	0.69
Western	8.688.506	5.71	0.65
South-Eastern	7.173.274	9.94	0.72
Crimea	1.417.212	1.99	0.71
Ural region	5.812.841	10.66	0.53
Siberia	4.245.065	5.86	0.72
Kirghiz Republic	3.749.686	5.91	0.63
Turkestan	680.287	6.88	0.10
Ukrainian SSR	20.088.342	26.45	0.76
Total	90.919.881	126.64	0.61

Zakavkaz’e and the Far East were not included in this table, since at the time of the Gosspirt questionnaire there existed there legal sale of vodka.

Thus, the population located on the present territory of the Union in 1913 consumed 90,919,881 vedros of state grain wine (at 40°), i.e., 0.71 vedro per capita.

Insofar as the territory of the former Russian Empire presented a rather motley picture of the geographical distribution of per-capita norms, nevertheless, as is evident from the table cited, with the exception of the Turkic Republic, for the territory under consideration this distribution is fairly uniform, ranging from 0.53 to 1.19 and giving on average 0.71 vedro per capita. Proceeding from average data on the sale of vodka in urban and rural state wine shops, one may conclude that the average per-capita consumption of the urban population was three times greater than the consumption of the rural population. Such was the situation in Russia in the peaceful prewar period. The present situation with the consumption of alcoholic beverages, according to the data of the above-mentioned Gosspirt questionnaire for individual regions of the RSFSR and Belorussia in 1923, is presented by Table No. 5 below. This questionnaire, processed by Gosplan, indicates per-capita consumption of 0.23 vedro of samogon per one person of the rural population per year, according to

TABLE No. 5.

Consumption of samogon by regions of the RSFSR and Belorussia in 1923.

(according to the Gosspirt questionnaire, July–August 1923).

NAMES OF REGIONS	Total samogon consumed, in vedros, in the indicated gubernias	Population, in millions of persons, in the indicated gubernias	Per-capita consumption of samogon, in vedros
Central agricultural region	350,000	5.1	0.07
Central industrial region	326,180	7.5	0.04
Lake-region region	195,000	2.4	0.08
Northern region	166,000	1.8	0.09
Middle Volga region	977,000	8.1	0.12
Lower Volga region	800,000	1.2	0.67
Western region	825,000	3.4	0.24
South-Eastern region	3,225,000	3.2	1.01
Crimea	190,000	0.3	0.63
Ural region	1,450,000	3.0	0.48
Siberia	727,880	5.2	0.14
Total	9,232,160	41.2	0.22
Belorussia	400,000	1.3	0.30
Grand total	9,632,160	42.5	0.23

34 provinces that gave responses, with 42.5 million rural population. Taking the rural population in the territory under consideration (the USSR without Transcaucasia and the Far East Region) as 106 million persons, we find that the entire rural population consumed 24.3 million vedros of moonshine of an average strength of 25°, i.e. almost 14.2 million vedros at a strength of 40°².

Comparison of these data with those corresponding to prewar consumption of vodka leads to the result that, with illicit distilling, the rural population consumes 28.4% of prewar vodka consumption, i.e. less than one-third. Bearing in mind, however, that this quantity of alcohol is obtained illegally under conditions of a stubborn and harsh struggle against illicit distilling, and also taking into account the inevitable and quite understandable underreporting in the questionnaire data, one must accept that the established magnitude of per capita consumption of prohibited moonshine is extraordinarily high, testifying to a tremendous need of the broad masses of the population for alcoholic beverages—a need not outlived by the measures of the past decade.

In order to estimate quantitatively the direct material damage that is immediately caused by illicit distilling, it should be noted that one vedro of moonshine of average strength 25° requires, on average, about 2 poods (1.95 poods) of flour, with fluctuations from 1.1 to 3.1 poods. This corresponds to 0.45 poods of flour per capita of the population of the USSR, corresponding to a total expenditure for 1923 of 447.7 million poods of flour, or 49.8 million poods of grain. The average expenditure of firewood, converted into standard hard coal, corresponds on average to about one pood per one pood of flour processed, i.e. a coal expenditure of 47.6 million poods is obtained. Since, in factory production of alcohol, at most 20 f. of coal are required per one vedro of it, this means that illicit distilling, compared with factory, permitted production, gives an excess expenditure of fuel of 16.5 million poods of coal, which, at a coal price of, for example, 16 kopecks per pood, will amount to a total excess expenditure of 3.4 million rubles. The average market value of a vedro of moonshine, according to the data of Gosspirt for 1923, was determined at 13 rubles 90 kopecks, with a range from 7 rubles 47 kopecks to 28 rubles 78 kopecks per vedro.

To characterize the general state of illicit distilling in 1923, below are given, according to data of the NKVD³, figures on the quantity confiscated in the RSFSR during January–July: a) moonshine stills—75,296 units, i.e. 5.18 units for every 1,000 households; b) on the number of cases initiated, of which there were in all 295,003, i.e. 20.26 for every 1,000 rural households.

The net income of moonshiners, on the basis of the sources mentioned, in connection with unavoidable expenses, as well as with the cost of moonshine and its output for 1923, corresponds, in all, to about 55.5 million chervonets rubles.

The total direct losses to the national economy and the state from the production of moonshine in 1923, according to the calculation¹ based on the above-mentioned official data, are presented below in Table No. 6.

The cited sum of 235 million rubles in no way touches upon the indirect, colossal destruction and losses of the country’s material and moral values and of the physical strength of the people, caused by illicit distilling and the consumption of moonshine, as well as by the persecution of both. Speaking of the widespread consumption of moonshine, one cannot fail to note the extreme poor quality of the product and its harm to health, not only because of the imperfection of production, but also owing to artificial additives of an extremely varied kind, beginning with rye flour, tobacco, various herbal and berry spices, etc., and ending with copperas, alkalis, and even sulfuric acid, added—

TABLE No. 6.

Losses of the national economy and the state from the production of moonshine.

NAME OF LOSSES	Losses of the national economy, in million rubles	State losses, in million rubles	Losses for equipment and production, in million rubles	Total loss, in million rubles
1. Grain products (flour)	29.8	—	—	—
2. Fuel	3.4	—	—	—
3. Labor	2.9	—	—	—
4. Excise	—	182.4	—	—
5. Trade profits	—	12.0	—	—
6. Production equipment	—	—	4.5	—
Total	36.1	194.4	4.5	235.0

added to mask the weakness of the product, its inferiority in taste, and to give it intoxicating properties, by which they seek to obscure the moonshine’s insufficient strength. Thus, to the negative aspects of the illegal consumption of alcoholic beverages under an official ban on them are added still new circumstances that aggravate the evil. The magnitude and depth of the latter, as well as the immediate conclusions, however, cannot be established merely by a simple quantitative comparison of what was with what is. In order to be able to grasp the essence of, and penetrate into, the complex phenomenon of clandestine distilling and the prohibited consumption of alcoholic beverages, it is necessary, at least in one particular example connected with one or another region of the vast country—one very variegated in ethnographic, economic, cultural, and other respects—to trace how the transition took place from the seemingly complete sobriety of the population immediately after the appearance of the ban on alcohol to the situation that corresponds at least to the year 1923.

Western Siberia over the period under consideration may be taken as such an example. Set apart by natural-historical conditions, this vast region with a population of many millions was during that time completely isolated by virtue of political conditions and military operations. Thanks to this, any influx into it of alcohol and of any intoxicating beverages from outside was almost entirely excluded, and therefore the need for alcohol could be satisfied only by its own means. The absence of a broadly developed industry and manufacturing sector compelled the Siberian population, in its striving for alcohol, to seek within itself the forces and technical means for producing intoxicating beverages. Thanks to this, Western Siberia appears to be a very convenient region for tracing, by its example, the emergence of the degree of the population’s striving for alcohol in the development, on the one hand, of the organization of local clandestine distilling, and, on the other, of the stubborn, universal struggle against it by the authorities.

For Siberia, which is of interest to us in the present case, the consequence of the noted new situation was the broad, rapid spread and extraordinarily intensive development of illicit distilling. Under the categorical prohibition of alcohol in all its forms, illicit distilling in Siberia constituted a counterbalance to all the tendencies toward alcohol embedded in the population. Therefore such illicit distilling appeared here as a kind of knot tying together all the threads leading to an explanation of the actual degree to which sobriety could be introduced among the population and to the clarification of the practical measures most suited to this aim. But in order properly to assess the significance of illicit distilling in Siberia, it is necessary to establish what Siberia had represented in prewar times in terms of the tendency toward alcoholic beverages and in relation to the means of satisfying this need.

Among alcoholic beverages of industrial origin in ordinary times, what was found among broad strata of the population was chiefly vodka, to a certain extent—spirits, and only to a very small degree factory-made beer. Beer consumption was concentrated only in the towns, and even there predominantly in the summer. The comparatively short summer and the very long winter period of the year, with severe frosts and harsh winds, compel and accustom the Siberian to seek not beer but warming beverages, such as tea, vodka, etc., or nourishing ones—such as milk. In addition to these purely climatic causes, there are a number of other circumstances that do not favor the spread of beer consumption in Siberia. The sparse population and vastness of Siberia’s territory, in the absence of convenient routes of communication, and finally the need for special arrangements for transporting and preserving beer, which by its nature is not very durable, do not allow the few and weak Siberian breweries to bring their product within reach of the broad strata of the Siberian rural population. In addition, the general economic and cultural level in Siberia is still such that, not only in the countryside but also in Siberian towns, the household still meets all the needs of everyday life so extensively that there is as yet no place here for restaurants, cafés, tea-rooms, beer halls, or other institutions of this kind, through which beer usually spreads easily and rapidly among broad circles of the population. And in those cases in which, in European Russia—and still more abroad—factory-made beer appears, in Siberia there is home-brewed beer, braga, mead, kvass, and so forth. In connection with this, industrial brewing production was represented in Siberia very weakly. Only a few Siberian breweries had satisfactory modern equipment with steam power; the majority of the plants were very primitively arranged: with direct-fire boiling, with horse-powered drive, and they generally work on purchased malt brought from European Russia. The productivity of most Siberian breweries is insignificant. Only in isolated cases did the productivity of the largest and best-equipped plants, usually situated in large Siberian towns, reach 150–300,000 vedros per year. The yield of beer from a pood of malt is about 5–6 vedros, with an average alcohol content of about 3% and a sale price per vedro from 1 ruble 90 kopecks to 4 rubles.

The distribution of breweries by district and their productivity, according to data for 1910, were as follows:

District	Number of plants	Annual production in vedros
Western Siberia	40	1,459,745
Eastern Siberia	21	520,034
Priamurye	37	882,587

The largest number of breweries in 1914 was concentrated in Tomsk Governorate, then not yet divided, namely—17 plants;

then, among the provinces most active with respect to brewing, come Irkutsk Province—14 plants, Transbaikal—13, Yenisei—8, Semipalatinsk—7, Akmolinsk—6, and Tobolsk—5.

The increase in the number of breweries over time was insignificant. Thus, for example, in Tomsk Province and Semipalatinsk Region, after 1910 only one brewery was added in each; nevertheless, the productivity of the existing plants continued to progress, and, for example, in Tomsk Province over 10 years production rose from 384 thousand to 553 thousand vedros. The total annual production of beer in Siberia in the prewar years reached more than 4 million vedros. This quantity, in relation to the total size of the Siberian population, gives, however, a negligible value for the average per-capita consumption of beer in Siberia. Although not a companion of the Siberian’s everyday routine, beer in the life of the Siberian Russian rural population is nevertheless an invariably necessary attribute of life during holidays, family celebrations, and other events of a similar kind. In this connection, the preparation of homemade beer, braga, mead, and the like—sufficiently intoxicating beverages—is common in the Siberian village. Every peasant housewife knows how to brew, and does brew when required, a heady, strong beer. Thus the Siberian rural population, which constituted 87.7% of its total number, was in fact completely uninterested in the existence of the brewing industry, and the cessation of brewing from the beginning of the war passed in Siberia entirely unnoticed by the mass of the population. The skill and habit of preparing homemade beer played an enormous role here in promoting the rapid and wide spread of illicit distilling in Siberia as soon as the prohibition on the sale of state vodka appeared. At the same time, the everywhere well-known production of homemade beer easily and simply expanded to the production of homemade vodka, at first by primitive fire distillation, and later by an improved steam process, with double purification.

The Siberian village had always known the methods of distilling spirits well and had long applied them wherever vodka of factory origin, admitted by the authorities, did not penetrate for one reason or another. There were always very many of these reasons, both temporary and permanent, in various places of vast Siberia. In some cases the reason was the considerable remoteness of the consumer’s dwelling from the places where legalized vodka was issued. Under such conditions, illegal distilling became a local, persistent phenomenon. In other cases the reasons were temporary but constantly recurring, such as: prolonged impassability of roads because of extended winter bad weather, spring roads rendered impassable, and so forth. Under ordinary conditions, samogon could not compete either in quality or in cost with state vodka; however, once this production had arisen, it nevertheless strove to preserve itself, seeking consumers for its product and making use, in its own interests, of the time when the issue of state wine was temporarily halted. And if in European Russia under such conditions there was illicit trade in state vodka, Siberia went further: here vodka from unauthorized distilling was put into circulation. The latter, even in the prewar period, already as a product of a permanent and developing cottage industry, had taken firm root in certain taiga districts, for example, in Tomsk Province—in Mariinsk Uezd. Here, even in ordinary times, fairly large-scale production with improved distilling and rectifying apparatus was not infrequently uncovered in the taiga. The product obtained in this way was sometimes of rather high quality and had around it regular consumers, who zealously protected such an enterprise. Thus illicit distilling was for Siberia an ordinary phenomenon and, in places, one firmly holding on. It manifested itself more strongly in the north and more weakly in the south, where the production of strong beer and mead was more widespread. A powerful counterweight that suppressed illicit distilling in nor—

under normal conditions, was the opening of the sale of state vodka and alcohol. In order to clarify this, since Siberia appeared to be a favorable environment for the development there of clandestine distilling, it should be borne in mind that the Siberian distilling industry was invariably the sole source that supplied Siberia with alcohol, and therefore its consistent development is the best indicator of the magnitude of the gradual growth in vodka consumption in Siberia. Beginning in 1860, the Siberian distilling industry steadily grew in an orderly fashion and increased both its total productivity and the number of its plants. The increase in the number of distilleries in Siberia by five-year periods from 1860 to 1910 is presented below:

Years:	1860—65	1865—70	1870—75	1875—80	1890—85	1885—90
Plants built	11	8	1	5	4	3
Years:	1890—95	1895—10	1900—05	1905—10
Plants built	4	4	5	6

The number of operating distilleries and the quantity of alcohol distilled annually throughout Asiatic Russia, expressed in vedros of vodka of forty-degree strength, for the period from 1901 to 1911 is as follows:

Distilling-period year	1901—2	2—3	3—4	4—5	5—6	6—7	7—8	8—9	9—10	1910—11
Number of operating plants	50	50	51	51	53	53	56	58	54	54
Vedros of alcohol (strength 40°) (in thousands)	3882	3780	4431	5043	5564	5264	6371	6755	4944	5950

By regions of Asiatic Russia, the distilleries by the distilling period of 1910—11 were distributed as follows:

Western Siberia . . . . 28
Eastern Siberia . . . . 16
Amur Region . . . . . . 7
Turkestan . . . . . . . 3

Processed in the period 1910—1911, in poods:

	Grain bread	Potatoes
Western Siberia	2.949.499 p.	101.999 p.
Eastern Siberia	1.252.494 »	137.924 »
Amur Region	19.138 »	7.801 »
Turkestan	53.730 »	—
TOTAL	5.372.861 »	247.724 »

Distilling in Siberia is carried on predominantly from grain bread. Little attention has been paid here to the cultivation of potatoes, and therefore there is little starch in them; and varieties adapted to the local climatic and other conditions in Siberia that can yield a high starch content are encountered very rarely.

From one pood of grain, 40 degrees² of alcohol are obtained. From one pood of Siberian potatoes, 12–14 degrees of alcohol are obtained.

The average cost of one bucket of vodka at 40°, according to data of the Ministry of Finance, in the years before the war, was as follows for Siberia, in kopecks:

Years	1905	1911	1912	1913
Western Siberia	239.95 k.	208.39 k.	214.29 k.	214.66 k.
Eastern Siberia	304.39 k.	277.97 k.	280.69 k.	274.82 k.

Siberian distilling was represented by large, well-equipped plants of an industrial character, with rationally organized production. In addition to 54 distilleries, there were also 4 yeast-and-distilling plants in Siberia. The total power installation of the Siberian distilling industry was about 1,500 horsepower, with the number of workers and employees in 1914 about 2,000 persons.

Besides the plants, an important constituent apparatus of the state wine monopoly entered into the Siberian distilling industry: wine warehouses, purification plants with special technical equipment, with a staff of employees, workers, and administration in 1914 of over 3,400 persons. All Siberian wine warehouses, of recent construction, were very well equipped and of the same type; only their capacity varied, ranging from 150,000 to 500,000 buckets of 40° wine. The number of warehouses in Siberia was 20, with 2 reserve stores. The total capacity of all Siberian wine warehouses was up to 1,500,000 buckets of alcohol. Besides plants and warehouses, necessary elements of the distilling industry, in connection with the wine monopoly, were state wine shops. Their number was determined in 1912–1914 by the rule that there should be one shop for every 6,000 persons of the population.

The total sale of state beverages in the last prewar years was expressed in buckets of alcohol, at a strength of 40°, as follows:

Years	Western Siberia	Eastern Siberia
1905	2,986,619	2,266,275
1911	4,110,861	1,077,184
1912	4,363,901	2,016,466
1913	4,719,778	2,008,427

The average per capita consumption of alcohol (40°), counted in buckets per person of both sexes, for 1910–1911 by the provinces of Siberia, was as follows:

Province/Region	Consumption	Province/Region	Consumption
Amur	1.13 buckets	Akmolinsk	0.47 buckets
Irkutsk	1.10 buckets	Yakutsk	0.30 buckets
Tomsk	0.77 buckets	Turgai	0.26 buckets
Transbaikal	0.67 buckets	Semipalatinsk	0.14 buckets
Yenisei	0.30 buckets	Semirechensk	0.12 buckets
Tobolsk	0.55 buckets

Throughout Asiatic Russia, the average per capita consumption of alcohol (at a strength of 40° in the years preceding the war) ranged from 0.35 to 0.38 buckets, whereas in European Russia this value was 0.56 buckets. Taking into account the average size of a family as five persons, we find that, with an average per capita consumption of from 0.5 to 1.10 buckets, in the Siberian provinces with a predomin—

among the chiefly Russian population, one family accounted for from 2.5 to 5 vedros of vodka per year, i.e., from 50 to 100 bottles. This quantity was drunk, excluding children and women, by only 1–2 members of the family, so that each adult male accounted for from 25 to 100 bottles of vodka per year. The figures given still do not express the full magnitude of vodka consumption, since part of it was drunk in the form of unrecorded “home brew,” secretly distilled. From the foregoing it is evident that vodka consumption in Siberia reached a considerable scale and became a common phenomenon, while vodka was regarded by Siberians not only as normal, but in many cases as an absolutely necessary product. Thus, by force of habit, and also of pathological heredity, vodka consumption in Siberia was a definite need of the population. Under such conditions, any difficulties in obtaining vodka by legal means invariably set in motion the historically formed and practically organized apparatus of home distilling in Siberia, always ready for work even in ordinary times. Under the conditions of a prolonged prohibition on vodka and other intoxicating drinks, to the former impelling causes there was added yet another new factor: the possibility of easy and rapid profit from producing moonshine for sale, in view of the enormous demand for it and the high prices. In addition to clandestine distilling and the associated trade in moonshine, there also existed in Siberia, chiefly in the towns, unpatented trade in various alcoholic beverages and products which, though bearing another name, served the same purpose and were illegally manufactured and sold. In most cases these products were prepared from alcohol purchased in the ordinary way, and the purpose of such production lay in transforming concentrated, relatively cheap alcohol into a more expensive, less strong product, sold without payment of excise duty and without the right to engage in such trade. Not infrequently, in markets, in small shops, and in dens—especially at night—denatured alcohol appeared. But all these were only few in number, with a narrowly limited sphere of action, affecting only individual persons or insignificant groups.

From all that has been set forth above, it is clear that among intoxicating drinks in Siberia only vodka had significance, having deeply taken root among broad strata of the population. Factory-brewed beer, and still more grape wine, scarcely penetrated the masses at all. However, in this respect as well Siberia had its own definite and firmly established needs, which were at times satisfied by home brewing of beer and in part by mead brewing. Owing to natural-historical conditions, the apparatus of home brewing, formed over centuries and long since organized, was used here also for preparing vodka by domestic means when the need for this arose.

Such was the situation in Siberia with respect to the consumption of intoxicating drinks in the prewar period, i.e., until the middle of 1914. Consequently, as regards the necessity of combating drunkenness, Siberia presented no fewer concerns than European Russia, but the difficulties for this struggle were greater here.

In connection with the war, from the middle of 1914 in Siberia, as in all Russia, formally unconditional sobriety was established. In reality, the situation was somewhat different and, moreover, changed over time. In the towns, alcohol officially inadmissible for drinking purposes in 1914 and 1915 began to penetrate the population by various evasions, through the obtaining of permits for alcohol for technical, medical, and other purposes—for example, for motor transport, etc. In the Siberian village there were no such possibilities, and therefore the prohibition at once evoked the home distilling long known in Siberia from of old. The abundance of grain, which in 1914 had not been exported in enormous quantities and remained locally; the broad demand for vodka; the good earnings from it; and, finally, the personal need for it—all this contributed to the wide spread of clandestine distilling, so that within 2–3 months after the beginning of the war the Siberian village was already, throughout, seething with moonshine. Taking—

During this time, the measures we took against violators of the law were quite fruitless. As time went on, conditions arose such that there were not enough places for prisoners, since in every village almost every household distilled wine, only at different times: now one, now another, and so on. A feature of such so-called “secret” wine distilling, in reality not concealed, in 1916–17 was that the production of homemade spirits was conducted in a family setting: the head of the family did the distilling, the children helped, and the mother of the family or her older members (usually women) traded. When some were arrested, others replaced them. Such broad family contact with alcohol did not pass without consequence for the population. The producers and sellers of it very quickly turned into constant and ardent consumers, as did often the very young members of the family. The drunken revelry of the Siberian village quickly spread and rose especially during the period of the mass return of soldiers from the front. In the Altai, Tomsk, and other Siberian provinces during this period, a phenomenon of this kind was observed: in one and the same place there was concentrated the production, sale, and consumption of vodka, with the manifestation of extreme forms of revelry, drawing in not only adults but also adolescents. Unfortunately, there was no accounting of all the manifold manifestations of intemperance in this period. What remain now as traces of it are only the numerous reports and, here and there, analyses of confiscated homemade liquor, partly preserved among the remnants of the files of the former excise laboratories.

Over time, secret distilling, constantly expanding and technically improving, became a supplier for Siberian towns, where homemade spirits were already of higher quality, often being disguised from the eyes of guardians of the law by a change in name and appearance, and presented as a product supposedly not intended for drinking purposes—for example, varnish, polish, and the like. This phenomenon was taken into account by the decree of the Provisional Government of March 27, 1917, which prohibited the sale, alongside strong beverages, of non-beverage alcoholic substances with a strength of more than 1.5% alcohol.

The position of the formal inadmissibility of alcoholic beverages changed in Siberia from July 8, 1918, when the Provisional Siberian Government issued a regulation on the sale of treasury wine (i.e., vodka) stored in treasury wine warehouses in Siberia. Under this regulation, “every male citizen who had reached 21 years of age had the right to receive no more than 1/20 of a vedro.” Quite apart from the numerous deviations from the intended norm, it should be noted that such sales were in places carried out repeatedly “by way of liquidating stocks.” Thus, in the last 3 months of 1923, according to data from the treasury wine warehouses of Tomsk province, an amount of vodka (40°) was released corresponding to an annual consumption of 0.30 vedro for every person of both sexes in the population of that province. Meanwhile, the average per capita consumption in Siberia in the prewar period was 0.35–0.38 vedro per year.

With the disorganization of the trade apparatus that had unexpectedly reappeared in 1918 throughout Siberia for issuing treasury vodka, the shortage of places of sale was felt acutely. Because of this, the population’s demand for vodka in the vast majority of cases remained far from satisfied and was therefore met by products of secret distilling. Obviously, under such conditions, the amount of actual consumption of any vodka in 1918, at best, could have been equal to—and in reality considerably exceeded—the consumption of the prewar years. Thus, this case, interesting in its essence, of testing the change in demand for vodka after an almost three-year period of formal sobriety led to the conclusion that during this time the population had in no way reduced its striving for alcohol, but rather had increased it. At the same time, the quality of alcoholic beverages and the nature of their consumption assumed sharply pathological forms.

By a decree of the Provisional Siberian Government of January 1, 1919, the state sale of beverages was restored in Siberia. At the same time, in the territory, for example, of the present-day Tomsk Province, from January through July inclusive, the monthly release increased, rising 3.3-fold over 6 months; moreover, demand for vodka remained invariably much higher than what the state warehouses supplied. Under such conditions, the release of vodka by the state wine warehouses of Tomsk Province for the months of June and July, recalculated as the annual per-capita consumption of this province, amounted to 0.27 vedro.

In July 1919 the sale of spirits and vodka in Siberia was discontinued, and at the same time moonshining reappeared. The turbulent period in the life of Siberia during the second half of 1919 left no traces concerning the state of Siberian illicit distilling during this time.

With the spread of Soviet power to Siberia, from the end of 1919, a complete ban was established on all vodka products, on spirits for drinking purposes, and in general on all intoxicating beverages. Thus, unconditional formal sobriety was once again restored in Siberia. From the beginning of 1920, local organs of Soviet power took measures for the complete removal from the hands of the population of all alcoholic beverages and products containing spirits. Any possibility of spirits reaching the population in one form or another by legal means was entirely excluded. Vigilant supervision, persistent prosecution, and harsh penalties, up to and including confiscation of all property for the storage or sale of vodka or spirits, and still more for illicit distilling, it seemed, should have protected the Siberian population from contact with alcohol. However, the desire for it proved so great that, in spite of everything, the sale and consumption of samosidka did not cease even during this period.

The unconditional prohibition and the impossibility of legally obtaining spirits supported clandestine distilling everywhere; developing rapidly, over time it became not an accident, not an isolated case, but a constant manifestation of the current life of Siberia.

Clandestine distilling in the years following 1920 gradually took on definite technical forms, becoming, despite persecution, a widely widespread cottage industry serving the deeply rooted need of the Siberian population for prohibited vodka. The products of “clandestine distilling,” i.e. “samogonka” or “samosidka” and “spirits,” beginning in 1914, steadily and regularly in the following years became worse and worse with respect to purification and in terms of concentration. This can be seen from the table given below of analyses for various years of clandestine-distilling products in Tomsk Province up to and including 1913.

Table No. 7, given below, provides, by year, the relative quantities of the various strengths of samosidka as percentages of its total production in Tomsk Province. These data are partly borrowed from the surviving remnants of the archives of the former excise laboratory, and partly obtained by direct analysis at the Tomsk Technological Institute of samples of samogonka seized in 1923 in Tomsk Province by the militia during the prosecution of clandestine distilling.

The extremely poor purification and low concentration of samosidka in 1922–1923 made it necessary, in order to mask the poor quality of the product, to resort to additives, sometimes harmless but more often malicious and harmful to health, such as tobacco, copper sulfate, kukol tincture, and the like. In terms of its quality, samogonka in 1922–1923 deteriorated especially sharply and became considerably lower even than the unpurified raw spirits of the period of the state wine monopoly. A distinction is made between earthenware-still and steam samosidka. The first is a low-quality product obtained by the primitive distillation of mash when spirits are driven off directly by fire; the second, called “steam,” is obtained by distillation with steam, sometimes in rather complex apparatuses and in

TABLE No. 7.

Years	5–15%	15–30%	30–40%	Above 40%	Total moonshine
	\multicolumn{4}{c}{Strength of moonshine in vol. % alcohol; distribution of moonshine by grades as % of its total quantity}
1912	0.00%	20.00%	30.00%	50.00%	100.00%
1913	7.14%	42.86%	18.57%	21.42%	100.00%
1915	10.00%	30.00%	35.00%	25.00%	100.00%
1917	16.09%	45.33%	22.67%	16.00%	100.00%
1923	45.45%	18.18%	27.27%	9.10%	100.00%

in individual cases sufficiently perfected, manufactured in urban, railway, and factory workshops. These apparatuses are often equipped with steam jackets, safety valves, water-gauge glasses, and also with elements of dephlegmation and rectification. Beginning in 1920, an intensified struggle against clandestine distilling has been conducted continuously throughout Siberia. Its results were not recorded almost anywhere in Siberia, and only in Tomsk gubernia, from October 1922, was strict accounting established for clandestine distilling and the fight against it. To promote the success of eradicating clandestine distilling, persons who uncovered offenses were given a material incentive in the form of 75% of the imposed fine. The accounting material thus obtained is very interesting and highly indicative, as characterizing clandestine distilling in Western Siberia during this period from the most varied aspects; for this reason it is presented below according to the documentary data of the militia of the city of Tomsk and its uyezd, and, in addition, for all of Tomsk gubernia for the period from October 1922 through April 1923. A general summary of these data is presented in Table No. 8 and Table No. 9.

In 1922–1923, in all detected cases one had to encounter only clandestine distilling; the formerly quite frequent cases of the preparation of beer, strong mash, and mead disappear completely in this period. Clandestine distilling for personal consumption exceeds by 3–4 times, in number, the quantity of discovered cases of clandestine distilling for purposes of sale. The scale of the first of these in relation to production is negligible; that of the second is very considerable, not infrequently with a steam installation, and moreover of good construction. The number of cases of storing moonshine for personal consumption is also very large. In 5 months, 3,630 cases of clandestine distilling and storage of moonshine exclusively for personal purposes were discovered. This indicates that the population’s striving for alcohol is not due to profit or large gain, but only by virtue of an acute, undoubtedly hereditary, need or an old habit for spirits so great that neither enormous fines, nor confiscation of all property, nor compulsory labor—nothing is capable of restraining these people infected with an inclination toward alcohol. Owing to this, the latter, being in essence sick people, are turned into criminals, paying not only for the sins of their grandfathers and fathers, but also for the historically formed and centuries-long maintained errors and crimes of the authorities.

As for the raw material of clandestine distilling in 1922–1923, only in medium and large-scale production for the sale of moonshine does malt serve as it; in the majority of cases, however, malt is replaced by malted rye flour of coarse grinding, and besides this other, cheaper varieties are also taken—

flour, for example, buckwheat, oat, barley, millet, emmer, etc. Usually the role of malt in clandestine distilling is played by rye flour. After brewing it thickly with boiling water, they leave it in a warm place and thereby cause it to malt. Upon reaching the desired degree of saccharification, they gradually add flour and water, and after some time yeast as well. Usually yeast is used only at the beginning of the work, and thereafter only starter from the preceding mash is employed. The fermenting mass (the mash) is in most cases made very thick. The reason for this is the desire to use fermentation vessels of smaller volume and the wish to obtain as large a yield of alcohol as possible. For one pood of dry supplies they take about 4 vedros of water, sometimes more.

Owing to the slight dissolution of the starch, its very poor saccharification, and the tremendous souring of the fermenting mass, the utilization of the processed materials, judging by analyses made of a number of samples, is insignificant—15 to 60% of what is possible under factory conditions of distilling. The scale of clandestine distilling in 1922–1923 was established in Tomsk Province in three categories: small-scale production—with simultaneous processing, i.e. “mashing,” of 1–1.5 poods of dry supplies; medium—8–9 poods; and large—15–20 poods. The relative prevalence of clandestine distilling on different scales was as follows: small—40%, medium—50%, and large—10%. Distillation of the fermented mash obtained in small-scale production is exclusively by direct fire, the so-called “korchaga” method; on the medium and large scale production is invariably by steam. The apparatus for obtaining korchaga homemade spirits is of the simplest kind. The mash to be distilled is poured into a pot or cauldron used in the household for cooking food, boiling water, etc. Such a cauldron is usually tightly closed with a wooden lid fitted with an outlet iron tube, often spirally bent or straight—for example, the barrel of a soldier’s rifle—through which the alcoholic vapors driven off from the mash poured into the cauldron are led into a receiver. To cool them, the tube is passed either through a trough or through a tub into which water is poured, covering the tube, in order to cool the distilled vapors and the alcoholic liquid. After the cauldron has been filled with mash to be distilled, its lid is daubed with dough or clay to eliminate cracks and leaks. The cauldron with mash is boiled over a fire in a little stove specially arranged for this purpose, or in an iron stove of the brazier type with a door for throwing in firewood. Such is the simplest and very widespread type of apparatus in Siberia for distilling korchaga homemade spirits.

With the steam method of distilling alcohol, the apparatus for this purpose consists of the following. The necessary and first element is the steam generator. In most cases this is a cylinder made of roofing iron, set into the masonry of a special stove. The size of such a cylinder in medium-scale production is 7–10 vedros. Water poured into such a cauldron is boiled to obtain steam. In many cases, especially in large-scale production, parts of factory equipment are encountered, such as tanks, cylinders, and sometimes military field kitchens converted into steam boilers. From the steam generator the resulting steam is led by an iron pipe into the still for distilling the fermented mash. The still is usually a closed barrel, often a closed tub, into which an open steam pipe is conducted almost to the bottom, immersing directly in the liquid to be distilled. Then come the elements of a rectifying column of very varied design, from the simplest to an exceedingly ingenious apparatus with Pistorius plates, with cup dephlegmators, etc. Often something like a rectifying column is encountered—a tall, wooden, relatively narrow tub with 2–4 iron sieves arranged one above another. As coolers, wooden tubs with water are invariably used, into which the cooled parts of the distilling apparatus are immersed. In individual cases very compact devices are found, made exclusively of tinplate and copper, distilling apparatuses with a capacity of

TABLE No. 8.

Summary of beer subject to such taxation in Tomsk Province for the period from November 1, 1922, to April 1, 1923

Province	Name of militia administration	Confiscated: apparatuses	Confiscated: mash destroyed, in vedros	Confiscated: moonshine, in vedros	Number of searches conducted*: on the initiative of the militia	Number of searches conducted*: by institutions	Number of searches conducted*: by private persons	Reports drawn up and submitted to the Administration Department: for producing moonshine for personal use	Reports drawn up and submitted to the Administration Department: for storing and acquiring moonshine for personal use	Reports drawn up and submitted to the Administration Department: for appearing intoxicated in public places	Reports drawn up and submitted to judicial bodies: for producing moonshine for sale	Reports drawn up and submitted to judicial bodies: for trading in moonshine	Reports drawn up and submitted to judicial bodies: against militia employees	Reports drawn up and submitted to judicial bodies: against other officials	Fines to be collected (a)	Fines to be collected (b)	Sentenced to compulsory labor	Received as %% deduction for the militia	Allocated for improving the living conditions of the militia	Notes
Tomsk Province		599	12,499	3,773/4	1,715/1,307	32/17	233/154	656	490	476	204	155	26	23	402,307	53,396	46 persons for 38 years 8 months and 7 days	26,507 rubles 50 kopecks	6,154	The figures in the numerator give the number of searches carried out, while the denominator gives the number of searches with a positive result.

TABLE

Information on the struggle against clandestine distilling by the militia

Name of militia administrations	Apparatuses confiscated	Barrels destroyed, in vedros	Moonshine, in vedros	Searches conducted on the militia’s initiative	Searches upon reports by institutions	Searches upon reports by private persons	Protocols drawn up and sent to the Administration Department: for production of moonshine for personal consumption	Protocols drawn up and sent to the Administration Department: for storage and acquisition for personal consumption	Protocols drawn up and sent to the Administration Department: for production of moonshine for sale
Tomsk City Militia	544	11511	329 1/2	1473/1125	32/17	225/144	583	421	354
Taiga City Militia	24	203	20.5	83	—	6	22	53	8
Mariinsk Uyezd Militia	592	2126	700	1820/1220	175/90	525/320	462	502	1558
Kuznetsk Uyezd Militia	340	950	507	323	—	25	120	105	45
Anzhero-Sudzha Uyezd Militia	51	3615	27 4/3	112	—	57	68	68	35
Leninsk City Militia	68	694	100 1/4	329/288	—	—	179	49	13
Narym Uyezd Militia	186	1587	62	245	—	—	87	72	22
Shcheglovsk Uyezd Militia	527	1894	112	834	49	19	657	182	89
Total	2332	9525 and 1/2	1859	5219/4210	256/156	857/571	2178	1452	2132

Note. In columns 5, 6, and 7, the denominator shows the number of searches that yielded results; the numerator shows the total number of searches conducted. In addition, for the Tomsk City Department, the Kuznetsk, Anzhero-Sudzha, and Narym militias, and the Shcheglovsk City Department, column 17 shows in the numerator the number of persons sent to compulsory labor, and in the deno-

Ts. A. No. 9.

of Tomsk Province from November 1, 1922, to March 15, 1923.

11. Transferred to judicial bodies: for production of home-brew for sale	12. Transferred to judicial bodies: for trading in home-brew	13. Transferred to judicial bodies: for concealing militia employees	14. Transferred to judicial bodies: for concealing officials and responsible persons	15. Received for collection of fines (a)	16. Received for collection of fines (v)	17. Sent to compulsory labor	18. SUM: received %% of deductions due to the militia	19. SUM: applied to improvement of the militia’s living conditions
159	142	1323	26	398750	41316	21 26 l. 3 m. 1 d.	9476—25	—
2	12	2	—	21325	10600	2 2 mo.	7697	862
80	52	6	12	70869	10600	30 2 mo.	53003	2428
7	—	—	—	21230	—	—	3080	—
98	98	—	—	1910 gold 21090	—	—	5125	480
40	5	1	1	43221	18231	—	9115—50	—
—	1	—	3	43300	5025	—	3768	—
107	21	—	13	189937	74718	80	56039	—
493	331	32	45	809522 r. and in gold 1910 r.	163650	133 h. 26 d. 7 m. 1 n.	147303—75	3770

The statement contains data on the militias from November 1, 1922, to March 15, 1923, with the exception of the Narym District Militia, for which data are given from November 1, 1922, to 1923.

The Shcheglovsk District Militia did not indicate for what term 80 persons were sent to compulsory labor.

a tub of 1.5–2 vedros, apparently intended for urban entrepreneurs and designed for use on a kitchen stove. Over five months in Tomsk Province alone, 2,332 stills were confiscated.

The place where korchazhnaia home-distilled spirits are produced is usually a dwelling, a kitchen, less often a shed, barn, cellar, etc. On a larger scale, especially at enterprises selling steam-distilled samogon, production is arranged separately from housing, in remote places in the taiga, in open country—in dugouts, along ravines and hollows, far from habitation. Large, technically equipped taiga distilleries are usually located in deep taiga and are vigilantly guarded against the unexpected appearance of the authorities. Tangled, long footpaths specially leading to the distillery, and guards armed with soldiers’ rifles, turn such moonshine plants into something like fortresses, which are opened only with difficulty and with great danger to the lives of the guardians of order. In 1922–1923, owing to persistent persecution, the production of samogon became very risky, and therefore both medium and large production was carried on, in the overwhelming majority of cases, by individuals, very rarely by two or three persons, and exclusively by men. In domestic korchazhnaia production, women are sometimes also encountered.

Producers of samogon for personal consumption are persons of the most varied status and degree of culture, including members of the intelligentsia. Entrepreneurs in clandestine distilling for the sale of samogon, especially medium and large-scale production, are persons who have, as it were, specialized in this business, often with a criminal past, recidivists. Temporary group production is also encountered in villages before major holidays, weddings, before the organization of a “pomoch’,” etc.

The distribution of samogon is carried out either by the producer himself or through his relatives, good acquaintances, “trusted people,” usually materially interested in the sale. The place of marketing is bazaars, villages. The city proves to be a major consumer, supplied already by middlemen. The transport of samogon and alcohol into the city, in view of the militia’s struggle against this evil, is connected with various tricks, special devices, and risk; hence the cost of samogon in the city is, at the very least, twice as high as in the village. Delivery of samogon to the city is carried out secretly: in carts with hay, in firewood, in special flat iron boxes or low wooden tubs with a double bottom, where the transported alcohol is camouflaged by market goods lying above the second bottom—cottage cheese, sour cream, butter, honey, etc.

The consumption of samogon in villages in districts where clandestine distilling is being especially persecuted takes place secretly, in huts specially intended for this purpose, with every precaution. In group drinking they withdraw to farmsteads and outlying holdings, while vigilant watch is established in case the militia, authorities, or undesirable observers appear. Such protection of samogon consumption is provided by accomplices in the drinking bout and by those interested in the proceeds from the samogon being sold. In towns, villages, and densely populated localities connected with factories, the railway, mines, etc., clandestine taverns are observed, with consumption on the premises and for takeaway. They are more often kept by women, usually with a criminal past. These establishments are known to the majority of the population and enjoy its patronage, but it is difficult to uncover them. The reason for this is, for some, securing for themselves the possibility of using samogon; for others, fear of revenge from the keepers of clandestine taverns and their visitors.

From a pood of grain, flour, and dry provisions in general, 8–12 bottles of samogon are obtained, with a strength of from 5 to 75% alcohol. Korchazhnaia samogon is always turbidly colored, with a characteristic unpleasant odor, from 5 to 25% alcohol; steam-distilled—25–35%; double-refined, called alcohol, reaches 75%.

strength. The price of the latter is considerably higher. Moonshiners carry out distillation from their own material, sometimes on a share basis—from the customer’s materials. In November 1922 the cost of a bottle of moonshine in the villages was 2–4 rubles (in 1923 currency notes), in April 15–30 rubles. City prices are 100% higher than village prices. The quality of moonshine varies greatly by place and time. After 1914 its quality, with each passing year, steadily deteriorated, and the quantity of impurities most harmful to health—such as fusel oil, ethers, acids, aldehydes—steadily increased each year, becoming a threat to health. The general characterization is that the best moonshine is significantly inferior in quality to the raw, non-rectified spirits of the state monopoly.

The measures of punishment are criminal liability under Article 140 of the Criminal Code, monetary fines, forced labor, and confiscation of all property. The result of the persistent half-year struggle in Tomsk Province in 1922–1923 is assessed by the militia itself¹ as follows: “the struggle is proceeding successfully, but the work of the city and district militia has not yet led to the desired results, i.e. to the complete eradication of this evil, since this contagion has taken deep root not only among the dark masses of peasants and workers, but also among people who are often educated and developed.”

The Mariinsk district militia comes to the following conclusion²: “distilling and drunkenness have become accidental phenomena; their epidemic character has disappeared, but it cannot be said that this evil has been uprooted. It has been driven underground, and the work must continue with new methods developed by practice itself.”

The already cited tables give an idea of the scale reached by illicit distilling, despite persecution. Here one may note such characteristic figures as the quantity of mash destroyed in Tomsk Province over 5 months—19,526.5 vedros; 1,859 vedros of confiscated moonshine; 2,332 confiscated moonshine stills, which is the result of 6,522 searches during these five months. And this after a prolonged, persistent struggle that has continued here without interruption since 1919.

Tomsk Province, with regard to illicit distilling and the consumption of moonshine, is not something exceptional as compared with other districts and provinces of Siberia with the same predominantly Russian population, such as Tobolsk, Omsk, Novo-Nikolaevsk, Altai, Yeniseisk, and Irkutsk provinces. This circumstance gives grounds for extending the general conclusions and inferences concerning illicit distilling that hold for Tomsk Province to the other provinces of Western Siberia listed here. In the opinion of representatives of the Tomsk militia, despite the stubborn and energetic struggle, it is still possible to uncover only about 40% of pot-still and 60% of steam illicit distilling. It is obvious that in isolated villages, farmsteads, remote zaimkas, among swamps, in the taiga, etc., the percentage of undiscovered cases is still higher. But out of caution, and for greater soundness of the final conclusions in further calculations, we shall nevertheless stop at the indicated average percentage of crimes discovered, i.e. 50%. The quantity of mash arrested in Tomsk Province determines the capacity of all fermentation vats of discovered illicit distillers; but since only half of them are discovered, the actual total capacity of all illicit distilleries in fact in existence must correspond to twice the amount of registered mash, i.e. 19,526.5 × 2 = 39,053 vedros. This determines the capacity of illicit distilling in Tomsk Province. Over time, this capacity changes: some distilleries are closed and destroyed, others arise anew. With the prolonged struggle against illicit distilling, by 1922–1923 the latter had already assumed definite forms and dimensions. Changing with respect mainly to composition, in the area of small—

¹–² Answers of the Tomsk Militia of May 10, 1923, to a number of questions put to it concerning the struggle against illicit distilling.

distillation, in its medium and large scales, retains considerable stability, going “underground.” Making use of the experience of their predecessors, new enterprises arise at the same time alongside those that have also been shut down. In view of this, one may accept that at the present time the capacity of illicit distillation is, to a certain degree, a constant quantity, determined for Tomsk Province by the scale established above.

But what, then, is the productivity of illicit distillation in Tomsk Province? It is obvious that once production has been set up, having overcome the first and most severe material and other obstacles with extraordinary difficulty and enormous risk, it inevitably strives to secure its own existence and to maintain its further activity. This situation, inherent in medium and large production working for sale, also occurs in cases of distillation for personal consumption. Given the very small scale of such production and, obviously, the great consuming capacity of the entrepreneur, the reasons that induced him to embark on so risky an undertaking are, of course, so strong that once production has been established it can no longer be an isolated occurrence for such a person, but is carried on regularly and usually on an increasing scale. Thus, the entire apparatus of illicit distillation operates over a long period, and the productivity of this work, apart from the established capacity of distillation, is determined also by the duration of a single production of moonshine, on the one hand, and by the length of a definite period of work—for example, over the course of a year—on the other. Taking into account the danger of illicit distillation and the stoppages compelled by it, as well as interruptions during the working season, holidays at a definite time of year, and other causes, it may be acknowledged that production is carried on for no more than 200 days in a year. As for the duration of a single processing of materials, it is determined chiefly by the duration of fermentation. According to established data, which also correspond to the real possibilities under the already noted conditions of illicit-distillation production, the duration of fermentation ranges from 3 to 5 days, on average—4 days. Therefore, over the whole annual working period there can be carried out \(200 : 4 = 50\) separate processings (i.e., mash charges).

According to police information and direct analyses of arrested mash, it has been established that the average density of the fermenting mass is such that from one pood of grain or flour about 5 vedros of mash are obtained. With the distillation capacity of Tomsk Province corresponding to 39,053 vedros of mash, a single processing takes: \(39053 : 5 = 7811\) poods of grain. Thus, the annual calculation for illicit distillation in 1922–23, on a cautious estimate, gives about 400,000 poods of grain, which corresponds to a per-capita consumption of grain for moonshine of:

\[ \frac{390550}{1.091.874^{1)}} = 0.37 \text{ pood of grain per year.} \]

Such a level of per-capita consumption of grain for illicit distillation is obtained on the basis of the extremely compressed scale of the latter, achieved exclusively by the energetic struggle conducted by the Tomsk Militia during the last five months. In places where the struggle against illicit distillation is not being waged to such an extent, the consumption of grain must be much higher.

For Western Siberia, within the limits only of the above-enumerated provinces with a population of 10,000,000 persons, the annual consumption of grain for illicit distillation amounts to 3,700,000 poods of grain.

In the period 1910–1911, the distilling industry then in existence processed, throughout all Western Siberia, only 2,949,499 poods of grain supplies and 101,999 poods of potatoes. Thus, given the existence

\(^{1)}\) The population of Tomsk Province according to the 1920 census, from the collection of the Siberian Statistical Administration, I, issue 4, p. 52, Krasilnikov.

in distilling, the expenditure of bread on it was less than under its formal absence and the persistent, stubbornly maintained illicit distilling. However, the expenditure on the actual production of samogon is not yet exhausted by this; it is connected with fuel costs. This expenditure may be approximately accounted for on the basis of the following considerations. From one pood of bread, five buckets of mash are obtained, from which on average 10 bottles of samogon are distilled, with an average alcohol content of about 20%. The distillation is carried out with firewood. Its calorific value may be taken as 3300 calories. Under primitive conditions of direct-fired (pot-still) distillation of mash, the greatest degree of utilization of fuel can, in the very best case, be 10%. Under such conditions 1 kilogram of firewood will evaporate 0.6 kilograms of water², and for 10 bottles of samogon, i.e. 6 kilograms of liquid, there will be required \(6.0 : 0.6 = 10\) kilograms of firewood. But in order to evaporate 6 kilograms of samogon it is necessary first to heat to 100° five buckets of mash, which will require approximately \(5 \times 12.3 \times (100 - 20) : 3300 = 15\) kilograms of firewood. In all, for distilling pot-still samogon there is required \(10 + 15 = 25\) kilograms, or 1.5 poods, of firewood.

For obtaining steam-distilled samogon, when the alcohol is distilled from the mash by steam, the fuel expenditure is different. From one pood of bread, 5 buckets, or 61.5 kilograms, of mash are obtained³. To heat this quantity of mash with steam at atmospheric pressure, according to Hausbrand, \(61.5 \times 0.186 = 11.4\) kilograms of steam are needed. For distilling 6 kilograms of alcoholic liquid (samogon), taking into account the imperfection of the apparatus, the absence of insulation on the pipelines, the duration of the distillation, etc., we take the necessary quantity of steam as equal to 8.6 kilograms. Consequently, in all, for distilling steam mash obtained from one pood of bread, \(11.4 + 8.6 = 20.0\) kilograms of steam at atmospheric pressure will be required. With the previously indicated calorific value of firewood and the degree of its utilization in combustion, we find that per one pood of bread processed into steam samogon, distillation will require:

\[ \frac{537 \times 20}{3300} = 32.5 \text{ kilograms, or } 2.0 \text{ poods of firewood.} \]

Taking the average expenditure for pot-still and steam samogon, we find that in all, per pood of bread, \((1.5 + 2.0) : 2 = 1.8\) poods of firewood are necessary. Let us convert this into coal, assuming the weight of a sazhen of firewood to be 230 poods, and the equivalent of a cubic sazhen of firewood in coal to be 120 poods of coal. This gives an expenditure per pood of grain processed in illicit distilling of 36 pounds of coal, whereas under conditions of factory operation this expenditure corresponds to approximately 20 pounds; i.e. the coal expenditure per pood of bread in illicit distilling is 80% greater than in factory production. The total annual fuel expenditure for illicit distilling in Western Siberia in 1922–23, in accordance with the quantity of bread processed, corresponds to:

\[ 3{,}700{,}000 \times 0.9^{3)} = 3{,}330{,}000 \text{ poods of coal.} \]

The annual fuel expenditure in factory distilling, which yields from a smaller quantity of bread a significantly larger quantity of alcohol, proves to be 2.4 times less than the total expenditure under illicit distilling, saving almost two million poods of coal per year. The quantity of samogon of average strength 20% corresponds to 1,850,000 buckets, which corresponds to 925,000 buckets of samogon of strength

40%, whereas from the smaller quantity of grain distilled in 1910, under factory production, three times as much vodka of 40% strength is obtained.

What, then, are the monetary expenditures and revenues of the treasury under permitted distilling and allowed consumption of alcohol, as compared with what took place under formal sobriety and the clandestine consumption of alcoholic beverages in 1922–23? Lacking many necessary direct data and materials, one must approach this question indirectly.

For 1911, according to data of the Ministry of Finance, the cost of one vedro of vodka (40%) proved to be 2 rubles 08 kopecks. For the same period, throughout Russia, the expenditure of the state wine monopoly amounted¹ to 18,443,000 rubles, with a net revenue of 59,764,000 rubles, which corresponds to 324% of net revenue. For simplicity of calculation, let us take the yield of alcohol under factory conditions from one pood of grain to be equal to one vedro of vodka (40%). Under these conditions, each pood of grain passed through a distillery yielded the treasury \(2.08 \times 3.24 = 6\) rubles 74 kopecks; and therefore the total net revenue of the treasury from distilling in Western Siberia amounted, in 1910–1911, to

\[ 2{,}727{,}611 \times 6.74 = 18{,}384{,}098 \text{ rubles.} \]

It is obvious that clandestine distilling and formal sobriety bring the treasury only, and moreover extraordinarily large, expenditures. It is clear that such revenues as fines, confiscation of the property of clandestine distillers, sellers of samogon, and violators of sobriety—quite apart from the fact that 75% of them go to remunerate the militia that uncovers the offenses—are by their very nature not revenues, but an indicator of those unproductive expenditures and of the destruction of immeasurably greater material and moral values, of that ruin which is caused in connection with these imaginary and negligible treasury revenues associated with clandestine distilling.

The direct expenditures of the treasury on clandestine distilling consist of expenditures on the militia, on informants, on observers in the localities, on searches, raids, maintenance of prisoners, judicial proceedings, and so forth. It does not appear possible to calculate these expenditures for lack of proper materials. However, it is not superfluous here to give some idea of the scale of these costs, proceeding from militia data on the struggle against clandestine distilling in Tomsk province. Comparing the number of searches and the quantity of samogon corresponding to the arrested mash, we find that for every three vedros of samogon of an average strength of 20%, there is one search. This one figure alone is sufficient to imagine what expenditure of money, forces, and energy the struggle against clandestine distilling requires; and what its results are is evident from the foregoing.

For a clearer elucidation of what formal sobriety costs the country, below, in Table No. 10, the annual outlays of grain, fuel, and monetary expenditures in Western Siberia under absolute formal sobriety and the clandestine distilling inseparably connected with it are compared, on the one hand, with the open, permitted consumption of vodka under the conditions of the state wine monopoly in 1910–1911, on the other. For convenience of comparison, these quantities are presented in the table both in generally accepted units of measure—poods, vedros, rubles—and in relative magnitudes, with the figures corresponding to the state monopoly taken as 100%, in accordance with which the corresponding magnitudes of the individual items of clandestine distilling are also expressed.

Barda has not been included in the comparison. It is obvious that, under clandestine distilling, this valuable feedstuff remains entirely unused, which, given the enormous quantity of grain being processed, constitutes a grave loss to the national economy.

¹ “Ministry of Finance, 1904–1913,” p. 118.

TABLE No. 10.

Expenditures and revenues	State wine monopoly for 19102, in units of measure	State wine monopoly for 19102, in %	Secret distilling for 1922–23, in %	Secret distilling for 1922–23, in units of measure
Grain and potatoes in grain units	2,727,611 puds3	100.0%	135.6%	3,700,000 puds
Fuel (coal)	1,363,850 puds	100.0%	244.2%	3,330,000 puds
Moonshine of 20% strength	—	—	67.4%	1,850,000 vedra
Vodka of 40% strength	2,746,010 vedra1	100.0%	—	—
Vodka and moonshine, expressed in vedra of absolute alcohol	1,098,404 vedra	100.0%	33.7%	370,600 vedra
Net revenue of the treasury	18,381,098 rubles	—	—	no
Expenditure of the treasury	no	—	—	Police expenditures on the prosecution of secret distilling, the sale, storage, and use of spirituous beverages; the maintenance under guard of those convicted of crimes; judicial proceedings, etc.

The negative aspects of the conditions of consumption under forcibly imposed temperance, inseparably connected with secret distilling, are illustrated sufficiently vividly by the table given above. The latter notes only one aspect that might seem positive: the comparative reduction in the population’s consumption of alcohol. However, this phenomenon must be assessed with great caution, taking into account, first, that the calculation of the supposed consumption of moonshine has of course been made with a certain understatement relative to the actual amount; and, secondly, that in quality moonshine, even the very best, is not comparable with so-called state vodka, which is unquestionably pure and relatively rendered harmless by the complete removal of fusel oils, aldehydes, ethers, and other impurities of raw spirit, which are present in enormous quantities in all moonshines. If one also takes into consideration the deliberate addition to moonshine of the most varied stupefying agents and substances known to be harmful to health, then the question of which is more harmful for consumers—100% in the form of pure vodka or 67% in the form of unrefined moonshine, often deliberately heavily contaminated with spices harmful to health—still remains open. Thus, the forcible implantation, even by the most energetic and extreme measures, of absolute temperance achieves the opposite goal.

The awareness of the need to provide some legal outlet for this inclination toward alcohol, which evidently still lay deep among the population, apparently prompted the highest governmental authorities to permit, in 1922–1923, the sale of beer, grape wine, and, finally, vodka flavored with various infusions of berries, herbs, and roots, on the condition that vodka products be released with a maximum strength of 20% alcohol.

Let us dwell on what significance these measures may have had under Siberian conditions for facilitating the resolution of the difficult but urgent alcohol question, connected with the consumption and spread among the broad masses of the population of the legal sale of such state vodka products and beer. It is also of interest to ascertain how these measures were carried out and how they were received by everyday life.

In connection with the question already examined above concerning the negligible distribution in Siberia of factory-made beer and, all the more, of grape wine, it should be noted that permission to consume either of these products could scarcely affect the question of satisfying, by legal means, the Siberian population’s craving for alcoholic beverages, or the elimination or weakening here of clandestine distilling. The colossal price of so-called “natural grape wine” of local bottling,^1 of dubious quality, and the high cost of present-day beer, very poorly produced by the few Siberian breweries still operating and surviving, make it clear that for the broad strata of Siberia’s population, both factory-made beer and “grape wine” have now become even less accessible than before. Thus, the whole alcohol question in Siberia remains connected exclusively with the consumption of vodka, and it is only on this plane that one can and must approach it. Apparently this is precisely how the authorities are posing it at the present time. In this connection, throughout Tomsk Province, in accordance with the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Administration of Sibirgossprit organized the production of vodka products at 20 degrees strength. The practical results of this measure, and how the further prospects of this undertaking were interpreted locally, are indicated by the official government body conducting this matter, which depicts the situation as follows:^2

“Over the course of a month (from April 5 to May 5, 1923) about 50 vedros of vodka products were released. The consumer of this type of product is so far exclusively the urban population, since, on the one hand, the rural population is still completely uninformed about them; on the other hand, it is hardly likely to take an interest in them, taking into account its weak purchasing power, the relative cheapness of moonshine, the possibility of having it at any time, and also the high cost of the products and, chiefly, the present impossibility of bringing the territorially released product closer to the population.”

The chief brake impeding the wide distribution of vodka products among the population is the high excise rates on alcohol and finished products. The initial cost price of infusions was approximately 20 rubles, and the release price was 25 rubles per bottle in 1923 currency notes, the excise assessment having been set lower owing to an error in a radiotelegram. But with the change in the excise on alcohol and on finished products, on the one hand, and with the fall in the exchange rate of the ruble, on the other, the price of this kind of product began to rise rapidly and by the autumn of 1923 had reached 74 rubles in 1923 currency notes per bottle.

The excise taxation for vodka products was expressed as 62.5 kopeks per degree. It is appropriate to note here that this excise taxation, in gold reckoning, on a bottle of vodka products (= 1 degree) was approximately one and a half times more expensive than a bottle of state wine (= 2 degrees of alcohol) before the war.

^1 The Congress of Winegrowers of 1912 established that the broad development of the falsification of grape wines is the chief cause of the crisis experienced by the winegrowing industry. Everywhere there is sale of grape wine, wine is unrestrainedly falsified. Moscow alone produced 14,000,000 bottles of adulterated wine per year. The isolation of incoming wine into retail sale, according to the Ministry of Finance, yielded an extraordinarily small percentage of natural wine in the winegrowing districts.

^2 Information received from the Tomsk Administration of the Sibirgossprit Commissioner, dated May 16, 1923, No. 648.

An idea of what the calculation of the cost price of infusions in 1923 was is provided by information obtained for Tomsk Province from the authorized representative of Sibgospirt.¹

“Given production with an initial market capacity (50 vedra per month), the expense items per unit of product (1/20 vedro = 1 bottle) are as follows:

Items:		In gold rubles	In Soviet notes
I a	1. Alcohol	10 k.	4 r. 10 k.
I a	2. Spices	5 »	— 65 »
I b	3. Glass container (1/20 vedro), label and cork	15 »	6 r. 15 »
I c	Resin, parchment, glue, cotton wool, filter, cloth, etc.	3 »	6 r. 20 »
II	Fuel, water, light	1 »	— 40 »
III	Wages, social insurance, %% charges on wages	13 »	5 r. 20 »
IV	General overhead expenses: depreciation, % on fixed and working capital, office expenses, upkeep of horse, patents, taxes, property insurance, etc. (30% of the normal calculation)	16 »	6 r. 45 »
V	Excise	33 »	13 r. 50 »
VI	Unforeseen expenses in connection with the change in excise (additional excise and penalties)	2.5 »	1 r. —
	TOTAL	98.5 k.	43 r. 65 k.

At the indicated cost price, the selling price was, per bottle, 1 gold ruble. With the change in the excise from 30 April 1923 by 62.5 k. to 33 kopecks, the cost price amounts, in gold rubles, to 1 r. 25 k., and the selling price to 1 r. 40 kopecks.

In production of 500 vedra per month (the normal minimum), the amount of expense items is expressed as follows:

Items	Amount
I	29.5 kop. gold
II, III, IV	7.5 » »
V, VI	65.0 » »
Total	1 r. 02 k. gold²

¹ Ibid.

² The cost of 40-degree vodka according to the report of the Tomsk-Semipalatinsk Excise Administration for 1913 is determined as follows:

Components of the total cost of wine (40%):	Per 1 vedro:	Per 1 bottle:
Raw alcohol	107.04 kop.	5.37 »
Rectification	12.59 »	5.63 »
Secondary purification	12.90 »	0.65 »
Cost of preparing table wine, etc.	58.55 »	2.93 »
Cost price	191.47 kop.	9.58 kop.
Increase in cost upon sale to the consumer (excise, trade expenses, etc.)	735.51 kop.	2.93 kop.
Price for the consumer	926.98 kop.	42.36 kop.

Thus, the cost of a unit is 20% cheaper than in the preceding case. In view of the reduction in the cost of the container to 10 kopecks, the cost price becomes cheaper. In this case, at the normal minimum, the cost price without excise will be 32 kopecks per 1 bottle for liqueurs, and with excise—97 kopecks. As is evident from the comparison of cost price and excise, the latter amounts to 67% of the cost price of the product.

From the above calculation, the representative of Sibgosspirt goes on to say, it is obvious how great the significance of the excise is in the matter of distributing vodka products. Only by changing the excise taxation on alcohol and on finished vodka products in the direction of reduction can one count on a wide distribution of these products among not only the urban but also the rural population, and consequently, thereby ensure the displacement of samogon and the preservation of the people’s strength and property.

In addition, there is another extremely important aspect, of great practical and principled significance. In this case the matter concerns the use of spices that turn pure and diluted alcohol into liqueurs, tinctures, and so forth. This is undoubtedly an erroneous measure, against which one must protest in every possible way. The addition of various admixtures to alcoholic beverages is a very ancient phenomenon; it was already known and used even by the brewing of ancient Egypt, where infusions of aromatic herbs, roots, and especially juniper berries were very widespread, as was hops in modern brewing. The addition of various spices, intoxicating substances, and the use of herbs and berries for the preparation of liqueurs and tinctures were widely applied in the last decades of the farming-out system for the vodka, the so-called “pennik,” released by the tax farmers. The use of these additions in ancient brewing is understandable: it masked the consequences of fermentation defects then inevitable, what are now called “beer diseases,” resulting from infection—errors of production that are now easily eliminated. The reasons for the use of hops in modern brewing lie in its flavoring and aromatic constituents, characteristic and necessary for beer, and in its preservative value. The transformation by the tax farmers of vodka into an infusion of all sorts of spices was a consequence of its low quality, of dilution with water, which was masked by the addition of all sorts of intoxicating substances in order to deceive the consumer in his assessment of the strength and purity of the vodka. The necessity for the tax farmers of various liqueurs and tinctures, called “pennik,” usually obtained from good alcohol, is also understandable: it was a means of drawing in and accustoming people unaccustomed to alcohol by offering them beverages attractive in taste, yet already sufficiently strong and intoxicating. Those who had taken this bait usually did not linger over these relatively expensive drinks and, through the efforts of experienced tavern dealers, quickly shifted to ordinary sivukha. Obviously, of all the reasons considered here that once made the use of spices necessary, at present only one has a place—namely, the need somehow to mask the weakness of the vodka being released, which is rejected by the very consumer for whom it was intended.

What, then, are the final results of releasing twenty-percent liqueurs and tinctures? As already indicated, habitual consumers of vodka are not at all satisfied by this measure. For them the addition of spices has the opposite effect to what was expected; and the increase in price, thanks to this, even without it excessively high for consumption of flavored and weak vodka, has led to people accustomed to pure (40%) vodka preferring to turn to samogon, which is more accessible in measure and corresponds to their requirements as to strength. In addition, in liqueurs and tinctures, as before and now, there is still another negative side. Modern liqueurs and tinctures, not being similar to simple vodka, and recalling to—

to a certain degree, in packaging, taste, and appearance, the former grape wines, but, being considerably stronger than them, they attract and are consumed by persons who were initially not inclined toward such strong beverages. Because of this, such liqueurs are an unnecessary pretext for drawing into alcoholism new persons who until then were wholly alien to it. Moreover, the addition of spices to a pure solution of aqueous alcohol increases the harmful effect of alcoholic beverages on the organism, while at the same time making them more expensive.

All this indicates that, in wishing to satisfy the existing and deep-rooted need of the Siberian population for spirituous beverages, it would be more expedient, instead of various kinds of 20% liqueurs, to give it what it actually needs and what is less harmful and more accessible in price—namely, the ordinary for Russia, well-purified 40° vodka—thereby satisfying those who truly feel a need for it and not creating cadres of new alcoholics by spreading among the population unnecessary, yet nevertheless sufficiently strong, beverages.

Such are, so to speak, the technical weak points of the measure concerning the drinking question for the conditions of Siberia. However, besides this, the measure under consideration also contains serious contradictions of principle with the fundamental idea of the entire policy in this direction over the indicated years, the task of which was reduced to the struggle against alcoholism. In connection with what has been set forth above, it is obvious that the consumption of alcoholic beverages must no longer be regarded as a crime, but as a malady of humanity, as a dangerous, grave, hereditary disease, transmitted from generation to generation and capable, to a certain extent, of being eradicated only by proper treatment over generations. But if this is so, then it is impermissible to allow revenues of the treasury, and still more to build the prosperity of the state budget, on drinking taxes, i.e. on phenomena connected with forces that destroy the national organism. The most that can be admitted in the present case is such a situation in which all expenditures connected with the struggle against alcoholism and its lamentable consequences will be covered from drinking taxes. Meanwhile, in the indicated measure on the drinking question—connected with the permission to release vodka products in Siberia—just as in all historically developed measures of the drinking trade in Russia since the time of Ivan the Terrible, customs duties, taxes, excise, and, in general, the enormous revenue of the treasury, which several times increases for the consumer the cost of vodka products, invariably run like a red thread. Judging by the calculation already cited of the Tomsk Administration of Sibgosspirt, the cost of the vodka product itself amounted, thanks to the excise, to only 33% of the selling price of the product. If, besides this, one takes into account that the relative cost of a weak twenty-degree liqueur is almost 2.5 times more expensive than the former forty-degree pure vodka and considerably exceeds the price even of the best varieties of strong home-distilled liquor, it will become obvious that the release of twenty-degree vodka products was a hopeless means against clandestine distilling and the hidden growth of alcoholism in Siberia.

All the indicated circumstances, it appears, were the reason for the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR of December 3, 1924, published in Izvestia VTsIK on December 4, 1924, by which the release of thirty-degree vodka, i.e. “Russian bitter,” was permitted, at a selling price of 1 ruble 75 kopecks per bottle. In its properties, appearance, and strength, this product to a certain extent already approached the customary requirements of broad strata of the population. By this governmental act the weak points of the preceding situation were noticeably mitigated; however, they were still not eliminated to such an extent that the state vodka of the new type (at 30%) could successfully compete, in its price and strength, with home-distilled liquor. Under such conditions the latter everywhere retained—

entailed an undemanding rural consumer, doing very little to weaken the possibilities for clandestine distillation and to reduce the consumption of home-distilled liquor.

In connection with what has been set forth above, one of the urgent tasks in the struggle against the development of clandestine distillation is the implementation of radical measures that would undermine the very foundations of its existence. Such a measure is, first of all, the actual, and not theoretical, deprivation of clandestine distillation of the possibility of selling its product. The only reliable means of doing this, under the conditions that have developed by the present time, can only be the release of a permitted alcoholic product sufficiently close to the mass consumer. The latter, in its quality, cost, and accessibility, must meet the real, and not mythical, demand of the population. The positive consequences of such a measure are clear: first, clandestine distillation is by this measure knocked out of the position, hitherto wholly inaccessible, that it has occupied; second, a grave national malady, having become hidden and therefore entirely surrendered to criminal exploitation, is made open, accessible to treatment and to the struggle against it; third, the indicated measure eliminates the great losses of many moral, physical, and material values of the people and the country, now being destroyed in enormous quantities in connection with clandestine distillation. It is evident that the entire matter of satisfying and regulating the population’s still unavoidable demand for alcohol must be concentrated exclusively in the hands of the government and its organs. And if the authorities approach this question not from the standpoint of extracting imaginary state revenues, inevitably connected with the encouragement and exploitation of drunkenness, but from the standpoint of the grave necessity of allowing the legal consumption of alcoholic products, for the purposes of a further systematic and comprehensive struggle against this highly complex, age-old phenomenon of national life, then this will be the best guarantee of success in the struggle against alcoholism. Naturally, in such a matter one cannot count on rapid success, or on the universal effectiveness of one or another measure; and, while adopting any other measure, one must vigilantly watch how life itself responds to it.

All that has been set forth above apparently formed the basis of the governmental measure published in the newspapers¹), consisting in the following: “The Presidium of the Union Central Executive Committee has recognized it as expedient to establish the central administration of the state alcohol monopoly (‘Centrospirt’), operating on the principles of commercial accounting. All rectification plants and the premises of former state-owned wine warehouses are transferred to the jurisdiction of Centrospirt, with the exception of the rectification departments of distillery plants. The Presidium of the Central Executive Committee establishes that the manufacture of grain wine (vodka) is permitted exclusively from rectified spirit and constitutes an exclusive right of the state, exercised by Centrospirt. Vodka must be prepared at a strength of forty degrees. The manufacture of vodka products is permitted both in state and in private vodka plants. Liqueurs and infusions may be prepared at strengths up to 40 degrees. Trade in vodka on the domestic market, as well as in vodka products and cognac, may be carried out, in compliance with the existing laws and regulations, by state, cooperative, and private enterprises alike. The decision of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee comes into force on October 1, 1925.”²)

There is another practically very important aspect of the matter in this question that must be mentioned here, namely—the broad approximation of the calcu-

¹) Newspaper Krasnoe Znamia, No. 197, August 30, 1925, Tomsk.

²) The present article, having been completed by that time, no longer concerns itself with conditions after 1925.

of a widespread legal product of consumption among the population, which is indispensable if one wishes to drive out all other prohibited, usually poor-quality and harmful-to-health products of clandestine distilling.

It is self-evident that clandestine distilling can be undermined only when the cost of vodka permitted by law excludes the possibility of competition with it by home-distilled spirits. Moreover, the greater the reduction in this cost in the first years after the introduction of the legal sale of vodka—in that period when clandestine distilling still holds firmly—the more significant the effect of this measure should be. It is clear that, as clandestine distilling is brought to an end, the cost of vodka permitted for consumption, and of all other alcoholic beverages, should gradually but steadily be raised, along with other corresponding measures.

The long experience of combating the consumption of alcoholic beverages that has taken place in Russia, in connection with the history of the development of the drinking trade at different times and in individual countries, leads to the quite definite conclusion that the inculcation of popular sobriety exclusively by methods of prohibition and prosecution is a hopeless task, leading to results opposite to the intended aim. Such a method, in its essence, amounts only to the mechanical removal of all external conditions connected with the consumption of alcoholic beverages, but it does not touch at all the fundamental forces that give rise to this phenomenon.

The principal error of this method is also that, because of it, an obvious popular evil becomes clandestine and therefore makes the struggle against it more difficult. At the same time, such a situation opens the broadest and most varied possibilities for the criminal exploitation of this popular weakness. This circumstance and its grave consequences must be firmly grasped by all those ardent opponents of the sale of alcoholic beverages permitted by the authorities who, at the sight of such sale—regardless of the conditions—are invariably inclined to burst into pathetic cries that the authorities are supposedly making the people drunk for the sake of treasury revenues, that it is necessary to close the legal trade in vodka, beer..., that it is a breeding ground of drunkenness, and so on and so forth. In doing so, it is completely overlooked that, in place of one permitted and regulated place of legal sale, with its premature closure there usually appears a whole series of clandestine taverns, with all the profoundly negative consequences connected with this. Thus, the sale of alcoholic beverages authorized and regulated by the authorities, at a certain stage of alcoholism, is an undoubtedly necessary means of struggle, a kind of brake restraining the development of this phenomenon. And just as on a railway it is difficult, and at times entirely impossible, to control the movement of a train without a brake, without exposing it to inevitable destruction, so too in the struggle against alcoholism the authorities at the present time would be completely powerless if they did not have in their hands, on the one side, the possibility of determining the degree and forms of the population’s inclination toward alcohol, and on the other, the means of satisfying—and consequently also regulating—this inclination according to their will. Obviously, in the present case the latter must be directed by the true interests of the people, which lie in the tasks of an all-round and systematic reduction in the consumption of alcoholic beverages by strictly grounded and vitally expedient measures.

Without touching upon the question of whence and how the inclination toward alcohol arose, which has already been examined earlier, it should only be noted here that, for modern humanity, this inclination is a highly developed, firmly maintained, and exceptionally widespread hereditary propensity, fixed by

for centuries and through an endless series of preceding generations. In view of this, if one wishes to weaken, in present and subsequent generations, the pathological craving for alcohol, it is necessary above all to direct efforts toward the causes of alcoholism, working in this sense in various directions—namely, educational, moral, cultural, and economic.

Accordingly, the tasks in the upbringing of the rising generations are: the weakening, by appropriate methods of physical education, of pathological inclinations and the development of healthy capacities of the organism; the protection of these generations from the possibility of sustaining or developing inclinations toward alcohol; the inculcation, through cultural education, of ideas about the impermissibility of consuming alcoholic beverages, and clarification from early childhood—and, of course, in schools—of all the grievous consequences of this. In general, it is obvious that the struggle against alcoholism must be conducted not with words, but by raising the culture of the popular masses, improving the economic conditions of existence, and creating a situation in which the natural need for amusements would find other possibilities for itself, outside any connection with alcohol. The rise of self-consciousness, the development of active and vigorous societies of popular sobriety, and energetic and reasonable work in the struggle against alcoholism by professional unions—which must take upon themselves this task as one of exceptional importance in the individual, social, and state sense—and, finally, rational support of this struggle by the government: all this must become one of the urgent and most important tasks of the present time. Moreover, for the possibility of success in this matter, it must be firmly understood that extreme measures—so to speak, maximalism in the struggle against alcoholism, this disease of humanity that has developed over centuries—are altogether inappropriate, yielding results opposite to those at which they are directed. Caution, restraint, and an attentive and thoughtful attitude toward the way life itself responds to the measures being undertaken must be obligatory, while at the same time constituting a reliable pledge of the success—though slowly developing, yet undoubted—of such work.

Upon the attainment of known results by means of the method considered here—action upon the primary causes of alcoholism—it appears possible to proceed already, so to speak, to physical means of combating the manifestations of this evil, i.e., to the prosecution of all violations of sobriety and of everything that contributes to them, as well as to restrictions on, or prohibitions of, the partial or complete consumption of alcoholic beverages, and so forth.

Provided such preparatory work is carried out, the national organism, having been somewhat improved with respect to its inclination toward alcoholism, will already find within itself sufficient strength for further self-defense. In the united subsequent efforts of the government and the people lies the pledge of the final victory over that terrible social affliction which alcoholism is at the present time.

To the article by Prof. S. V. Lebedev.

ERGOGRAPH RECORD

Fig. 1.

before drinking beer, work = 5680 kg-mt.

after drinking 1 glass of beer, after 10 min.
work = 3675 kg-mt.

To the article by Prof. S. V. Lebedev.

THE EFFECT OF ALCOHOL

ON MEMORIZING NUMBERS AND MENTAL ARITHMETIC

Drawing No. 2.

MEMORIZING NUMBERS

▧ DAYS OF COMPLETE SOBRIETY

■ DAYS WITH THE INTAKE OF 1 GLASS

OF BEER BEFORE THE EXPERIMENT

Drawing No. 3.

ADDITION OF NUMBERS

To the article by Prof. S. V. Lebedev.

ALCOHOLISM

AND BODILY INJURIES.

Distribution of 1,143 cases by days of the week
in a large European city.

Figure 4.

Development and Relative Magnitudes

of per-capita consumption among the population of beer, wine, and vodka for 1885–1905.

France

1885–1889
1900–1905

Belgium

1885–1889
1900–1905

Italy

1885–1889
1900–1905

Denmark

1900–1905

Germany

1885–1889
1900–1905

Austria-Hungary

1885–1889
1900–1905

North Am. U.S.

1885–1889
1900–1904

Sweden

1885–1889
1900–1904

Russia

1885–1889
1900–1905

Drawing No. 5.

To the article by Prof. S. Z. Gregorov.

Sweden

1900–1904

England

1900–1905

Norway

1900–1904
1885–1889

Legend:

• Vodka
• Wine
• Beer

To the article by Prof. S. V. Lebedev.

AVERAGE PER-CAPITA CONSUMPTION OF BEER, WINE, AND VODKA

per head of population in civilized countries, 1885–1905.

BEER CONSUMPTION.

Chart 5-a.

Vertical axis: liters.

Countries and years shown along the horizontal axis:

• Belgium: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• England: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• Germany: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• Denmark: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• United States of North America: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• Switzerland: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/04
• Sweden: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/04
• Austria-Hungary: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• France: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• Norway: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05
• Russia: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/04
• Italy: 1885/89; 1890/94; 1895/99; 1900/05

To the article by Prof. S. V. Lebedev.

WINE CONSUMPTION

Liters

Countries and periods shown: France—1885/89, 1890/94, 1895/99, 1900/05; Italy—1885/89, 1890/94, 1895/99, 1900/05; Switzerland; Austria-Hungary; Germany; Belgium; Holland; North American United States; England.

VODKA CONSUMPTION

Liters

Countries and periods shown: Denmark; Austria-Hungary; Germany; Holland; Sweden; Belgium; France; North American United States; Switzerland; Russia; England; Norway; Italy.

To the article by Prof. S. V. Lebedev.

Per-capita consumption of wine (—) in relation to excise rates (══) and the grain harvest per capita of both sexes (----)

1863–1903

Figure 6.

Axes and labels:

• Years: 1863–1903
• Poods
• Buckets of 40° wine
• Excise-rate labels: 4 kop.; 5 kop.; 6 kop.; 7 kop.; 8 kop.; 9 kop.; 9¼ kop.; 10 kop.; 11 kop.

1. Ibid., p. 12. ↩↩↩

2. 1. Statistics of Production of the Oblast Excise Departments. Part II. Publication of the Main Administration of Non-Salary Revenues, issue II—1912.

   ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

3. Ibid., p. [[unclear: page number]]. ↩↩↩↩↩