Continuity and change in Russian alcohol consumption from the tsars to transition

Social History

Volumn 31, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 160-179

  Mäkinen, Ilkka Henrik ^a   Reitan, Therese C ^a  

^a SÖDERTÖRN UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33644963001     PISSN: 03071022     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03071020600562983     Document Type: Article

References (153)

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13. 'Cross-cultural' studies of drinking patterns and cultures are often synonymous with 'cross-country' or 'cross-regional' comparisons. Examples of comparative cultural studies are found in D. B. Heath (ed.), International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture (Westport, Conn., 1995)
14. D. J. Pittman and C. R. Snyder (eds), Society, Culture, and Drinking Patterns (New York, 1962)
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18. E. Tolvanen, 'I and others: Alcohol use among older people as a social and cultural phenomenon', Ageing and Society, XVIII, 5 (September 1998), 563-84.
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20. R.W. Wilsnack, N. D. Vogeltanz et al., ' Gender difference in alcohol consumption and adverse drinking consequences: Cross-cultural patterns', Addiction, XCV, 2 (February 2000), 251-65.
21. E. Aharonovich, D. Hasin et al., 'Differences in drinking patterns among Ashkenazic and Sephardic Israeli adults', Journal of Studies on Alcohol, LXII, 3 (May 2001), 301-6
22. R. Caetano, 'Prevalence, incidence and stability of drinking problems among whites, blacks and Hispanics', Journal of Studies on Alcohol, LVIII, 6 (November 1997), 565-73
23. J. W. Frank, R. S. Moore et al., 'Historical and cultural roots of drinking problems among American Indians', American Journal of Public Health, XC, 3 (March 2000), 344-51
24. P. B. Johnson and H. L. Johnson, 'Cultural and family influences that maintain the negative meaning of alcohol', Journal of Studies on Alcohol, LX, 2 (March 1999), 79-84
25. A. J. Treno, M. L. Alaniz et al., 'Drinking among US Hispanics: A multivariate analysis of alcohol consumption patterns', Hispanic Journal of Behavioural Sciences, XXI, 4 (November 1999), 405-20.
26. H. Z. Li and L. Rosenblood, 'Exploring factors influencing alcohol consumption patterns among Chinese and Caucasians', Journal of Studies on Alcohol, LV, 4 (July 1994), 427-34.
27. B. B. Benda, 'An examination of a reciprocal relationship between religiosity and different forms of delinquency within a theoretical model', Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, XXXIV, 2 (May 1997), 163-87
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29. J. C. Brannock, S. L. Schandler et al., 'Cross-cultural and cognitive factors examined in groups of adolescent drinkers', Journal of Drug Issues, XX, 3 (Summer 1990), 427-43
30. C. C. Lo and G. Globetti, ' Gender differences in drinking patterns of American and Hong Kong adolescents', International Journal of Comparative Sociology, XL, 3 (August 1999), 307-32
31. Y. D. Neumark, G. Rahav et al., 'Alcohol drinking patterns among Jewish and Arab men and women in Israel', Journal of Studies on Alcohol, LXII, 4 (July 2001), 443-8
32. S. Tomsen 'Youth violence and the limits of moral panic', Youth Studies XVI, 1 (March 1997), 25-31.
33. D. B. Heath, 'Continuity and change in drinking patterns of the Bolivian Camba' in D. J. Pittman and H. R. White (eds), Society, Culture and Drinking Patterns Reexamined (New Brunswick, 1991)
34. in the same volume M. E. Hilton and W. B. Clark, 'Changes in American drinking patterns and problems, 1967-1984
35. T. Brennan, 'Towards the cultural history of alcohol in France', Journal of Social History, XXIII, 1 (Fall 1989), 71-92.
36. K. M. Fillmore, J. M. Golding et al., 'Cross-national comparisons of drinking behaviour as determined from the collaborative alcohol-related longitudinal project', Alcohol Health and Research World, XVIII, 3 (1993), 198-205
37. B. F. Grant, T. C. Harford et al., 'Stability of alcohol consumption among youth: A national longitudinal survey', Journal of Studies on Alcohol, IL, 3 (May 1988), 253-60.
38. R. Room and K. Mäkelä, 'Typologies of the cultural position of drinking', Journal of Studies on Alcohol, LXI, 3 (May 2000), 475-83
39. M. Ramstedt, 'Alcohol and suicide in 14 European countries', Addiction XCVI, 1 (Supplement 2000), S59-S75.
40. See, for example, B. M. Segal, Russian Drinking. Use and Abuse of Alcohol in Pre-Revolutionary Russia (New Brunswick, 1987).
41. ibid., xx.
42. In this case, 'Russian' must be understood broadly as a geographic, as well as an ethnic/ national term.
43. R. E. F. Smith and D. Christian, Bread and Salt. A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia (Cambridge, 1984)
44. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit.
45. B. M. Segal, The Drunken Society. Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the Soviet Union (New York, 1990)
46. Laura L. Phillips, Bolsheviks and the Bottle. Drink and Worker Culture in St Petersburg, 1900-1929 (DeKalb, 2000)
47. D. Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600-1930 (London, 1999).
48. Frank et al., op. cit.
49. Even within a Russian, or Soviet, context the drinking patterns of women and men are very dissimilar, especially as far as quantity and frequency are concerned. Gender-specific historical data are scarce and discontinuous. In 1908, for example, women constituted a seventh part of the 9760 annual patients of a large clinic for alcoholics in Moscow (see L. S. Minor in N. Vildorchik, '1-ii Vserossiiskii Syezd po Borbe s Pyanstvom' ('First All-Russian Conference on the Battle with Drunkenness'), Russkii Vrach, 3/1910, 95).
50. As to more recent times, interview data from the southern town of Taganrog, collected in 1994, indicated that 29 per cent of men could be characterized as high consumers of alcohol, while only 3 per cent of women would fit in this category: See P. Carlson, The Unhealthy Decade (Stockholm, 2000).
51. The results of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Study, conducted in the 1990s, are still debated, but it is agreed that Russian men in the 1990s drank between four and six times more than women (see A. Nemtsov, 'Alcohol consumption level in Russia: A viewpoint on monitoring health conditions in the Russian Federation', Addiction, XCVIII, 3 (2003), 369-70).
52. Nestor, The Russian Primary Chronicle. Laurentian Text (Massachusetts [1953]), 97.
53. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 4
54. S. White, Russia Goes Dry. Alcohol, State and Society (Cambridge, 1996)
55. Smith and Christian, op. cit.
56. Kvas is a lightly fermented beer, based on rye, barley, wheat, pastry or bread, and flavoured with fruits, berries or herbs. Its alcohol content is less than 2 per cent. See V. Treml, Alcohol in the USSR (Durham, North Carolina, 1982), 3
57. J. M. Hartley, A Social History of the Russian Empire 1650-1825 (London, 1999), 187.
58. Moon, op. cit., 84f.
59. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 30f.
60. According to Smith and Christian (op. cit., 88f.) some researchers believe that distilled drinks - vodka - reached Russia in the late fourteenth century. However, by the first half of the sixteenth century spirits were certainly known in Russia and were most probably brought to Russia from the West.
61. D. Christian, Living Water. Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation (Oxford, 1990), 77, 90-1.
62. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 31.
63. In his 'Spiritual Regulation' Peter I included demands for bishops to curb the disorderly behaviour of priests. The Synod primarily took action in extreme cases, resulting in some instances of corporal punishment and defrocking on the grounds of drunkenness. See Hartley, op. cit., 224f.
64. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 50.
65. It should, however, be mentioned that abstaining was also dominant among the Orthodox Old Believers (see, for example, Hartley, op. cit., 188).
66. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 51f.
67. 'Belarus' is here used about the present country, while 'Belorussia' refers to the historical unit.
68. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 78
69. Hartley, op. cit., 188.
70. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 80.
71. Beer and Braga are both made of barley and flour with an alcohol content of 4-8 per cent. See Treml, op. cit., 62.
72. Smith and Christian, op. cit., 223-4.
73. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 110.
74. Christian, Living Water, op. cit., 43 and glossary.
75. H. G. Wanklyn, 'Geographical aspects of Jewish settlement east of Germany', The Geographical Journal, VC, 3 (1940), 175-88
76. and Salo W. Baron, 'The Jewish question in the nineteenth century', Journal of Modern History, X, 1 (1938), 51-65.
77. Christian, Living Water, op. cit., 112
78. John D. Klier, 'The ambiguous legal status of Russian Jewry in the reign of Catherine II', Slavic Review, XXXV, 3 (September 1976), 504-17.
79. See, for example, T. H. Friedgot, Iuzovka and Revolution. Life and Work in Russia's Donbass, 1869-1924 (Princeton, 1989).
80. See P. Herlihy, ' "Joy of the Rus": Rites and rituals of Russian drinking', Russian Review, L, 2 (April 1991), 131-47.
81. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 105, 110f.
82. Smith and Christian, op. cit., 309.
83. Leading in the whole Empire was Courland with only 260 persons for each alcohol sales outlet.
84. Statisticheskii vremennik Rossiiskoi Imperii. Sbornik svedenii po Rossii za 1883 god (Spb., 1886).
85. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 114.
86. ibid., 112-14.
87. ibid., 115f.
88. This observation reminds us that the link between consumption and the consequences of drinking are not uniform. See, for example, R. Room, 'Intoxication and bad behaviour: Understanding cultural differences in the link', Social Science and Medicine LIII, 2 (July 2001), 189-99.
89. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 118.
90. See, for example, Segal, The Drunken Society, op. cit., 189ff.
91. See above for more on the so-called privileged provinces.
92. Christian, Living Water, op. cit., 71. Consumption figures are originally given in the old, Russian volume measure vedro ('bucket' or 'pail'), corresponding to 10-12 litres. We have equalled a pail with 12 litres.
93. Christian, Living Water, op. cit., 74. Note that the nineteenth-century gubernii cannot always be compared with the twentieth-century oblasts (used below) due to border changes.
94. It is interesting to note how this large (3-4-fold) difference disappeared after the abolition of the tax-farming system in 1863, and later turned into the opposite.
95. ibid., 72.
96. ibid., 90f.
97. J. Barnes, 'Liquor regulation in Russia', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CLXIII (1932), 227-33.
98. N. Weissman, 'Prohibition and alcohol control in the USSR: The 1920s campaign against illegal spirits', Soviet Studies, XXXVIII, 3 (1986), 349-68
99. Barnes, 'Liquor regulation in Russia', op. cit. High as it may seem, this figure still represents a considerable decrease from the average of 31 per cent of total government revenues created by liquor in the Russian Empire during the previous century.
100. See Christian, Living Water, op. cit., 6.
101. White, Russia Goes Dry. Alcohol, State and Society (Cambridge, 1996), 15f.
102. Segal, The Drunken Society, op. cit., 27, 51ff
103. V.Treml, 'Alcohol in the USSR: A fiscal dilemma', Soviet Studies, XXVII, 2 (April 1975), 161-77
104. S. Fischer, L. Summers and W. Nordhaus, 'Stabilization and economic reform in Russia', Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, I, 1 (1992), 77-126.
105. Adapted from A. M. Korovin, Samoubiistva i potreblenie vodki v evropeiskoi Rossii s 1903-go po 1912-ii-god (Moscow, 1916).
106. ibid., 8.
107. According to official sources (Narodnoe Khozyaistvo Respubliki Belarus v 1992 g., p.27), average alcohol-related mortality in 1990 was 11.5 cases per 100,000. The figure varied from 5 in Brest oblast, to 9-10 cases in Vitebsk, Gomel and Grodno oblasts, and 14-18 in Minsk and Mogilev oblasts.
108. The old gubernii of Uralsk and Turgai.
109. Bobak et al., 'Alcohol consumption in a national sample of the Russian population', Addiction, XCIV, 6 (June 1999), 857-66.
110. Source: Korovin, op. cit., 1916.
111. Source: Narodnoe Khozyaistvo RSFSR 1990.
112. Belorussian, Baltic and Kazakh areas had to be discarded due to lack of adequate data from 1989.
113. Customary divisions are, for instance, that of Ukraine into eastern and western parts and the separation of the most clearly 'ethnic' areas of Russia (Dagestan and the 'Tatar' areas). For the divisions of Russia proper see L. V. Vlasova's article 'Istoriko-kulturnye zony Rossii' in L. V. Vlasova and N. S. Polishchuk (eds), Russkie (Moscow, 1997), 107-8.
114. The consumption was, however, still below average in the provinces of Novgorod, Olonets and Vologda.
115. Except in the northern Ukrainian gubernii of Poltava and Chernigov.
116. Excluding the largely Muslim Terek and Dagestan.
117. Orenburg and Astrakhan gubernii.
118. Samara, Saratov and Simbirsk.
119. Podolia and Volhynia.
120. Pskov and Smolensk gubernii.
121. The gubernii of Vyatka, Kazan, Ufa, Uralsk and Turgai.
122. Excluding the Baltic, Belorussian and Kazakh units due to lack of adequate data.
123. The coefficient of variation (CV) was 43.7 per cent in 1910, and 28.0 per cent in 1989.
124. The north had now become homogeneous, and no lower-than-average consumption regions could any longer be found there.
125. Except for Voronezh, Belgorod and Bryansk oblasts.
126. Except for Chelyabinsk oblast. There were no data for 1989 for those parts of Kazakhstan that constituted the former gubernii of Uralsk and Turgai.
127. Mari-El, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan - all of which had a non-titular majority in 1989.
128. With the exceptions of Crimea and Donetsk oblast, which together with the city of Kiev had the highest alcohol consumption figures in Ukraine.
129. In Table 1 these four provinces appear under the heading 'Rest of the north'.
130. It is, furthermore, unlikely that the Baltic or the Belorussian cultural areas, for which there were no detailed data available, would have shown such large internal differences in 1989 had adequate data been available.
131. An observation made already by Korovin in 1916 (op. cit., 44, 47).
132. Including the Baltic, Belorussian and Kazakh areas, where no data were available for 1989.
133. Calculated as the change in the z-score.
134. Treml (op. cit., 70), speaking of the USSR. Treml identifies three major groups which appear to have significantly different drinking habits: Muslims, Jews and Slavs (73).
135. S. Weiss, 'Israel' in D. B. Heath (ed.), International Handbook on Alcohol and Culture (Westport, conn., 1995)
136. B. Glassner, 'Jewish sobriety' in Pittman and White (eds), op. cit.
137. G. Rahav et al., 'Drinking patterns of recent Russian immigrants and other Israelis: 1995 national survey results', American Journal of Public Health, LXXXIX, 8 (August 1999), 1212-16.
138. Segal, Russian Drinking, op. cit., 148
139. Treml, op. cit., 73. In 1910 alcohol consumption was clearly lower in the provinces associated with the Pale of Settlement (see above). However, the proportion of Jews there was not sufficiently large to account alone for the large differences between these provinces and the rest of the Empire.
140. See, for example, White, op. cit., xi
141. Segal, The Drunken Society, op. cit., xvi.
142. E. Österberg, 'Global status of alcohol control research', Alcohol Health and Research World, XVII, 3 (12993), 205-12.
143. Christian, op. cit., 74ff.
144. R. Room, 'Region and urbanization as factors in drinking' in B. Kissin and H. Begleiter (eds), The Pathogenesis of Alcoholism, Psychosocial Factors (New York, 1983), 555-604.
145. O. J. Skog, 'The collectivity of drinking cultures: A theory of the distribution of alcohol consumption', British Journal of Addiction, LXXX, 1 (March 1985), 83-99, 97.
146. O. J. Skog, 'The long waves of alcohol consumption: A social network perspective on cultural change', Social Networks, VIII, 1 (March 1986), 1-32, 29.
147. M. E. Hilton, 'Abstention in the general population in the USA', British Journal of Addiction, LXXXI, 1 (February 1986), 95-112, 111.
148. See A. M. Zolotaryev, 'Potrebleniye vina v Rossii v 1904-1909 godakh' in Statisticheskii Ezhegodnik Rossii (1909), lxxviii-cxvi. Zolotaryev ascribes this substantial difference to the availability of cash and alcohol outlets, as well as the presence of industrial work(ers), in urban areas.
149. M. Keller, 'Alcoholism: Nature and extent of the problem', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCXV (January 1958), 1-11, 4.
150. Room, op. cit.
151. See Christian, Living Water, op. cit., 90f.
152. The last four analysed together as 'the north' (cf. Figure 2).
153. Zolotaryev, op. cit., cvii-cviii.