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Vodka and Corruption in Russia on the Eve of Emancipation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

David Christian
David Christian*
Affiliation:
Macquarie University
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Extract

Vodka was big business in nineteenth century Russia, was it is in the Soviet Union today. In the 1850s, the total turnover of the trade was at least 200 million rubles, or more than 20 percent of the value of all internal trade. In 1859, the government's share of this huge turnover exceeded 120 million rubles, which accounted for more than 40 percent of all ordinary revenues. As Nikolai Ogarev pointed out, this huge sum was enough to cover most of the peacetime expenses of the army on which Russia's status as a great power depended. Figures for 1859 were certainly unusual; nevertheless, liquor revenues averaged 32 percent of ordinary revenues throughout the period from 1805 to 1862. Vodka was the single most important source of government revenues in this period, and the government had, therefore, a huge stake in the success and expansion of the trade.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 46 , Issue 3-4 , Fall/Winter 1987 , pp. 471 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1987

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References

1. There are estimates of total turnover in Trudy kommissii, vysochaishe uchrezhdennoi dlia sostavleniia proekta polozheniia ob aktsize s pitei (St. Petersburg, 1861) 1 (no. 12): 12–13; N. G. Chernyshevskii, “Zapiska g. Zakrevskago,” Sovremennik, December 1860, “Sovremennoe obozrenie,” pp. 195–215; la. Georg, “Vzgliad na istoriiu i sovremennoe sostoianie piteinykh sborov po velikorossiisskimguberniiam,” in Vestnik promyshlennosti, no. 3 (September 1858), 102–126; and Kolokol, March 1858, 1: 10. For N. M. Druzhinin's estimate of the value of internal trade, see P. G. Ryndziunskii, Utverzhdenie kapitalizma v Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 1978), p. 10. For a general survey of the historyof vodka in Russia, see Smith, R. E. F. and Christian, David, Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 Google Scholar, chaps. 3, 4, 5, and 8.

2. Herzen, A. I. and Ogarev, N. P., Kolokol (15 April 1862) (facsimile ed., Moscow, 1962)Google Scholar, for 1862, 1: 129. Liquor revenues retain their significance in the Soviet Union. In 1979, taxes on alcoholconstituted 29 percent of all taxes paid by the Soviet population (25.4 billion rubles) and 9 percent oftotal state revenue. See Treml, V. G., Alcohol in the USSR: A Statistical Study (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982), pp. 30–31 Google ScholarPubMed.

3. Calculated from figures in Ministerstvo finansov. 1802–1902, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1904)1: 616–619, 622–627, 632–633.

4. Svedeniia o piteinykh sborakh, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1860–1861), 3: 51–61. The privileged provinces included, in addition to the Baltic provinces, the Lithuanian provinces of Kovno, Grodno, and Vil'na; the White Russian provinces of Minsk, Mogilev, and Vitebsk; the Ukrainian provinces of Kiev, Podol'e, Volyn', Poltava, Chernigov, and Khar'kov; the New Russian provinces of Ekaterinoslav, Kherson, and the Tauride; and Bessarabia.

5. Svedeniia 3: 61–66; V. A. Kokorev, “Ob otkupakh na prodazhu vina,” Russkii vestnik kn. 2 (November 1858) Sovremennaia letopis', p. 42.

6. In 1859, the Great Russian provinces generated more than 70 percent of all governmentrevenues from vodka; Svedeniia 3: 10.

7. The most important single source on the tax farm in this period is the five-volume publication prepared in 1860 and 1861 by the government commission that recommended the abolition of taxfarming: Svedeniia o piteinykh sborakh, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1860–1861). This has been the mainsource for all later work on the history of the liquor trade in Russia before 1863, including I. G.Pryzhov's fascinating Istoriia kabakov v Rossii v sviyazi s istoriei russkago naroda (Moscow, 1868). The following account is also based on Svedeniia, as well as on extensive reading of the journalism, bothlegal and illegal, of the late 1850s. It is part of a larger study of vodka and Russian society in the early nineteenth century.

8. Among the best discussions of bribery are those in H.-J. Torke, “Das russische Beamtentumin der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Forschungen zur Osteuropaischen Geschichte 13 (1967): 7–345 (particularly pp. 224–241); Zaionchkovskii, P. A., Pravitel'stvennyi apparat samoderzhavnoi Rossii v XIX v. (Moscow: Mysl', 1978)Google Scholar; and the brief discussion in Starr, S. F., Decentralization and Self-Government in Russia, 1830–1870 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972)Google Scholar, chap. 1. On theUSSR today, see Simis, Konstantin M., USSR: The Corrupt Society. The Secret World of Soviet Capitalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982 Google Scholar, particularly chap. 3, “The District Mafia,” whichoffers many suggestive parallels with local government in tsarist Russia.

9. Torke, “Das russische Beamtentum,” p. 237.

10. Ekonomicheskii ukazatel’ 41 (October 1858).

11. Svedeniia 3: 248–249.

12. Samoilov, A., “Vziatkodateli,” pt. 1, Ekonomicheskii ukazatel’ 44 (2–14 November 1857): 1, 039.Google Scholar

13. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvennyi apparat, p. 156.

14. See ibid., p. 68.

15. Samoilov, “Vziatkodateli” 1: 1, 039.

16. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvennyi apparat, p 76; I. V. Selivanov, “Zapiski,” in Russkaia starino, June 1880, pp. 293–294; Kolokol, 1 November 1858.

17. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvennyi apparat, pp. 74–76.

18. [ Grot, K. K.], Konstantin Karlovich Grot kak gosudarstvennyi deiatel': Materialy dlia ego biografii i kharakteristiki, 3 vols. (Petrograd, 1915) 1: 114 Google Scholar; Svedeniia 3: 114–115.

19. Grot, Material)) 1: 8.

20. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stsvennyi apparat, pp. 73–75.

21. Ibid., p. 155.

22. Koshelev, cited in Svedeniia 3: 250.

23. Herséwanoff, N., Des fermes d'eau-de-vie en Russie (Paris: Bonaventure et Ducessois, 1858, pp. 22–23 Google Scholar.

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27. Ibid., p. 158.

28. Kolokol, 1 November 1858. This article led to an enquiry, as a result of which, Panchulidzewas dismissed.

29. Saltykov, Sobranie sochinenii 1: 143.

30. Koshelev, cited in Svedeniia, 3: 249–250.

31. Kolokol (l March 1858) 1: 10.

32. Kitarra, , Publichnyi kurs, Vinokureniia, chitannyi po priglasheniiu Ministerstvafinansov, 3 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1862, 1866, 1868), 1: 57–59.Google Scholar

33. It is of some interest to compare these figures with the average percentage of income spenton bribes by illegal entrepreneurs in the USSR today. Simis guesses that even in less-corruptregions of the USSR, “underground entrepreneurs expend around 15 to 20 per cent of their incomeson bribery” (Simis, USSR: The Corrupt Society, p. 168).

34. Koshelev, Svedeniia 3: 249.

35. Moskovskie vedomosti, no. 142, 17 June 1859.

36. Grot, Materialy 1: 114.

37. V. N. Elagin, “Otkupnoe delo,” Sovremennik no. 9 (1858) (“Slovesnost “’), pp. 185–264; no.10 (“Slovesnost “*), pp. 347–426.

38. Kolokol, March 1858.

39. Torke, “Das russische Beamtentum,” pp. 234–235.

40. Kolokol, 1 June 1859; Russkoia starina, no. 3 (1880), p. 573.

41. See, for example, Grot, Materialy 1: 172–173.

42. Svedeniia 1: 180–182

43. Polnoe sobranie zakonov (1850) 24, 058.

44. These were published from the late 1820s under the title: Kratkoe obozrenie piteinykh sborov …, by the Ministry of Finance. They are described in A. G., [Gersevanov, N.], O p'ianstve v Rossii i sredstvakh istrebleniia ego (Odessa, 1845), pp. 14–17 Google Scholar.

45. On Kokorev, see P. L. Liebermann, “V. A. Kokorev: An Industrial Entrepreneur in NineteenthCentury Russia,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1981); and Kokorev, , in Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, ed. Wieczynski, J. L. (New York: Academic, 1976) 17: 99–100 Google Scholar.

46. The bucket, or vedro, was the standard measure. It was equal to 12.3 liters.

47. Korsak, A., “O vinokurenii,” in Obzor razlichnykh otraslei manufakturnoi promyshlennosti Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1865) 3: 332–337 Google Scholar. These figures are consistent with, and may be based on, thefigures in Svedeniia 3: 92, and 4: 177, and 277–281.

48. A. Samoilov, “Vziatkodateli,” pt. 1: 1, 039.

49. Kokorev, “Ob otkupakh,” p. 42.

50. This claim should be qualified. After selling their basic quota of vodka, tax farmers received extra amounts at a cost price of about a ruble. Some contemporaries argued that if they had concentrated on selling large quantities of good vodka, rather than on exploiting monopoly prices, theycould have sold at 3 rubles and still made profits. If so, then their strategy must be regarded as acommercial choice rather than an unavoidable necessity. Korsak, “O vinokurenii,” pp. 345–346.

51. Svedeniia 3: 248.

52. Vestnik promyslennosti, no. 4 (October 1858), p. 18.

53. Svedeniia 3: 92; Chernyshevskii, “Zapiska g. Zakrevskago,” Sovremennik (December 1860); “Sovremennoe obozrenie,” pp. 195–215; review of la. Ionson, Rukovodstvo k vinokureniiu (St.Petersburg, 1859), in Trudy Imperatorskogo ekonomicheskogo obshchestva, no. 3 (1859), pp. 54–66.

54. A. Korsak, “Nalogi i vinnyi otkup,” Russkaia gazeta, nos. 6, 7, 9 (1858) and no. 1 (1859); thisreference is from no. 9 (1858).

55. Medvedev, M., O khlebnom vine i ego podmesiakh (St. Petersburg, 1863), pp. 24–26 Google Scholar; Turgenev, N. I., Rossiia i russkie, 1st Russian ed. (Moscow, 1907), pp. 210–221 Google Scholar [first published in French, in 1844].

56. See Kitarra, Publichnyi kurs, 1: 57–59.

57. Turgenev, Rossiia i russkie, p. 211.

58. Ibid., p. 212.

59. Ibid. The practice was so common that it spawned a special verb, podtalkivat', defined by Dal', as “an old custom of tavernkeepers “; Dal', V., Tolkovyi slovar’ zhivago velikorusskago iazyka, 4th ed. (St. Petesburg, 1912–1914)Google Scholar.

60. Moskovskie vedomosti, 19 June 1859.

61. Russkii dnevnik, no. 51 (7 March 1859).

62. Svedeniia 3: 282.

63. Svedeniia 4: 453–454.

64. Korksa, “O vinokurenii,” p. 353.

65. This is the estimate adopted by Korksa, “O vinokurenii,” p. 353.

66. For the estimate of 10 percent for undermeasuring, see Kitarra, Publichnyi kurs, p. 57.

67. Svedeniia 3: 35.

68. Ibid. 1: 75 and ff.

69. Ibid. 1: 82–83.

70. Pryzhov, Istoriia kabakov, pp. 271–272.

71. Svedeniia 1: 84.

72. Kokorev, “Ob otkupakh,” p. 35.

73. Svedeniia 3: 7, 22.

74. Dobroliubov, N. A., “Narodnoe delo,” Sobranie sochinenii v 9-ti tomakh (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962) 5: 249.Google Scholar

75. P. P. Semenov, obituary of K. K. Grot in Russkaia starina. no. 4 (1898), p. 220.

76. Smith and Christian, Bread and Sail, pp. 311–314.

77. Liebermann, “Kokorev, V. A. “

78. Pogrebinskii, A. P., Ocherki istorii finansov dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (XIX-XX vv.) (Moscow, 1954), p. 34 Google Scholar. Attempts to estimate the sums involved were made by E. S. Kozlovskii, “Vinnye otkupai ikh mesto v pervonachal'nom nakoplenii kapitala v Rossii,” in Trudy Leningradskogo finansovo ekonomicheskogo instituta, 1947 g., vyp. III.

79. Thompson, E. P., “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past & Present 50 (February 1971): 76–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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81. Svedeniia 3: 61–66.