Na sobranie po perevyboram mestkoma na stancii N chlen sojuza Mikula javilsja vdrebezgi p'janyj. Rabochaja massa krichala: «Nedopustimo!», no predstavitel’ uchka vystupil s zashhitoj Mikuly, ob”jasniv, chto p'janstvo – social'naja bolezn’ i chto mozhno vybirat’ i vypivak v sostav mestkoma …
Rabkor 2619 (Mikhail Bulgakov, O pol'ze alkogolizma, 1925)
At the assembly for the re-election of the local committee of the N – Railway station, Mikula, a union member, came pissed as a newt. The working masses shouted: “Impermissible!,” but the representative of the founding committee came to the defense of Mikula, explaining that drunkenness is a social disease and that it was therefore acceptable to elect drunkards …
Rabkor 2619 (Mikhail Bulgakov, On the Advantages of Alcoholism, 1925)
Setting the objectives of the new Bulgarian temperance journal Borba s Alkoolizma (Fight Against Alcoholism), the editor Haralampi Neichev commented in 1922, “alcohol, this unmatched destroyer of human society, of the individual and the family, completely unbothered, widely supported by ignorance, misery, tradition, by the state officials and capital, grows ever deeper roots in our unfortunate and weary country … Our goals are clear: radiating streams of light to uncover the nature of our insidious enemy in the spirit of truth and science.” Indeed, the journal later became an “Organ of the Union for Fight against Alcoholism, IOGT [Independent/International Order of the Good Templars] in Bulgaria” and, although not completely undisputed, it did emerge as something of a flagship of the Bulgarian interwar temperance movement, boasting a stable circulation of up to 3,000 copies a month until 1941. The journal did not exclusively limit its concerns to the question of alcoholism, but also published original and translated articles on other issues relevant to the global social hygiene movement at the time. Venereal diseases, tuberculosis, and drug abuse were also discussed on the pages of Borba, with much focus on the underlying social context causing these “scourges of modernity.” The socialist-leaning perspective of the journal was further underscored by the occasional critique – as already noted in the quotation above – of what was seen as alarming consummation of capital and state.