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Alcoholism as a cultural artefact?:
Reimagining the (excessive) Russian vodka drinker in
an era of political consumerism and politicized food
Bachelor thesis
Cultural Anthropology and Developmental Sociology University of Amsterdam
Peer van Tetterode (10448470)
Monitored by dr. P. T. van Rooden, co-read by I.L. Stengs Word count: 11,198
peervantetterode@gmail.com 05-18-2016
Key concepts: Alcoholism, Advertisement, Anti-Alcohol Campaign, Buycot, Boycot, Consumption, Egalitarian Dogma, Fantasy, Food Politicization, Framing, Hegemonic Masculinity, Hegemony of Form, Identity, Medvedev, National identity, Nationalism, Political Consumerism, Post-Socialist, Post-Soviet, Putin, Russian Federation, Subjectivity, Taboo on Distinction, Vodka Politics
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Abstract As it was in the USSR today’s Post-Soviet Russia food is once again politicized.
This fact is related to Russia’s alcohol problems. Since some foodstuffs have become more ‘European’ than others due to bans, some other products have become more ‘Russian’. The stereotypical candidate here is vodka. Mark L. Schrad argues that historically the Russian state has been reliant on vodka-profits, and therefore distributed it. In his view the only way to effectively combat contemporary alcohol problems is to municipalize the distribution of the spirit instead of the traditional monopolizing effort that the autocratic state is likely to pursue. Notwithstanding, Russian (excessive) vodka-use remains a complex cultural phenomenon rather than solely an administrative malady. To understand the subjective narrative of repetitive lethal mass-consumption of vodka and its shadow -the self-made ‘samogon’, a content analysis of various materials relating to Medvedev’s anti-alcohol campaign and Schrad’s book ‘Vodka Politics’ is conducted. Although Schrad has rightly pointed his finger on a salient point, this material is better understood in the light of more recent sociological and cultural anthropological concepts; (political) consumption, buycotting versus boycotting, material fantasy, hegemony of form and hegemonic masculinities that adds nuance to Schrad’s sterile political argument.
3 ‘It is both a catalyst of procreation and its scourge. It dictates who is born and who dies. And like a deity, vodka is wrapped in a sense of almost mystical allure, a pagan stupor, that calls to the lonely soul with a mix of lust and shame.’ (Viktor Yerofeyev in Schrad 2014: 11)
Introduction
In today’s Russia, the consumption of food is once again politicized, European newspapers are full of the curiosities that were caused by the bans from both the EU- as the Russian side . In the wake of the sanctions a well-known example in the media was the ban on cheeses in various periods between 2014-2016. As Muscovites and urban dwellers in the provinces took a special liking towards European cheeses, this resulted in a cheese-crisis, and the demand could in no ways be filled by inland produce. The ban resulted in a flux of creative responses; Russian entrepreneurs now produce cheese within their country. Feta from Vologda,
camembert form Krasnodar.1 This newfound or increased inland produce is still answering to a fraction of the demand. On top of that, in the course of a few months cheeses are being imported from -or via- microstate San Marino, which is formally not part of the EU-legislature.2 In august 2015, the politicization of food became very overt when government officials burned European produce and broadcasted the imagery of this ritual live on state television.3
1
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/sep/07/russias-sanctions-western-food-national-cheese-revival-local-lavkalavka (visited on April 14, 2016)
2
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/san-marino-to-export-meat-and-cheese-to-russia/562933.html (visited on April 15, 2016)
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But this is not about dairy or cheese. This is about vodka. Russian people and vodka and vodka and Russian people, a seemingly blunt stereotype. In the course of the same August wherein European produce was burned, Russian minister of Health Veronika
Skvortsova announced in a press conference that she was concerned about the steady rise of deaths among younger men between 30 and 45. Autopsies showed that in 70 % of the cases the cause of death was alcohol related.4
There was another small, barely present, news item in the Russian state-owned newspaper ‘Federal Press’, last September; it announced that the legal drinking age was heightened to twenty-one years of age.5 Whether this measure will actually have the planned effect is to be seen. What can be stated is that this measure is quite historical, most certainly when juxtaposed to the state of affairs during the first two Putin administrations. The first decennia of the 21st century could really be seen as an era in which post-soviet alcohol problems were either passively neglected or opportunistically exploited in the name of Putin’s paternalistic goodwill which became very concrete with the installment of
government sponsored vodka distribution company Rosspirtprom (Schrad 2014: 346) The numbers of alcohol related deaths and young drinkers were almost at an all-time high, these figures were only topped by the national demographic disaster under Yeltsin in the years after the collapse of the Soviet-Union. Although the presence of Dmitri Medvedev did not really make a whole lot of difference to the look of the Kremlin composition, in content nor appeal,
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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/health-minister-concerned-about-rise-in-death-rate-among-younger-russians/526887.html (visited on April 15, 2016)
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Unknown Author. (2015, September 23) Возрастной ценз на алкоголь - это абсурд и неуважение к молодежи, Федерал Пресс [The new age threshold in alcohol sales is ridiculous and disrespectful toward the young, Federal Press]
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he did something quite stunning. He was the first Russian leader since Soviet chairman Mikhail Gorbachev to take action against the fierce alcohol problems (Schrad: 2014: 386). Putin’s ‘War on Vodka’ in 2012 6
, and the tenor of the recent September article can best be seen as pursuing Medvedev’s anti-alcohol measures in 2009.
The relation between the banning of dairy products and the pursuing alcohol problems is not quite manifest. However, the banning of certain European, non-Russian products makes a claim about ‘Russian’ products, and the most renowned Russian products is vodka. Russianness thus seems to be framed in a process in which various parties within Russian society are consciously and less consciously instigating others into adopting a consumption pattern for a bigger reason than just consuming. Surely this carousel of enticement, the promise to nourish of the desire to belong to a distinctive group is hinting at a mechanism that is anything but unknown to modern day ‘western’ consumers. Aforementioned is in abstract terms of course precisely the field of everyday marketing, the evermore-inoffensive lubricant of capitalist society. Nonetheless this framing becomes more dangerous in a climate wherein consumption is politicized, and the consumption of a –lethal- product is
‘traditionally’ linked to a dominant societal group that has enjoyed certain important privileges, a group that appreciates popular stability above all.
Mark Lawrence Schrad’s 2014 book ‘Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy and the Secret History of the Russian State’ served as a starting point for my reflections. Although this good political historical read with gusts can be read as a romantic bricolage of sagas telling the scandalous vodka-soaked escapades of Russia’s fierce autocrats and their minions, it makes an interesting argument. Schrad argues that the structural large demographic figures
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-10-30/putin-wages-war-on-vodka-as-lifestyle-death-toll-nears-million
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of alcohol related deaths, and the affiliated miserable trends have a lot to do with the
historically grown reliance of the Tsarist, Soviet and Post-Soviet state treasury on vodka sales revenues. On the basis of rich historical Tsarist, Soviet and up-to-date Putin-era sources he continues to argue that both Gorbachev, Medvedev with their anti-alcohol campaign were, and Putin still is, merely appeasing symptoms of a larger disease called autocracy that really afflicts Russians throughout history. Schrad is pointing to the fact that within an autocratic system there is a tendency of the isolated governing elite to situationally monopolize vodka sales ‘for the greater good’, the improvement of health issues. Instead of the current
monopolization the solution to impetuous alcoholism on a national scale in Schrad’s view would be to gradually municipalize alcohol sales. His idea is that it would be ideal to hand over the distribution of spirits to small firms in the local towns and give a fixed percentage of the tax to organizations that are set up in the localities to tackle local alcohol dependency. For, as the historian he is, he tends to belief that because the aforementioned process worked in 19th and early 20th century Sweden, this will work in 21st century Russia (ibid.: 388).
I am fervidly doubting the assumption that if you decentralize the say in the vodka matter the issue will evaporate into thin air. If vodka dependency is related to autocratic rule, than the issue is to be understood from both sides of the societal pyramid by investigating the transcending Russian or Post-Soviet ‘cultural’ values cherished by top and bottom in material about vodka-consumption and alcohol problems. Schrad’s ‘autocratic disease’-argument is to be situated in a cultural background where vodka consumption is tied into a more inclusive multifocal semiotic web. To drink vodka in Russia has something to do with at least a number of themes, it has to do something with performing manhood, the enactment of the ‘Russian Soul’ and with the wish to belong to the collective of the societal middle, the group that was already cherished by the Soviet Party way back when they were labelled ‘Soviet
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workers’. It is still good to be a part of this group for the membership increases the likelihood of a stable and safe life in a not always so stable and safe system.
In this article, based on literature and a thematic analysis of excerpts, I ask if the (excessive) consumption of vodka in today’s Russia could be understood as a pitiful cultural tradition associated with a repressive autocratic state legacy, or as an act of modern political consumerism in a climate where food is politicized. This question is filled with ‘matter out of place’, as a stray Mary Douglas in my imagination would call it. As for one, political
consumerism, as will be explained, is a concept very much rooted in a North-American, Western-European socio-cultural context. However, by experimenting with and trying to apply such a concept in this case one is forced to theorize the Post-Soviet Russian consumer as an agent that can make a difference by means of consumption, much like in any other modern capitalist society, not merely as the structural victim of history. For above mentioned purposes a pedantic approach is chosen, benignly antithetical to Schrad’s stance, though the aim is to look under the stones he leaves unturned and to broaden the scope of his manifest rather than to enroll on a polemic between disciplinary handicaps. It is fructuous to keep in mind that the rational choosing agent or consuming active citizen is not a realistic image here, instead I propose to aim for an expressive form of consumption, whereby although consumers have some agency, they are also subjected to greater desires and the appeals of solidarity that are associated with consumption.
This study has its limits. As for one, the consideration between cultural tradition and political consumerism should be seen as a bipolar way to look at vodka consumption, the way I thought to be suitable when looking towards a cultural context made up by a consumption good, its buyers and distributors. The ‘data’ by which I speculate on there being other ways of studying vodka consumption is thin and the only claim that I want to make is that a scholar
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who is studying the relation between politics and vodka-consumption should not only look at Kremlin-based interaction patterns.
§ 1: Fantasies about (political) consumerism
To state something sensible on whether vodka-consumption is an act of political
consumption, a very important question has to be answered; what is political consumerism? The answer to this question depends on the way one defines political consumerism. Is this a political form of consumerism or rather an instrument of political activism? Of course consumption always has ties to the political realm, but not every consumer is a political consumer that is consciously practicing that defining act; to mingle with the political.
Granting that Malinowski’s descriptions of the Kula-trade can be seen as describing consumption rituals, ‘modern’ consumerism has been a topic of anthropological interest since the 1980’s (Carrier, Miller in Klumbyte 2010: 24). Initially it evolved around studying
consumption as an economic activity rather than a political one. Later on scholars more frequently pursued the quest of uncovering the historical political structures that lay at the base of consumption patterns’ social life (Ibid. 24-25). As Klumbyte argues, few studies have concentrated on consumption, citizenship, the state and the broader political process of nation state building; consumption in the discipline has all too often been perceived as an economic field rather than a political arena wherein political values and ideologies are being shaped (ibid.). Zhao & Belk define consumerism as a ‘belief and value system in which
consumption and acquisition rituals (e.g. shopping) are naturalized as sources of self-identity and meaning in life, goods are avidly desired for non-utilitarian reasons such as envy
provocation and status seeking, and consuming replaces producing as a key determinant of social relations (2008: 231).’ As consuming ‘for non-utilitarian reasons (ibid.)’ has replaced
9 the act of producing as a means to build social relations around and determine them,
consumption is researched more as a vehicle of identity shaping and power distribution. Yet why do people want to buy products if they, in the first place do not intend on using them? The answer to this important question is politically loaded Stavrakakis argues (2006). Inspired by Lacan he states that if one has to point out an -ism that was the all-time winner in the 20th century it is not capitalism or communism but consumerism (ibid.: 84). Through time there has emerged a hegemony of consumerism (ibid.). The enduring temptation that works as a driving force of consumerism he explains with the use of the Lacanian jouissance, often translated as enjoyment (Stavrakakis 2006 & Kingsbury 2008). For Stavrakakis the act of consuming is not merely to buy a product but to buy and believe the messages that ‘promise happiness, fun, popularity and love’ that accompany it (ibid.: 92), a pledge of a clean enjoyment (ibid.: 85) in order to experience a moment best described as jouissance. Jouissance is both informed by Freud’s notion of libido and Marx’s description of surplus value (Kingsbury 2008: 49), it is some natural urge of joy and order that is lost when the subject is confronted with the symbolic system of language and social relations, what is bought or consumed is exactly the imaginative regaining of that part that was lost or
‘castrated’. The lost particle can never be found again, if it ever was. The ‘symbolic order is unable to assimilate to people’s experiences, it threatens to be revealed for what it is: not self-evident, seamless and smooth as glass, but man-made , messy and typically full of gaps and cracks (Veenis 2012: 217)’. It is impossible to be reunited with the lost primordial joy for in the existing order it has no real appearance, so the lacking subject can only desire to regain it (Stavrakakis 2006: 92). This desire or fantasy can be instigated by or purposely be mixed up with the want towards the material, that is an important driving force of modern day
10 In her book ‘Material Fantasies’, Veenis describes how in the former German
Democratic Republic, East Germans were enticed by western capitalist products, precisely because the improvement of the material wellbeing was presented as the solution for all problems in official state ideology (2012: 221). The fantasy within ideology here served very much as a way to conceal the tragic bits of reality, such as the silent remembrance of the Nazi past and the fact that the West-German ‘Wirtschaftswunder’ proved to exhibit all aesthetic aspects that a communist utopia would have, but did not (yet) have. This is in line with Zizek’s description of the working of fantasy within or in dialogue with ideology. Fantasy is working as a scenario in which the horror of the real is obscured, although the subject is willing to belief in the likelihood of this scenario. He gives the example of the instructions a flight attendant gives when passengers have boarded on an airplane, there is a very little likelihood that in the case of a plane crash the plane will glide softly on a flat ocean surface, a slide will be gracefully inflated and everybody will be happily floating for half an hour until a coastal guard will pick up the bunch (Zizek 1999:91) . It is highly unlikely that this will actually happen, still the passenger is willingly inclined to fall for this myth. A material fantasy in the broader sense describes the social fact that people are inclined to believe that the consuming of a certain good can bring forth an ecstatic fulfillment of a promise that is put forth in the hegemonic discursive framework. In the GDR this was the achievement of a German communist utopia, very much described in material terms. In Post-Soviet Russia this is something else described in material terms.
What generally is meant with political consumerism or critical consumption is the presumed bottom-up process of buying or explicitly not buying consumption goods and thus consciously influencing the sales of manufacturers within the market (Neilson 2010: 215). Political consumerism is defined as ‘the use of consumer choice as a political tool versus businesses that are perceived as political actors and the practice of using the market as a
11 forum for political expression’ (Micheletti et al in Brown 2015: 239). In that way it could be seen as a tactic of political activism for the marginalized or disadvantaged against the
traditional political system. Therefore, by means of political consumerism, ‘consumer spaces thus become sites of resistance’ (Brown 2015: 245). Authors have generally theorized
political consumerism as a bottom-up activity.
Albeit, de Tavernier disagrees by describing a growing trend in his field of food consumption, namely that governments are imposing a ‘duty to know’. This entails that contemporary European consumers are increasingly expected to know about the products’ producer, its manufacturing history, its environmental impact and how healthy the product is, while the state entity does not enhances its promoting or prohibiting activities, and instead becomes more and more conspicuously absent (2012: 905). This ‘duty to know’ and the prime time of the conscious consumer also has to do with the state’s cutting of social security expenses in the first place (ibid.). It should be noted here that with or without the interference of the media or PR-bureaus, political consumerism remains a dialogue between the
institutions and the subject, the manufacturing business, the government versus the consumer as much as it is a subject versus subject dialogue.
As discussed earlier Stavrakakis sees the act of consumption as the buying of
promises associated with the brand (2006: 92), this actually has a lot to do with one particular aspect of political consumerism. A group of authors that have contributed to the bulk of literature about political consumerism in order to make it a less homogeneous concept tend to make a distinction between boycotting and buycotting (Neilson 2010, Yates 2011), the latter term was coined by Friedman (Yates 2011: 192) . Boycotting is described as being the act of ‘punishing [a] business for unfavorable behavior’ (Neilson 2010: 214) whereas buycotting is described as ‘rewarding [a] business for favorable behavior’(ibid.). Boycots are more
12 channels, along with strikes and the like (ibid.: 216) . Buycotting is a more subtle form of engaging in political consumerism and could take place on an everyday basis. Buycotters tend to have more trust in institutions and are more altruistic and equality loving than the more competitive boycotters (ibid.: 219). These buycotters hence tend to adjust their buying behavior in accordance to their liking of the company’s message, their promise.
In the case of the post-soviet countries consumption a convergence of a material fantasy and political consumption takes place. Since the old Soviet utopia building project, was framed in of a specific material way this common past, as Klumbyte shows in her study of the comeback of Soviet Sausages in Lithuania is a site for consumers to criticize the existing neoliberal order (2010: 22). Consumption in that sense is political, although not in the ‘political consumer sense’, that is a means to reconcile the active citizen with the consumer. Klumbyte points out that in the case of Soviet sausages there are products being sold because they hint at familiarity, not that they are authentic (ibid.: 23-24), so consuming these products is a quest for shared memory’s and stories, not so much as to find a true hard and vast marker of identity or role. The consumption of certain goods that have a symbolic continual connection with a presumed ‘ shared’ past, are pivotal in regaining a form of group solidarity in the present, consuming such a product is then an attempt to regain what is lost.
§ 2: Vodka and its victims
Surely an oral-history based biography of Russian vodka-abuse as a societal pest must be a as thick as an orthodox bible, but to avert leaping into stereotypes and jumping to premature conclusions one has to sober up and look at the studies in the field. As usual suspects point to the particularities of a crime, usual sufferers can shed light on the oddities of a torment. At whom is the bottle pointing in the studies?
13 To compare the alcohol use of the average Russian to other countries worldwide, the most recent substance abuse report published by the World Health Organization in 2014 is useful. The average consumption of the Russian above 15 years of age is 15.1 liters of pure alcohol in 2008-2010. Among the total population above 15 years of age, 19.1 % is a heavy drinker following the organization’s threshold that is set at 60 grams or more of pure alcohol in the past 30 days before the respondent was asked to participate (World Health
Organization 2014: 233 ). Russia, by the WHO is described as having a top score -five on a scale from one onto five- on the total life years lost that is caused by enthusiastic alcohol consumption so I will compare these numbers to some countries outside of Europe and the post-Soviet sphere that also have a high score on the aforementioned scale, and of course these must be countries that have no major Muslim population. In Asia, the top achiever Korea has a steady alcohol consumption of 12.3 liters of pure alcohol on average and 6% is a heavy drinker (ibid.: 280). In Africa, South Africa is the special kid in the class with an average consumption of 11 liters of pure alcohol on average and 10.4 % that is counted as a heavy drinker (ibid.: 128). In South America, Brazil passionately ascribes to a 8.7 in average drinking liters has had 12.7% of the population drinking heavily. In North America, the US hits a humble homerun with 9.2 liters on average and 24.5% that are heavy drinkers (ibid.: 170). Down under, Australia houses a population that drinks 12.2 liters on average plus it bears within its borders 10.9% of heavy drinkers (ibid.: 261). So what I want to point out here is that the Russian Federation with its 15.1 liters and its 19.1 % of heavy drinkers has an alcohol issue compared to other states globally.
14 Graph 1: This image doesn’t leave much to the imagination (Nemtsov 2011: 299)
In the European alcohol consumption literature there is mostly a reference to three ideal typical ‘belts’ of drinking cultures with respectively their specific drinking behavior characteristics that are also build around the most popular drink being drunk in the area. The most southern belt is the wine belt, this belt has a Mediterranean style of drinking that is characterized by drinking wine daily with meals, yet no acceptance of public drunkenness. The Central/Western European beer belt drinking culture is quite similar to aforementioned belt in drinking frequency and lack of acceptance of public drunkenness (Popova et al: 465). The countries within the most Northern belt, the vodka belt, can best be described of as an area where ‘irregular binge drinking episodes and the acceptance of drunkenness in public’ are characteristic (ibid.: 466) . With the aim of relative comparison it is good to keep in mind that Russia is situated in the last mentioned ideal typical belt.
In the article of Popova et al. a useful overview about alcohol-use in Europe is being explained (2007). The researchers looked at recorded and unrecorded per capita consumption, they payed close attention to the differences between eastern and western Europe. The lowest consumption pattern of drinking was observed in Malta and the Scandinavian countries
15 followed by the Mediterranean countries (ibid.: 467). The highest trends were seen in
Moldova, Romania, Ukraine and Russia. These are all post-communist countries, the writers of the article think there was a specific historic trend directly after the Second World War, wherein the countries with communist regimes drank more on average, a trend that continued onto Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol policies but then continued after the fall of the communist system (ibid.: 466) .
When one observes table 1(ibid.: 469), it can be seen that Russia in relation to other
countries has the highest overall consumption, at least in 2002. These graphs make one wonder if there is a relation between countries that had communistic regimes before 1992 and their alcohol consumption in comparison to the rest of Europe since the Central and Eastern European countries tend to score significantly higher. Also there is a trend of unrecorded consumption in this region, and Russia in specific. The drinking of ‘samogon’, the equivalent of homemade brandy or counterfeit vodka is a problem on which I will elaborate later on.
16 Popova et al. also discuss a few other points, namely that Russia has the most
detrimental pattern of drinking and that there is a huge difference between female and male heavy drinking patterns within Russia as compared to other countries (ibid.: 471). The detrimental pattern score that the researchers have given to Russia is a lonely four in a scale from one to four, to put that in perspective, the average in the whole polled European region is a 1.5. This scale is made up to compare how often people drink while at the same time measuring how much they drink. It is made up of six factors that increase the risk of drinking being dangerous for an individual’s health: ‘high quantities of drinking per occasion;
frequency of getting drunk; festive drinking being common; drinking in public places being common; drinking with meals being uncommon; low rate of daily drinking (ibid.:466).’ The second point is the gap between the percentage of female and male heavy drinkers,
respectively the percentage of 53.2% for men versus 8.4% for women, this gap also persists in the average European pattern that is set at 44.2 for men and 7.6 for women , but the gap is bigger in Russia and the numbers are more severe. All in all, when quickly comparing Russia within the European context and even within the post-communist bloc, it can be said that her alcohol problem is most serious and that there is a big difference between female and male drinking patterns.
The gender-gap persists also in the average mortality age difference that served as one of the big visible motivations for Medvedev’s anti-alcohol campaign (Schrad 2014: 370), when looking at the Russian alcohol trends through gendered glasses one gets a specific picture. Hinote et al. looks at something that is not so often studied, namely the relation between women and alcohol use in the post-soviet countries and comes onto an interesting finding as they note that women that do not wish to return to communism often drink more, and that the drinking –mostly of beer, so not the binge consumption of vodka (2009: 1261)- among women got more frequent after the collapse of communism. They explain drinking
17 among women in Post-Soviet countries as an overt rejection of traditional Soviet norms and values (ibid.: 1254). If this is the ‘agency’ in women drinking patterns than there must be a drinking pattern -‘structure’ that is more inclusive towards men . Traces of the virile
inclusivity can be plainly observed, for instance men’s vodka demand is far less affected by price changes than women’s demand (Nelson 2013: 2060). Furthermore, the following graph shows the recent history of alcohol poisoning between men and women in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia (Nemtsov 2011: 263). The graph (ibid.: 322) makes quite clear that there is a stark difference in alcohol poisoning between men and women, this indexes the differences in use frequency and the extreme effects of choosing preference; the choice between the ‘traditional’ strong vodka mostly drunk by men versus the ‘subversive’ less strong beer drunk by women.
18 That brings us to the usual suspect of binge drinking activities involving vodka in Russia. Jukkala et al. examine the relationship between binge drinking, economic strain, social relations and gender in a Moscow case study (2008). They worked with the identification of age and gender groups in their research .
Table 3 Average amount of alcohol consumed per occasion, by sex and age, among those respondents who reported drinking alcohol in Moscow 2004 (in grams of pure ethanol)
Age group Men (n ¼ 463) Wome n (n ¼ 546) Total (n ¼ 1009) 18–30 yr 100.3 39.8 68.6 31–40 yr 90.0 38.6 64.6 41–50 yr 94.6 33.3 62.6 51–60 yr 79.0 32.7 52.0 61–70 yr 60.2 21.7 36.9 X71 yr 51.4 20.8 34.6 Total 85.0 32.6 56.6 Education- standardise d totala 89.0 32.7 58.4
aStandardized according to the educational-level proportions of the Moscow City population given in the 2002 Census for the population over 18 years.
19 As we can see in both table 3 (ibid.: 668) the groups that drink the biggest amount per
binging episode are men between 18-30, 31-40 and 41-50 years old –bluntly speaking those generally referred to as the working population. These groups also excel in drinking
frequency, a large percentage drinks several times a week (ibid.: 667). The authors of the same article in accordance with Nemtsov’s argument (ibid.: 670), discuss that these risk groups are frequently characterized by a lower socio-economic status with more financial problems, a working class background and a lower educational level (Nemtsov 2011) Although this might seems to be a logical, ‘common sense’ finding, it is highly peculiar that women in the same population groups, confronted with the same issues do not remotely come close to the severity of the virile drinking pattern. Since I refuse to believe that these groups drink solely because they drink, I must look further. It is hard to say yet what her name is, but there must be a siren that with her bittersweet song lures these men into drowning.
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§ 3: Vodka and the Kremlin:
Mark L. Schrad in his book Vodka Politics pursues a very broad historical analysis of the ties of Russian state politics or politicians with the distribution and consumption of vodka
(Schrad 2014) . By vodka politics he means: ‘policy decisions to manipulate alcohol consumption and the influence of alcohol on political developments (ibid.: 13).’ Mortality due to extreme alcohol consumption, in his view is structurally related to bad centralist governance. He argues that the autocratic tendency to monopolize alcohol distribution and sales is the cause of the high alcohol problem figures in Russia. This is based on the premise that he reveals in the first pages of his book. He is convinced that ‘drinking is a social activity, and its effects – domestic violence and drunken driving to hooliganism and premature death – are social in nature. And inasmuch as these social impacts require
government attention, the entire cycle of alcohol – from production and sales to consumption and effects – is fundamentally a political issue (ibid: 11).’ The state was and until some extend still is reliant on vodka revenues and the Kremlin’s strategy testifies to its patriarchal caring and the assumption that the it knows what is good better than its citizens or subjects. The strategies that mostly entail reducing sales, setting higher prices and further monopolize distribution in Schrad’s view only reduced the likelihood of the civil initiative of temperance movements that in US and European history were participating actors in (proto)- democratic grassroots movements and an emerging civil society, thus further strengthening the grip of the autocracy (ibid.: 11). The well intentioned anti-alcohol campaigns in Russian history are thus only temporarily suspending symptoms of a larger disease that is the governing tradition.
Schrad supports his argument chronologically in various manners. To begin with Schrad states how the state control on spirit distribution was established early on. He gives a lengthy description of how former Moscovite courts like Ivan the Terrible’s (ibid.: 26-35), Peter (36-48) and Catherine the Great’s (49-59) were built on aquavit and later vodka distribution, sales
21 and the related soaked intrigues. In the becoming of a state structure in the 16th century he emphasizes the importance of the kabak, a state sponsored tavern that was present in every town in Muscovy and Russia. All consumption and production outside these taverns was prohibited and harshly punished. Thus the kabak as early as 1552, under Ivan the Terrible became an effective way to firmly monopolize the states hold on the vodka sales and a means to be present in the minds of the Russian consumers (ibid.: 81). Local landlords, since they had the resources, were the first to distill vodka to provide it to the local taverns, which were mostly visited by the poor, so the consumption enforced early ‘class distinction’ and played a part in the status quo of power distribution early on (ibid.: 90). Also the kabaks, so caught up within secular structure of the state did not function, as they did in Europe, as ‘free’ places to discuss political issues all to critically, thus preventing the emergence of a civil society (ibid.: 17).
Corruption has been the obvious accomplice of a state interest in vodka sales, Schrad argues, this began with local state tax farmers and distributors making deals about sale percentages but still endures (ibid.: 109).This corruption is made possible because the persisting dependence; vodka consumption has the tendency to be perceived by its drinker, historically the peasant, as a form of escape from daily hardships, a form of freedom, although in realty it is a form of -state- dependency (ibid.: 126). Rallying against this
dependence, abstinence became an important aim within early Leninist Marxist thought, as a means to combat poverty and class difference (ibid.: 147), although out of practical reasons, this ideal of the sober communist worker was refuted by Stalin. The reinforcement of a state monopoly has officially always be reinstated as a means to improve public health, since it would prevent unsafe samogon (self-made moonshine) consumption and of course sales too.
22 The justification for monopolization efforts of vodka distribution by the state in recent history has many times been to fight illegal ‘samogon’ production and unrecorded
consumption and to the availability of cheap liquor (Radaev 2015: 11). This could be seen as the state’s attempt to make consumption and distribution more ‘legible’ (Scott 1998: 2) in order to simplify, make readable and eventually make it more easy to effectively combat alcohol related health problems among its population. This then becomes a way to gain control over the market and, so it is thought , over the consumers within the market. There are a few well known and lesser known recent examples of this governing tendency in ‘Vodka Politics’.
When Andropov, Soviet leader after the long Brezhnev reign, for the first time wanted to reform alcohol policies in 1983 he not only made it increasingly hard for people to drink in public and especially at work, he also insisted on reducing the prices of vodka instead of raising it to prevent a rise in samogon consumption (Schrad 2014: 257-258). Gorbachev who was ‘raised’ and inspired by Andropov, within the next two years, after this progressive Andropov and his successor the more conservative Chernenko, from May 17 1985 intensified the anti-alcohol effort. There was a shocking demographic motivation for intense measures to be enforced; a 11 to 12 year drop in male life expectancy compared to ten years earlier, dramatic drops in live expectancy, alarming boosts of pre-adult and female drinking instead of the usual male binges, abortions due to unwanted alcohol related pregnancies, increased crime rates and alcohol related suicides (275-276). In the course of the year, a large
propaganda campaign was set up, alcohol was prohibited near schools and public places, liquor stores were closed or at least limited to stringent rules and opening hours. The availability of alternative goods in provision stores -that mostly offered a thin variety if any offer in the 80’s-, was boosted, such as juices and fruits. And again more intense legislation against self-made alcohol possession, production and use was adopted (ibid.: 263-264).
23 Eventually the prohibition lead to a rise in the populations ‘health and a large gap within the state budget, which turned out to be huge financing the process of building communism the Gorbachev way (ibid.: 280).
The Soviet Union’s collapse and the period under Yeltsin, Schrad tends to call the ‘most drunken period in all-Russian history’, no real efforts of combatting alcoholism were taken (ibid.: 287). Most positive trends caused by Gorbachev’s campaign were wiped down during the –soaked- transition. The tendency to combat alcohol problems by means of centralized decisions and monopolization persisted in Post-Soviet Russia in the early Putin years. Putin had a plan to regain control over the vodka sales that was in the early 2000’s in the hands of Yeltsin era Mafiosi and regional governments (ibid.: 339). The installment of Rosspirtprom, the company that was to have a state privileged position within the liquor market did, as it turned out have more to do with boosting state revenues than the advancement of public health (ibid.: 347). In 2004, Rosspirtprom controlled 45% of the legal spirits market, this was again shaped as an effort to get Russians off samogon by CEO Sergei Zivenko (ibid.: 355). These efforts had the opposite effect (ibid.: 366) So through time a lot of state efforts were enforced to get Russians off samogon and drink [less] state taxed vodka, an effort to centralize control and to make the drinking patterns more legible.
Medvedev then, for the first time since Gorbachev, launched an anti-alcohol campaign in 2009. The motivations were again alarming demographic trends. Medvedev was rightfully alarmed by Aleksandr Nemtsov claim that ‘you only need to remember these three numbers (ibid.: 367)’: […] 58.5 standing for the low Russian male life expectancy, 13.5 marking the huge gap between female and male life expectancy and 16.5 marking the year difference in average male life expectancy in comparison to the same figure measured for the average European male (ibid.: 367). Many of the initiatives were quite similar as under Gorbachev, a
24 propaganda-like awareness campaign was launched, sales hours of liquor stores were actively reduced, the minimum price per bottle was raised this time, the ambitious goal was to raise life expectancy to seventy-five in 2025. The campaign was new in its make-use of new channels, such as celebrities being employed to state public announcements on state
television and the internet and funny YouTube-spots, like ‘Адская белочка: the squirrel from hell’7
, belochka, meaning little squirrel is also a Russian slang term for delirium tremens (ibid.: 369). So all in all these gradual measures were very different from those that made up the shock drainage under Gorbachev. Though these measures have led onto slow yet steady improvements in demographic trends, they yet again made way for entrepreneurs, illegal sales and production of dangerous counterfeits. This issue is not merely political rhetoric and still relevant in 2015/2016 as studies show (Nemtsov 2011, Kotelnikova 2015, Radaev 2015). Thusly Schrad points to this as being an ongoing problem in accordance to the monopolizing tendency of the state.
Schrad in consequence argues that the centralist autocratic monopolization tendency in response must be replaced by a municipal system of regional distribution and anti-alcoholism clinics. Samogon production, distribution and consumption ideally will be reduced by making way for activism in the localities, the same social spaces where counterfeits are made (Schrad 2014.: 388-389).
25
§ 4: Vodka and the Russian:
The problem with Schrad’s argument is that it makes the claim that the use and abuse of vodka is mostly caused and related to the governing tradition within the Kremlin. Needless to say, different cultural structures, sentiments and considerations play a role in the matter of the vodka consumption as well. Perceiving the practice of consumption through Lacanian
goggles, it is impossible to see consumption as the act of buying a product, solely because the consumer needs it. What Russians buy if they buy a bottle is more than just a bottle of vodka. What it is they buy and why they are buying and consuming it in such amounts is still a matter of informed speculations, yet because they are doing it, it is important to argue about.
In his acclaimed book ‘Imagined Communities’(1991), Anderson describes the nation as ‘a political community ‘that is imagined both inherently limited and sovereign’. It is supposed to be limited because in order to have members it also has to be distinguished from entities, other nations that are left out, so paradoxically it is inclusive because it is exclusive. The sense of community that is associated with the nation describes a feeling of unity and equality among all members, even if this is fictional, there remains a sentiment that this solidarity is real. This feeling of solidarity is true because it is exclusive and because the nation’s members have at least some distinct characteristics that separate them from other nations, whether defined among linguistic, ethnic or cultural lines.
After the fall of the USSR, the Russian state had to come up with a new definition to identify and relate to the nation. The Russian nationality, in socialist times was always a difficult subject and has been until this day on. Shevel (2011) argues that this Russian identity crisis was never really overcome, since the administrators benefitted from the legal vagueness that allowed the government to push through various policies since the transition period (ibid.: 179). Nationalism is mostly studied as being civic or ethnic, both forms of nationalism
26 are problematic when applied to the Russian nation building attempts. Civic nationalism, conceiving the members of a state within a confined territory as citizens that are loyal to the institutions that are set up by the state, in the Russian case is difficult to apply since the territory can be defined as the former imperial space or the current state. Ethnic Nationalism entails that the nation is a community with a shared ethnicity, language, cultural traits and religion. This concept is not easy reconcile with the Post-Soviet Russian case since within Russian territory there are different kind of ethnic nationalisms, different options such as Eastern Slavs, Russians or Russian speakers (ibid.:180). In practice the nation building attempts in Russia had aspects of both nationalism varieties.
Various nation building projects were tried and never fully constructed in Russia after 1992. The civic ‘rossiiskaya’ nation definition did not have historical precedence within the USSR, since the inhabitants of the Republic of Russia within the Union weren’t
identifying themselves as ethnic Russian, but rather as Soviet, proletarian and as the builders of progress, Russia being perceived as a big brother character within the USSR. (ibid.: 181) Furthermore Russian civic nationalism was many times seen as a ways to assimilate other nations in the process because it would fail to include them on their own terms (ibid.: 182). A strong ethnic Russian identity too was never developed, not in the Russian Imperial time nor in the USSR. There actually is a lack of agreement who is Russian as well. Ukrainians and Belarussians often aren’t theoretically distinctive from Russians in ethnic terms (ibid.: 186-187). Another option is to perceive all people living on former USSR territory as Russians, but this is of course problematically irredentist and has expansionist implications, the implementation by the state, would meet with the most extreme resistance (ibid.: 189).
Eventually throughout the offices of Yeltsin to Medvedev and Putin the official vague concept of compatriotism has been put into use. This conception can be used in the narrow sense, including only ‘ethnic Russians’ and in the broad sense including all former Soviet
27 citizens. The use of compatriotism is favorable for the Kremlin since ‘a more ethno-cultural definition of “us” would make it difficult for Russia justify its involvement in the regions outside its borders where ethnic Russians do not live in compact settlements, such as Abkhazia, Ossetia and Transdniestria (ibid.: 197)’, also the state is allowed to pressure neighboring former Soviet governments that have compatriots living within their borders and it can move, lastly limiting the benefits associated with compatriotism allows the government to control migration of former Soviet Peoples without formally pursuing policies associated with such a cause (ibid.: 198). The compatriot term however leaves undefined who the Russian really is, in its attempt to form a middle road between ethnic and civic claims and resisting earlier Soviet formulations. So it is hard to see the Russian nationality as a dominant nationality within a nation-state that is, as it were, set up for this group. Russianness
purposely has remained a vague and empty concept, a useful rhetoric trick for politicians, but not meaning much by itself.
This leaves Russians without a sense of official belonging, belonging to Russia just as much as every other Post-Soviet citizen does. That is a hard pill to swallow, especially when keeping in mind that the Russian nationality in the Soviet Union was already an uneasy topic, Russians outside Russia were very much affected by the collapse of the USSR, and recent conflicts, whether warm, as in Ukraine or Georgia or cold as with the trade-boycotts with the EU make it quite clear that Russians are thought of as an internally united entity. All foreign threats, others that potentially will try to steal the ‘nations’ enjoyment (Kingsbury 2008: 52). National identity in Russia then is to be studied more as the sum of behavioral enactments of Russianness. If it is within reason to state that ‘what we buy is what we fantasize and what we fantasize is what we are lacking (Stavrakakis 2006: 92)’, then for haps it is not so far-flung that a fair share of what Russians buy is the fantasy of a coherent [supra]national identity assuring acute solidarity, that is conjured up in with the practice of joint consumption
28 (an example in which supranational identity is strengthened through acts of consumption is Vidmar-Horvat K. 2010).
The second piece of the puzzle has to be sought in the area of regional gender studies. Schrad does not address the question much, but it surely is no mere coincidence that the most
hazardous drinking patterns and death rates were found among men. Hinote and Webber argue that the Russian hegemonic masculine ideal is achieved or aspired to through the drinking of vodka by working class men that have less or no access to resources like money and power that could otherwise have served to construct a masculine identity with (2012: 305).
Through time the sites of social interaction wherein Russians drank have played a role in shaping the way they did. In village life, the mir that was the most important social body in the structuring of social life. Violations of drinking norms, that were mostly ritual in nature; namely to abstain or to get drunk were sanctioned (ibid.: 298). This social environment changed for many Russians due to increasing urbanization beginning in the latter half of the 19th century. There was less mechanic solidarity, less immediate sanctions to hazardous drinking patterns. In the growing cities and industrial towns, the tavern served as a social space where ‘more routinized, recreational and habitual practices [of drinking] among the new urban proletariat and especially among men’ developed (ibid.: 298). The tavern, was a man’s world. As ‘Bolshevik radicalism ultimately gave way to Stalinist authoritarianism (ibid.: 299)’, gender issues were not addressed as was initially the revolutionary intend, thus men could maintain a power in the public sphere. Women one the one hand could work but were also expected to do all or most domestic duties (ibid.:299) Another site was the
29 workplace, where the new characteristics of ‘real Soviet workers’ were settled at drinking and being male. Within this new social arena, male identities were negotiated.
Although men could assert masculine power through identifying with state communism (ibid. 303), Hinote and Webber describe how the construction of masculine hierarchies was often related to thirst (ibid.: 300). Nondrinking men frequently were ascribed labels like mokraia kuritsa [wet hen], that implied that they were more feminine or sexually inexperienced (ibid.). Drinking served as a rite of passage that made male children into working males (ibid.: 302). The Bolshevik foundational dogma, that class supersedes gender resulted in a challenge to the traditional patriarchal organization of the household, thus forcing men to enact aforementioned masculine practices in the public sphere only. This meant that men were expected to emerge themselves in the public. As the male figurehead of the family formed a barrier for state control, men were supposed to assert their power
elsewhere, in working and drinking activities (ibid.:301). In these settings gender challenges could take place and power was negotiated. At the workplace apprenticeships would for instance be paid for by means of vodka, thus creating humiliating situations for lower skill workers, blows that were again shaken off with a snifter in the tavern . There was a
hegemonic identity of worker in a workers state that was reinforced by alcohol (ibid.:303). With the fall of the USSR, the consumption of alcohol and masculinity remained intertwined. For working-class men drinking remains a means to aspire to an ideal of manhood when other resources are unavailable (ibid: 305). Although the state ideology has changed and became more neo-traditionalist and paternalistic in nature, ideals of manhood (like the image of Putin) are still motivating man to be man, and to drink too.
30 The (over)consumption of vodka in Russia can be understood in a third way, that credits state ideology and corresponding governing decisions with its omnipresence in society, like Schrad assumes, yet does so in a different manner. Yurchak, in his acclaimed ‘Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything was Forever Until it Was No More’ describes that when the communist system in Russia collapsed in the early ‘90’s to former Soviet citizens it seemed that it had almost happened over night. He argues that this seemed the case precisely because in the late socialist period, the years between the mid- 50’s until the mid- 80’s, there was a distinctive discursive regime wherein official discourse no longer meant what it literary denoted, a ‘semantic model’, but was interpreted in a ‘pragmatic’ manner wherein the form of that being communicated mattered more than the literary meaning (2003: 480, 491). A situation had arisen wherein Soviet citizens worried less about what was being communicated in the ideological party language, and more about what could be gained. The unthinkingly
reproduction of ideological forms in texts that took place in this period was culminating in a ‘hegemony of form’, that meant ideological presence was all around yet not many believed in it, as long as it worked. This insight is to be seen with the anthropological debate about structure and agency in the background, namely because it implies that agency is also enacted when the subject is choosing for stability (ibid.: 484).
Stability was also an intrinsic motivator in the survival of the ‘egalitarian dogma’ that turned out a ‘taboo of distinction’ in practice. Veenis describes that this ‘taboo of distinction’, in the German Democratic Republic was a social mechanism that persisted because ‘standing out’ in the communist era was difficult (2012: 220). Differing behavior was often answered with a visit of the state’s secret service, the Stasi –In Soviet Russia the KGB served a similar purpose- and the norm-breaker was always punished in everyday social settings. Thus the practical implication of the ‘state-sanctioned’ enactment of the socialist ideal of general equality was that citizens did not allow each other to differentiate (ibid: 221). The persistence
31 of this mechanism was not so much due to that fact that it was state-sanctioned but more because citizens were pressuring one another to conform.
Both these conceptual approaches of hegemony within socialist societies have in common that they show how conformity was very much a key value for the dominant working class, the only class that formally existed. From here on it is not a large step as to speculate whether such a conformity is still important for the working class in the Russian federation. Solidarity and group pressure may still work as acts of confronting Russians with the norm, to respect ones’ former-Soviet worker status, and to mistrust state or corporate promises of social mobility. Although a reproduction of the form of ideological statements is problematic, since there is no communist party language anymore, hints of there being a taboo on distinction to mark the coherence of a working class identity and thus the working of post-soviet class-conformity would be interesting to find in the texts that are being analyzed.
32 § 5: Vodka framing her drinkers
I have conducted a brief analysis that is mostly known in the literature as a thematic discourse analysis (Bryman 2008). All categories that are used I have deduced from the literature and concepts that have been discussed in previous sections also the counting of words used made clear what the categories could be. The material is not representative for a greater population and it is highly problematic that this material was translated from Russian to English and that all material was converted into a uniform text meant that all other forms of communication in film were lost in the process.
The material that has been used is gathered from various sources produced from 2009 to 2016. For choosing these sources, the criteria were that the described actors in the text are making claims about vodka consumption or prohibition, and that they gave insight in various levels within Russian society. All materials are only analyzed in text format, thus in some cases they had to undergo two translations, from Russian to English and from film to text format. The first source is a popular YouTube-promotional video produced in the 2009 alcohol campaign that is the first part in a trilogy named ‘Adskaya Belotsjka’ or ‘Squirrel from Hell’8
. The second source is a text from a label of the Russian vodka brand ‘Russian Endurance’(Roberts 304). The third source consists of different narratives from relatives of deceased heavy drinkers that narrate about their memories with them, the data was gathered during field work conducted in the Russian town of Izhevsk (Saburova et al. 2011: 5-7) that are analyzed in a different manner. The fourth and fifth source are newspaper articles that displayed comments on the anti-alcohol campaign from various angles. The sixth source is a text consisting of selected fragments from a documentary by the Dutch journalist and
producer Jelle Brandt Corstius (Brand Corstius et al. 2010) wherein three consumers are
8http://www.rferl.org/content/squirrel_from_hell_takes_on_russian_alcoholism/2255880.html visited on May
33
generally reflecting on their use and a samogon-producer and consumer talks about his activities while later on consuming the self-made product with Brandt-Corstius and other guests. This analysis is meant to point out very broadly to what extent aforementioned cultural processes and the political play a role in relation to the narratives about the consumption of vodka.
The discourse analysis is inspired on the notion of word-context , or why certain words or topics are used in relation to another, in this analysis that is consumption (Gee 1999: 101), there is being looked into the ‘situated meaning’ of the combined reference of concepts (Ibid: 104). The codes are mostly a priori, in the sense that they are made up in accordance to the central concepts in the literature, but they also have a grounded element9 to it because they have been affected by the word count. These codes were thought out further in
accordance to the quantity that the words were used. For instance, the category ‘community’
is made up because a words were counted that could hypothetically refer to a community, but it was not sure yet what kind of community. The code ‘vodka /substitute consumption’
is used to signal where in the texts claims are made about or in relation to the consumption of vodka or substitutes. The code ‘gender’ is signaling every word that is denoting a gendered
entity. The code ‘community’ is signaling every reference to a group that a subject belongs to (from using ‘I/you’ or ‘us/them’ to ‘Russian/foreign’). The code ‘politics’ is used with every
reference to the government, legislation or a measure. The literature inspired code
‘solidarity/pressure’ is made up to signal enactments of group solidarity or group pressure that can be seen as practices that force actors to conform to the norm. The code ‘healthy versus unhealthy’ is set up when claims about health are made. The last code, ‘soul’, was
only counted two times but because it is very context dependent to what this term refers to, it
34
is interesting to speculate on how actors relate this spiritual concept to consuming. As discussed, I only reflect on how these codes are related to the consumption code in the context, every section was commented on to speculate about the relation of each appearing code to the consumption code in the context.
Consuming as a gendered and gendering practice did show in the analysis. While V. the host is showing Brandt-Corstius how samogon is made, all of a sudden he changes the subject. The fact that he shows castor is quite peculiar for, the whole time he was talking about hunting and samogon production. This could mean that for him these matters are somehow intertwined. In the eyes of the beholder this topic seems highly out of place in the talk they previously had, but it could mean that in a very literal sense male sexuality and samogon production are part of the same practice, just as hunting both are ways to enact a form of a masculine identity.
There are men that suffer from a loss of libido. That is why I preserve castor. It’s for the libido. Two drops from the jar and you are ready. For the erection, yes. Two drops and you can go on all night (Brandt Corstius 2010).
The rules that are ascribed to the drinking practice are to intrinsically gendered. Women can only toast with strange men if they are last, so women are allowed to participate in the
drinking practice only if they respect the manmade rules. With an obscene sense of humor the Adskaya Belotsjka clip is making fun of women kept out of the practice of consumption, the wife-figure is mistaken for a devil and is to be ‘shot’. The extreme aspects of this practice being gendered are seen in the destructive practice of ‘zapoi’, described as a drinking practice of several days on end in which the participators keep drinking. Gendering is also happening
35 when referring to the deceased drinker as a ‘devil’ (Saborova 2011: 6), so interestingly both men and women when associated with drinking or dismissing the drinker can be devils.
Words that can be used to describe a community are often mentioned in the material. In the documentary, ‘We’ is identified as, plainly everyone that is accompanying the setting, but more generally there is a prescriptive we: ‘Yes, the first one we drink in one zip.’ That is also there in the prescriptive you: ‘Your house must always be full.’ All prescriptive forms refer to how one should drink. This does not say anything about what the interviewer is used to, only how it is supposed to be done, therefore it is saying something about how the ‘we’ is
supposed to act. In this prescriptive form ‘guest’ and ‘host’ are used many times, the ‘host’ here is also a way of constructing a self-image versus the other-image that is the guest. The last ‘we’ is the constant reference that something is typically Russian, while an outsider can be doubtful about why that is so. For instance, in relation to hunting: That is a lynx, a beautiful one, it’s not finished yet. They are our pussycats. Or This is a firm Russian wolf weighing 85 kilograms. And in relation to drinking especially: I will take the first and last zip. That is Russian hospitality.
In the awareness clip of the squirrel there are a lot of imaginary demons, kudyabliks and spiders that are seen as the enemy of the squirrel and his described friend. Furthermore there is a description of the Volga river, this can refer to a claim of pride of the soil. So there are a lot of hints that there is an imagined national community that is associated with
hospitality and the practice of drinking. The label on the vodka-bottle than picks up on the mythical specifics of the Russian consumer.
36 I Have travelled the whole world, I have visited the five continents, but only here, in Russia, have I met people with the inexplicable combination of finesse and simplicity, altruism and
light-heartedness, courage and greatness. Incredibly inexplicable! Russian Endurance. [Russkaya Vyderzhka] - more than mere character.(Roberts: 304)
Working just as drinking is perceived to be an act of solidarity as well as pressure. Working is considered to be a practice of solidarity that is opposed to drinking:
He worked overtime. It was very difficult. He said he'd lived two lives already. That was the feeling he had. First he works too much, he feels like living two lives. Then he begins to drink more and more -then he has one life again- (Saborova 2011: 5)
In many cases the bottle is opposed to earning money.
"They alcoholise you in the [transport] fleet, I told him. How can I refuse, they ask me to do something with their car, he said. And of course, they give him a bottle, not money for this." #14 (Saburova 2011: 6)
However, this mostly is the same place where the deceased males have started to drink. But the subjects also lose their jobs for consuming:
- perhaps, something happened at work: he began drinking, missed work and was asked to leave... Then he got a job at the radio plant. They sacked him for drinking" #15 (Saburova 2011:6)
So the workplace seems to serve as the cradle of extreme consuming but also as the site where the consumer gets judged.
37 The practice of hunting and fishing together is associated with relaxing and drinking in the documentary. The self -manufacturing process of samogon is somehow part of the broader theme of relaxing. Again work is juxtaposed to drinking, yet also a part of drinking, for everyone who relaxes and drinks together also works, this is described in one sentence: Everyone is working hard, when we hunt, we relax.
There are a also lot of courtesy rules being discussed that have to do with the practice of drinking together, they have the potency of pressuring the members of the group into drinking.
An empty bottle must be removed from the table. Otherwise your house will be empty. Your house must always be full. A bottle is as a house. Russians say: they live in abundance, in abundance. (X): Your house can not be empty, everything you have must be put on the table. Also the glasses must be full (Brandt Corstius 2010).
The entity of the state still plays a part in the process of consuming. All commenters on the anti-alcohol measures, Patriarch Kirill, Valentines Matvienko and Demid Golikov, the head of ‘strategic planning’ were convinced that the legislators were the only entity that could bring about change.
by the samogon producer V. mostly as an actor to resist.
We make it ourselves *that is why it more safe*. You had the USSR and then began perestroika. Much illegal vodka was sold. People died from drinking It (Brandt Corstius 2010).
38 The government is only mentioned in relation to consumption as to describe the USSR, that is presumably a time were nothing was the matter and then the perestroika period wherein illegal vodka that was sold, the selling and consumption of this vodka had disastrous effects. What is strange here is firstly that V. experienced the perestroika period that formerly is still within the USSR period as a period wherein the old state had already crumbled. The anti-alcohol campaign was to blame for getting harmful substitutes on the market rather than preventing hazardous consumption in V’s opinion. So the act of self-production is justified as being a kind of resistance against state measures, because he already witnessed a situation in which top-down measures were not to be trusted. Health is that sense also political since samogon is a way for V. to resist the influence of the state.
People that live in the woods will live until they are one hundred years old. They drink samogon with herbs and they feel very fit. It is cheaper to buy vodka in stores, and I can easily afford it. But in this drink I put my soul (Brandt Corstius 2010).
V. is continually stressing the healthiness of samogon. Samogon is opposed to poison more than one time and also opposed to vodka. In what order V. is switching from topic is relevant here. First he makes an essentialist claim that people who live in the woods are the most fittest. Directly thereafter he says that it is cheaper to buy vodka in stores (an essentialist artificial setting) and then claims that he put his soul in his drink. The strange thing is that the word ‘soul’ is also used by the woman in the vodka factory in the same documentary. So this ‘soul’ here denotes a pureness, or healthiness, whereas the woman referred to it as something in need of warmth.
39
Conclusion
This essay started out with the question if the (excessive) consumption of vodka in today’s Russia be understood as a pitiful cultural tradition associated with a repressive autocratic state legacy or as an act of modern political consumerism in a climate where food is politicized. This question served as a starting point from where on out I have tried to point out what the background of the evaluation was and also the fact that it was a rather bipolar question that is not easy to answer. In this essay I have tried to argue that the consumption of vodka and its counterpart samogon are consumed for clear-cut reasons. The hazardous drinking patterns are mostly found among males, this was described in the literature and also in the small parts of data that were used in the analysis. Consuming can be reflecting a national identity issue, but it this by itself does not seem a motivation to consume. Rather I have argued that it could be an attempt for suspicious consumption, a way to ‘live in abundance’ (Brandt Corstius 2010) for a split second, this fills the gap of lacking solidarity and it pressures Russian men into consuming. Political consumption is not clear to examine in the texts, rather there is a form of expressive consumption that is to be effectively looked into if there is to be taken decisive steps in the process of lessening the dependency’s grip.
This essay was meant as a critique on Schrad’s historical political analysis , in the sense that it is too shallow in its assertion that the consumption of vodka is merely to be controlled and handled by the Kremlin. The fact that the samogon user was arguing that the production of samogon was actually a form of resistance against reliance on the state-
controlled vodka is both a reflection of the centralizing tendency of the government as a form of agentive resistance. As Schrad has argued, he thinks the solution to successfully fight alcohol dependency in Russia is to municipalize the sales and the interest on revenues. There
40 is something to say for the stance that the autocratic way of dealing with this issue however is the way that is accepted as the only way in the minds of Russians, for both the samogon producer as the Patriarch think of the state as the only instigator of change in this issue, not the municipality. There are however sites, like the working place that are very decisive in the spreading of hazardous drinking patterns and the behavioral trends that are common here could for haps studied in more detail, as to point where and how these patterns are regenerating.
References
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