Vodka Politics (85 page)

50
. Kelly,
History of Russia
, 254–55. On Romodanovsky’s bear see Friederich Christian Weber,
The Present State of Russia
(London: W. Taylor, 1722), 137. See also Kelly,
History of Russia
, 271–72; Robert Coughlan,
Elizabeth and Catherine: Empresses of All the Russias
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 17. Other noteworthy accounts of Peter’s drunken cruelty can be found in the works of novelist Alexei Tolstoy. In his well-researched
Peter the First
, Tolstoy depicts Peter’s Jolly Company emasculating members of the old boyar class: “Prince Belosel’sky was stripped naked and eggs were broken against his bare butt…. They stuck a candle into Prince Volkonsky’s anus and chanted prayers over him until they collapsed with laughter. They pitched and tarred people and made them stand on their heads. They even used a bellows to pump air into Courtier Ivan Akakievich’s anus, which caused his subsequent speedy death.” Tolstoi,
Pyotr Pervyi
, 214; English translation from Segal,
Russian Drinking
, 72.

51
. Rambaud,
Russia
, 27; von Strahlenberg,
Russia, Siberia and Great Tatary
, 248.

52
. Ségur,
History of Russia and of Peter the Great
, 443.

53
. Bushkovitch goes on to note that in the ensuing drinking “Menshikov got so drunk he lost a jewel-encrusted order of knighthood, a present from the King of Prussia. Fortunately a common soldier found it the next day and returned it to him.” Bushkovitch,
Peter the Great
, 344–46. On the little people see Hughes,
Russia in the Age of Peter the Great
, 259. Of course, the birth of Alexei also was celebrated with alcohol. Hughes,
Peter the Great
, 29.

54
. Evgenii Viktorovich Anisimov,
The Reforms of Peter the Great: Progress through Coercion in Russia
, trans. John T. Alexander (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 278–79.

55
. On the law of succession and the crowning of Catherine see Anisimov,
Reforms of Peter the Great
, 279; Cracraft,
Revolution of Peter the Great
, 66–67. On the Drunken Synod and Peter’s death see Kelly,
History of Russia
, 338–39.

Chapter 5

1
. Vasilii O. Klyuchevskii,
A Course in Russian History: The Time of Catherine the Great
, vol. 2, trans. Marshall Shatz (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 15–16.

2
. Robert Nisbet Bain,
The Daughter of Peter the Great: A History of Russian Diplomacy and of the Russian Court under the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, 1741–1762
(London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1899), 106; Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom, “Preface: Catherine the Great and Her Several Memoirs,” in
The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
, ed. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom (New York: Modern Library, 2005), xv.

3
. Catherine II,
The Memoirs of Catherine the Great
, trans. Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom (New York: Modern Library, 2005), 4–5.

4
. Klyuchevskii,
A Course in Russian History
, 17–18; Samuel Smucker,
Memoirs of the Court and Reign of Catherine the Second, Empress of Russia
(Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1855), 24; Catherine II,
Memoirs of Catherine the Great
, 74.

5
. Catherine II,
Memoirs of Catherine the Great
, 120; Robert K. Massie,
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
(New York: Random House, 2011), 159; Henri Troyat,
Catherine the Great
, trans. Joan Pinkham (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980), 86, 99–100.

6
. Catherine II,
Memoirs of Catherine the Great
, 82–84.

7
. Ibid., 184.

8
. Klyuchevskii,
Course in Russian History
, 16–17.

9
. Samuel M. Smucker,
The Life and Reign of Nicholas the First, Emperor of Russia
(Philadelphia: J. W. Bradley, 1856), 25.

10
. Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Timothée d’Eon de Beaumont,
Lettres, mémoires & négociations particulieres du Chevalier d’Éon, ministre plénipotentiaire de France aupres du roi de la Grande Bretagne; avec M. M. les ducs de Praslin, de Nivernois, de Sainte-Foy, & Regnier de Guerchy ambassadeur extraordinaire, &c. &c. &c
. (London: Jaques Dixwell, 1764); for an English translation see Troyat,
Catherine the Great
, 26–27. See also Jean-Henri Castéra,
The Life of Catharine II. Empress of Russia
, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (London: T. N. Longman & O. Rees, 1799), 1:124. Henri Troyat,
Terrible Tsarinas: Five Russian Women in Power
, trans. Andrea Lyn Secara (New York: Algora, 2000), 153. On the need to balance Peter and Elizabeth see Cruse and Hoogenboom, “Catherine the Great and Her Several Memoirs,” xvi.

11
. C. C. J., “Russian Court Life in the Eighteenth Century,”
Littell’s Living Age
23, no. 1777 (1878): 762.

12
. Troyat,
Catherine the Great
, 133.

13
. Smucker,
Catherine the Second
, 38–39.

14
. Troyat,
Catherine the Great
, 133–34.

15
. Klyuchevskii,
Course in Russian History
, 17–18.

16
. Harford Montgomery Hyde,
The Empress Catherine and Princess Dashkov
(London: Chapman & Hall, 1935), 29; Klyuchevskii,
A Course in Russian History
, 22–23; Troyat,
Catherine the Great
, 136–37.

17
. Klyuchevskii,
Course in Russian History
, 22–23.

18
. Valerie A. Kivelson, “The Devil Stole His Mind: The Tsar and the 1648 Moscow Uprising,”
American Historical Review
98, no. 3 (1993): 733; Dmitry Shlapentokh, “Drunkenness in the Context of Political Culture: The Case of Russian Revolutions,”
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy
14, no. 8 (1994): 18; Paul Miliukov, Charles Seignobos, and Louis Eisenmann,
History of Russia, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Empire of Peter the Great
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), 151. Adam Olearius vividly described the sorrowful fate of those too drunk to escape the flames; see Samuel H. Baron, ed.,
The Travels of Olearius in Seventeenth-Century Russia
(Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1967), 208–13.

19
. Robert Coughlan,
Elizabeth and Catherine: Empresses of All the Russias
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974), 32. On Catherine I and alcohol see Sergei Romanov,
Istoriya russkoi vodki
(Moscow: Veche, 1998), 117–18. Also see Troyat,
Terrible Tsarinas
, 15–18.

20
. Troyat,
Terrible Tsarinas
, 69.

21
. Troyat,
Terrible Tsarinas
, 82–85; Evgenii Viktorovich Anisimov, “Empress Anna Ivanovna, 1730–1740,” in
The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Rediscovering the Romanovs
, ed. Donald J. Raleigh and A. A. Iskenderov (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 45–53.

22
. Coughlan,
Elizabeth and Catherine
, 37–38; Bain,
Daughter of Peter the Great
, 92.

23
. Klyuchevskii,
Course in Russian History
, 23.

24
. Ibid., 22; Alfred Rambaud,
Russia
, 2 vols. (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1902), 2:85.

25
. Klyuchevskii,
Course in Russian History
, 23–24, 204; Walter K. Kelly,
History of Russia, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time
, 2 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854), 1:463.

26
. Troyat,
Catherine the Great
, 143–48.

27
. Ibid., 148–49.

28
. Ibid., 149.

29
. Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova,
The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova
, trans. Kyril Fitzlyon (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), 82; Massie,
Catherine the Great
, 268–69. On the rumors see Virginia Rounding,
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power
(New York: Macmillan, 2006), 147.

30
. Klyuchevskii,
Course in Russian History
, 26. Claims of losses from the celebration totaled roughly 105,000 rubles. Rounding,
Catherine the Great
, 147. Walter Kelly suggests that even foreign ambassadors contributed to the celebrations. Kelly,
History of Russia
, 466.

31
. Dashkova,
Memoirs of Princess Dashkova
, 81. Klyuchevskii suggests that Peter also requested Elizabeth Vorontsova, who was instead dispatched to Moscow to marry Alexander Poliansky. Klyuchevskii,
A Course in Russian History
, 26.

32
. Robert Nisbet Bain,
Peter III, Emperor of Russia: The Story of a Crisis and a Crime
(London: Archibald Constable & Co., 1902), 182–84; Kelly,
History of Russia
, 475.

33
. Kelly,
History of Russia
, 473.

34
. J. M. Buckley,
The Midnight Sun, the Tsar and the Nihilist
(Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1886), 168–71.

35
. Smucker,
Catherine the Second
, 268–69.

36
. Edvard Radzinsky,
Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar
, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Free Press, 2006), 16–17.

37
. Smucker,
Life and Reign of Nicholas the First
, 69; Radzinsky,
Alexander II
, 32–34.

38
. See, for instance, Stephen Kotkin,
Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 99; Stephen White,
Russia’s New Politics: The Management of a Postcommunist Society
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29–30.

Chapter 6

1
. See, for instance: Linda Himelstein,
The King of Vodka: The Story of Pyotr Smirnov and the Upheaval of an Empire
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 287–338; K. V. Smirnova et al.,
Vodochnyi korol’ Petr Arsen’evich Smirnov i ego potomki
(Moscow: Raduga, 1999), 85–118. On international disputes arising from such Russian imagery see Boris S. Seglin, “Russkaya vodka v mezhdunarodnykh sudakh,”
Biznes-advokat
, no. 1 (2005);
http://www.bestlawyers.ru/php/news/newsnew.phtml?id=370&idnew=14983&start=0
(accessed Feb. 8, 2013).

2
.
Vice Magazine
journalist Ivar Berglin goes on a similar expedition into the origins of vodka in his Vice Guide to Travel documentary “Wodka Wars,”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR_37f6hHTE
(accessed July 21, 2013).

3
. The biographical material on Vilyam Pokhlebkin was culled from the Russia 1 television documentary “Smert’ kulinara: Vil’yam Pokhlebkin,”
http://www.rutv.ru/video.html?vid=39680&cid=5079&d=0
.

4
. “Vodka,” in
Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia
(Big Soviet Encyclopedia) (English translation), ed. A. M. Prokhorov (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 545.

5
. Daniel J. Malleck, “Whiskies,” in
Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia
, ed. Jack S. Blocker Jr., David M. Fahey, and Ian R. Tyrrell (Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 2:650; Birgit Speckle,
Streit ums Bier in Bayern: Wertvorstellungen um Reinheit, Gemeinschaft und Tradition
(Münster: Waxman Verlag, 2001), 80–81.

6
. Artur Tabolov,
Oligarkh: Prestupleniya i raskayanie
(Moscow: EKSMO, 2008); cited in Boris V. Rodionov,
Bol’shoi obman: Pravda i lozh‘ o russkoi vodke (Grand Deception: Truth and Lies about Russian Vodka
) (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo AST, 2011), 58–63.

7
. Vilyam Vasilevich Pokhlebkin,
Istoriya vodki
(Moscow: Tsentpoligraf, 2000), 11–15. On Stolichnaya and Pepsi see Charles Levinson,
Vodka Cola
(London: Gordon & Cremonesi, 1978), 94; Vladislav Kovalenko, “Vodka—vse ravno chto vechnyi dvigatel’,”
Kompaniya
197, no. 1 (2002),
http://ko.ru/articles/3858
(accessed Feb. 10, 2013); Igor Shumeiko,
10 mifov o russkoi vodke
(10 myths about Russian vodka) (Moscow: Yauza, 2009), 30–35.

8
. Shumeiko,
10 mifov o russkoi vodke
, 35 (emphasis in original).

9
. “Smert’ kulinara: Vil’yam Pokhlebkin,”
http://www.rutv.ru/video.html?vid=39680&cid=5079&d=0
.

10
. Yuliya Azman and Oleg Fochkin, “Za chto ubili pisatelya Pokhlebkina?”
Moskovskii Komsomolets
, April 18, 2000; Aleksandr Evtushenko, “… A telo prolezhalo v kvartire tri nedeli,”
Komsomol’skaya pravda
, April 21, 2000; “Ubit znamenityi geral’dist i kulinar,”
Moskovskii Komsomolets
, April 15, 2000; James Meek, “The Story of Borshch,”
The Guardian
, March 15, 2008.