Vodka Politics (93 page)

45
. Snow, “Alcoholism in the Russian Military,” 424–25. For more on “Was he drunk?” see Frederick McCormick,
Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia
, 2 vols. (New York: Outing Publishing Co., 1907), 2:281.

46
. Frederic William Unger,
Russia and Japan, and a Complete History of the War in the Far East
(Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1905), 231–40.

47
. Vinkentii V. Veresaev,
In the War: Memoirs of V. Veresaev, trans
. Leo Winter (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1917), 7–8; on suicides, 19–21.

48
. Joshua A. Sanborn,
Drafting the Russian Nation: Military Conscription, Total War, and Mass Politics, 1905–1925
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 13; Veresaev,
In the War
, 23.

49
. Veresaev,
In the War
, 25.

50
. On McCormick’s first impressions see
Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia
, 1:27. See also ibid., 2:278–82; Ernest Barron Gordon,
Russian Prohibition
(Westerville, Ohio: American Issue, 1916), 8.

51
. Eugene S. Politovsky,
From Libau to Tsushima: A Narrative of the Voyage of Admiral Rojdestvensky’s Fleet to Eastern Seas, Including a Detailed Account of the Dogger Bank Incident
, trans. F. R. Godfrey (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1908), 11.

52
. McCormick,
Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia
, 1:143. On the high levels of drunkenness among the officer class see V. E. Bagdasaryan, “Vinnaya monopoliya i politicheskaya istoriya,” in
Veselie Rusi, XX vek: Gradus noveishei rossiiskoi istorii ot “p’yanogo byudzheta” do “sukhogo zakona
,” ed. Vladislav B. Aksenov (Moscow: Probel-2000, 2007), 101–3.

53
. McCormick,
Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia
, 1:180–81.

54
. Ibid., 2:279.

55
. Ibid., 2:281.

56
. Richard Linthicum,
War between Japan and Russia
(Chicago: W. R. Vansant, 1904), 213.

57
. Petr A. Zaionchkovskii,
The Russian Autocracy under Alexander III
, trans. David R. Jones (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International, 1976), 22.

58
. Kevin Lee, “Dogger Bank: Voyage of the Damned,” Hullwebs History of Hull (Kingston upon Hull city history website) (2004),
http://www.hullwebs.co.uk/content/l-20c/disaster/dogger-bank/voyage-of-dammed.htm#
(accessed March 21, 2009); Sydney Tyler,
The Japan-Russia War
(Philadelphia: P. W. Ziegler Co., 1905), 357.

59
. Lee, “Dogger Bank: Voyage of the Damned.”

60
. Richard Michael Connaughton,
The War of the Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–5
(New York: Routledge, 1991), 246.

61
. Norman E. Saul,
Sailors in Revolt: The Russian Baltic Fleet in 1917
(Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), 64–66.

62
. Connaughton,
War of Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear
, 246; Lee, “Dogger Bank: Voyage of the Damned”; Constantine Pleshakov,
The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), 98.

63
. Pleshakov,
Tsar’s Last Armada
, 98–99; Tyler,
Japan-Russia War
, 364.

64
. Gordon,
Russian Prohibition
, 9; Michael Graham Fry, Erik Goldstein, and Richard Langhorne,
Guide to International Relations and Diplomacy
(London: Continuum, 2002), 162.

65
. J. Martin Miller,
Thrilling Stories of the Russian-Japanese War
(n.p., 1904), 449.

66
. Veresaev,
In the War
, 259–60.

67
. Ibid., 275.

68
. Ibid., 259–60.

69
. Reported in the
Vil’no voenno-listok
; cited in Snow, “Alcoholism in the Russian Military,” 427.

70
. McCormick,
Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia
, 2:280.

71
. Pleshakov,
Tsar’s Last Armada
, 192–93.

72
. Ibid., 283, 86.

73
. McCormick,
Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia
, 2:280. See also Pleshakov,
Tsar’s Last Armada
, 324–25.

74
. McCormick,
Tragedy of Russia in Pacific Asia
, 2:281.

75
. W. Bruce Lincoln,
In War’s Dark Shadow: The Russians before the Great War
(New York: Dial, 1983), 243, 59.

76
. Quoted in Herlihy,
Alcoholic Empire
, 52; see also Ernest Poole, “Two Russian Soldiers,”
The Outlook
, Sept. 2 1905, 21–22.

Chapter 12

1
. Viktor P. Obninskii,
Poslednii samoderzhets, ocherk zhizni i tsarstvovaniia imperatora Rossii Nikolaia II-go
(Moscow: Respublika, 1992), 21–22.

2
. Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv,
The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 5.

3
. Robert K. Massie,
Nicholas and Alexandra
(New York: Atheneum, 1967), 19–20.

4
. See Orlando Figes,
A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924
(New York: Viking, 1996), 16; Valentina G. Chernukha, “Emperor Alexander III, 1881–1894,” in
The Emperors and Empresses of Russia: Rediscovering the Romanovs
, ed. Donald J. Raleigh and Akhmed A. Iskenderov (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), 359; Charles Lowe,
Alexander III of Russia
(New York: Macmillan, 1895), 277–89; Hermann von Samson-Himmelstjerna,
Russia under Alexander III. And in the Preceding Period
, ed. Felix Volkhovsky, trans. J. Morrison (New York: MacMillan and Co., 1893), xxi–xxii.

5
. Petr A. Zaionchkovskii,
Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie v kontse XIX stoletiya
(Moscow: Mysl’, 1970), 47–48.

6
. James P. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci,
Czars: Russia’s Rulers for over One Thousand Years
(New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995), 331–32; Catherine Radziwill,
Nicholas II: The Last of the Tsars
(London: Cassell & Co., 1931), 100.

7
. Zaionchkovskii,
Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie
, 51–52.

8
. Mohammed Essad-Bey [Lev Nussimbaum],
Nicholas II: Prisoner of the Purple
, trans. Paul Maerker-Branden and Elsa Branden (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1936), 153. See also George Alexander Lensen,
Russia’s Eastward Expansion
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 95; David Chavchavadze,
The Grand Dukes
(New York: Atlantic International, 1990), 224.

9
. Mark D. Steinberg, “Russia’s Fin De Siècle, 1900–1914,” in
Cambridge History of Russia
, ed. Ronald G. Suny (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 72. This wasn’t the first time that a
festin du peuple
went horribly awry. Following Alexander II’s coronation forty years earlier, a free dinner for a quarter-million guests was spoiled by rain and ravaged by crows. Moreover, the festivities were accidentally begun even before the new tsar arrived. Once the guests laid into the 1,252
vedro
s of wine, 3,120
vedro
s of beer, and untold quantities of vodka, they could not be stopped. Henry Tyrrell,
The History of the War with Russia: Giving Full Details of the Operations of the Allied Armies
, 2 vols. (London: London Printing & Publishing Co., 1855), 2:334–35.

10
. Duffy and Ricci,
Czars
, 331; Massie,
Nicholas and Alexandra
, 58–59; W. Bruce Lincoln,
The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias
(New York: Dial, 1981), 627. On the couple’s charitable work see Christopher Warwick,
Ella: Princess, Saint and Martyr
(London: John Wiley & Sons, 2006), 167.

11
. Alexander Mikhailovich Romanov,
Once a Grand Duke
(New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1932), 139; Zaionchkovskii,
Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie
, 52, 136–37; Patricia Herlihy,
The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 24–28, 209n1.

12
. Constantine Pleshakov,
The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), 21–22. See also Zaionchkovskii,
Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie
, 51.

13
. Mike Martin,
From Crockett to Custer
(Victoria, B.C.: Trafford, 2004), 172–73.

14
. Dee Brown,
Wondrous Times on the Frontier
(Little Rock, Ark.: August House, 1991), 46–52.

15
. Marc Ferro,
Nicholas II: Last of the Tsars
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 49; Julia P. Gelardi,
From Splendor to Revolution: The Romanov Women, 1847–1928
(New York: Macmillan, 2011), n.p.

16
. Pleshakov,
Tsar’s Last Armada
, 21, 58, 98, 152.

17
. The grand duchess subsequently retired to a convent and devoted herself to alleviating poverty and intemperance. Edith Martha Almedingen,
An Unbroken Unity: A Memoir of Grand-Duchess Serge of Russia, 1864–1918
(London: Bodley Head, 1964), 52; Lincoln,
Russia
, 651.

18
. On his alcoholism see Obninskii,
Poslednii samoderzhets
, 21. As a scapegoat, see Ferro,
Nicholas II
, 47.

19
. Alexander Polunov,
Russia in the Nineteenth Century: Autocracy, Reform and Social Change, 1814–1914
, trans. Marshall Shatz (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2005), 219–21. On the vodka-fueled riots and pogroms see Kate Transchel,
Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895–1932
(Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 36; V. E. Bagdasaryan, “Vinnaya monopoliya i
politicheskaya istoriya,” in
Veselie Rusi, XX vek: Gradus noveishei rossiiskoi istorii ot “p’yanogo byudzheta” do “sukhogo zakona
,” ed. Vladislav B. Aksenov (Moscow: Probel-2000, 2007), 108–11.

20
. V. Blagoveshchenskii, “Vred p’yanstva dlya obshchestva i gosudarstva,” in
Pit’ do dna—ne vidat’ dobra. Sbornik statei protiv p’yanstva
(St. Petersburg: Tipografiya Aleksandro-Nevskago obshchestva trezvosti, 1911); N. N. Shipov,
Alkogolizm i revolyutsiya (Alcohol and Revolution
) (St. Petersburg: Grad., 1908), 35–42; W. Arthur McKee, “Sobering up the Soul of the People: The Politics of Popular Temperance in Late Imperial Russia,”
Russian Review
58, no. 2 (1999): 214; Herlihy,
Alcoholic Empire
, 61–62, 66–68. On the vodka boycotts see Transchel,
Under the Influence
, 36.

21
. Marr Murray,
Drink and the War from the Patriotic Point of View
(London: Chapman & Hall, 1915), epigraph; Vladimir P. Nuzhnyi,
Vino v zhinzni i zhizn‘ v vine
(Moscow: Sinteg, 2001), 234; A. W. Harris, “A Compensation of the War,”
Union Signal
, June 8, 1916, 5.

22
. Mark Lawrence Schrad,
The Political Power of Bad Ideas: Networks, Institutions, and the Global Prohibition Wave
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 141, 73–74. On the Kaiser’s proclamation see “Kaiser Wilhelm Seeks to Curb Drink Evil,”
Union Signal
, Sept. 25, 1913; James S. Roberts,
Drink, Temperance, and the Working Class in Nineteenth-Century Germany
(Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 68–69.

23
. Aleskandr M. Korovin, “Vysochaishii manifest 17 oktabrya i bor’ba s p’yanstvom,”
Vestnik trezvosti
, no. 130 (1905) cited and translated in Herlihy,
Alcoholic Empire
, 129. Indeed, America’s pioneering expert on Russia, George Kennan, explained to temperance advocate Frances Willard that “drunkenness among the peasants is a result of the latter’s poverty and wretchedness—that it is an attempt to escape for a time from the consciousness of hopeless misery caused by oppression and bad government.” George Kennan to Frances Willard, Aug. 29, 1888, p. 2, folder 47—Correspondence, 1888: July–September (reel 15), Women’s Christian Temperance Union Series, Temperance and Prohibition Papers, Evanston, Ill.

24
. Quoted in Transchel,
Under the Influence
, 31. See also Irina R. Takala,
Veselie Rusi: Istoriia alkogol’noi problemy v Rossii
(St. Petersburg: Zhurnal Neva, 2002), 100–103. Evgenii V. Pashkov, “Kazennaya vinnaya monopoliya v Rossii kontsa XIX-nachala XX v.” in:
Alkogol’ v Rossii: Materialy vtoroi mezhdunarodnoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii
(Ivanovo, 28–29 oktyabrya 2011), ed. Nikolai V. Dem’yanenko (Ivanovo: Filial RGGU v g. Ivanovo, 2011), 72–9.