The Mayor's office announced that the decision is part of "the institution of a State policy aimed at lowering the level of alcohol abuse and taking prophylactic measures to reduce alcoholism in the population of the Russian Federation by the year 2020." That policy was announced by President Dmitry Medvedev last year. It aims to cut consumption in half and has already led to higher taxes on beer and an increased minimum price on a bottle of vodka. According to government statistics, over 23,000 people die of alcohol poisoning annually, and the average Russian drinks almost five gallons per year -- double the amount the World Health Organization finds acceptable.
Mikhail Metzel, AP
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, shown here on May 9, is cracking down on alcohol sales in his city. He's not the first to try to lessen Russian appetite for liquor.
Experts doubt that the latest measure will have much effect -- except, perhaps, to bolster illegal sales. Sergei Zivenko, president of the Kristall distillery, told TASS that "people will just buy it earlier, as they did in Moscow in 2006 [when a similar measure was adopted]." Restaurant, club and bar owners, however, celebrated the decision, which permits them to continue business as usual with less competition. And Luzhkov apparently has only hard liquor in his sights, as the measure will not restrict the sale of beer. "People who drink vodka aren't switching to beer," said Mikhail Blinov, the executive director of the Union of Producers of Alcohol.
Alcohol has been a concern for the Russian state since at least the year 986, and may even have prevented Russia from becoming an Islamic state. Documents show that Grand Prince Vladimir I of Kievan Rus, the predecessor the Russian, Ukrainian and Belorussian states, was visited by the Muslim Bulgars who encouraged him to adopt Islam. After hearing about their faith, Vladimir was pleased by the idea of a harem, but ultimately rejected their plea, famously declaring: "Drinking is the joy of the Rus. We cannot exist without that pleasure." Two years later, Vladimir baptised Rus into the Eastern Orthodox Christianity of the Byzantine Empire.
Peter the Great created a special medal for drunkards in 1714. Made of cast-iron, it weighed 17 pounds and was apparently the largest and heaviest medal on record. The police would clamp it onto the necks of those arrested for inebriation to discourage them from repeating their transgression.
Russia began its modern experiment with prohibition in 1914, six years before the U.S. The step had been hotly debated in the Russian parliament for three years, the educated intelligentsia pressing hard for its adoption. With war imminent, Tsar Nicholas II finally abolished the sale of alcohol for the mobilization campaign. The ban was soon extended for the duration of the war itself.
The results were astounding: Alcohol consumption dropped tenfold as productivity, personal savings, the birth rate and a host of other indicators rose sharply. But times were devastatingly hard as war woes were amplified by hunger, disease and famine. The country fell apart as the First World War was succeeded by the Revolution and a civil war. Still, Lenin, leader of the new Soviet government, reconfirmed the Imperial ban on alcohol in 1917.
Naturally, prohibition stimulated illegal alcohol sales and home brewing, even though Russia never witnessed the organized criminal system that arose in the U.S. during Prohibition. Eventually, though, Russians began to resort to more colorful and dangerous methods of evading the ban, presaging Soviet post-war culture. When Lenin expanded the alcohol ban in 1919, he not only added a five-year prison term with confiscation of personal property, but -- for good reason -- specified that the law would cover "non-beverage substances containing alcohol."
By 1923, however, Lenin wanted to accelerate economic recovery by softening of the severe policies of the war years. He also needed money. And in 1923 -- nine years before the U.S. -- he ended prohibition, permitting liquor production under state control.
Still, drinking did not approach pre-revolutionary levels until Russia was devastated by another world war. In 1958, the Soviet government reacted to an increasingly obvious problem by forbidding the sale of alcohol in many public places. In 1972, the price of alcohol was raised and production of hard liquor was cut in favor of wine.
These measures were of limited effect. Drinking was acquiring a new and special role in Soviet culture. The intellectual elite, largely oriented against the Soviet state, sought to live and work outside official society. Often taking menial official jobs and living in bohemian poverty, they simultaneously created a rich underground culture -- the so-called "generation of janitors and night watchmen."
A new "alcoholic romanticism" was born, most famously expressed in Venedikt Erofeev's 1969 cult novella "Moscow to Petushki." It was officially published in Russia only in 1989 with a cover price of three rubles, sixty-five kopecks (the price of a bottle of vodka in the late 1960s). Erofeev created an iconic and semi-autobiographical main character: a perpetually inebriated intellectual whose endearingly comical irresponsibility -- justified by his alcohol dependency -- sets him outside official Soviet life; beneath the gentle humor is a profound spiritual tragedy. The angels help him in his search for liquor as he offers readers his recipes for such exotic cocktails as "The Spirit of Geneva," a mixture of cologne, cheap beer and spirit varnish.
In the 1980s, President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a new anti-alcohol campaign -- it lasted all of two years. Urban myths soon emerged. In one, rumors circulated that an airplane had crashed due to ice accumulating on the cockpit windows -- all the antifreeze had been siphoned off and drunk.
It remains to be seen whether Medvedev and Luzhkov will do better.
The results were astounding: Alcohol consumption dropped tenfold as productivity, personal savings, the birth rate and a host of other indicators rose sharply. But times were devastatingly hard as war woes were amplified by hunger, disease and famine. The country fell apart as the First World War was succeeded by the Revolution and a civil war. Still, Lenin, leader of the new Soviet government, reconfirmed the Imperial ban on alcohol in 1917.
Naturally, prohibition stimulated illegal alcohol sales and home brewing, even though Russia never witnessed the organized criminal system that arose in the U.S. during Prohibition. Eventually, though, Russians began to resort to more colorful and dangerous methods of evading the ban, presaging Soviet post-war culture. When Lenin expanded the alcohol ban in 1919, he not only added a five-year prison term with confiscation of personal property, but -- for good reason -- specified that the law would cover "non-beverage substances containing alcohol."
By 1923, however, Lenin wanted to accelerate economic recovery by softening of the severe policies of the war years. He also needed money. And in 1923 -- nine years before the U.S. -- he ended prohibition, permitting liquor production under state control.
Still, drinking did not approach pre-revolutionary levels until Russia was devastated by another world war. In 1958, the Soviet government reacted to an increasingly obvious problem by forbidding the sale of alcohol in many public places. In 1972, the price of alcohol was raised and production of hard liquor was cut in favor of wine.
These measures were of limited effect. Drinking was acquiring a new and special role in Soviet culture. The intellectual elite, largely oriented against the Soviet state, sought to live and work outside official society. Often taking menial official jobs and living in bohemian poverty, they simultaneously created a rich underground culture -- the so-called "generation of janitors and night watchmen."
A new "alcoholic romanticism" was born, most famously expressed in Venedikt Erofeev's 1969 cult novella "Moscow to Petushki." It was officially published in Russia only in 1989 with a cover price of three rubles, sixty-five kopecks (the price of a bottle of vodka in the late 1960s). Erofeev created an iconic and semi-autobiographical main character: a perpetually inebriated intellectual whose endearingly comical irresponsibility -- justified by his alcohol dependency -- sets him outside official Soviet life; beneath the gentle humor is a profound spiritual tragedy. The angels help him in his search for liquor as he offers readers his recipes for such exotic cocktails as "The Spirit of Geneva," a mixture of cologne, cheap beer and spirit varnish.
In the 1980s, President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a new anti-alcohol campaign -- it lasted all of two years. Urban myths soon emerged. In one, rumors circulated that an airplane had crashed due to ice accumulating on the cockpit windows -- all the antifreeze had been siphoned off and drunk.
It remains to be seen whether Medvedev and Luzhkov will do better.