It was the test of a 'true Russian' to be able to drink vodka by the bucketful. Since the sixteenth century, when the art of distillation spread to Russia from the West, the custom had been to indulge in mammoth drinking bouts on festive occasions and holidays. Drinking was a social thing - it was never done alone - and it was bound up with communal celebrations. This meant that, contrary to the mythic image, the overall consumption of vodka was not that great (in the year there were 200 fasting days when drinking was prohibited). But when the Russian drank, he drank an awful lot. (It was the same with food - fasting and then feasting - a frequent alternation that perhaps bore some relationship to the people's character and history: long periods of humility and patience interspersed with bouts of joyous freedom and violent release.) The drinking feats of Russian legend were awe-inspiring. At wedding feasts and banquets there were sometimes over fifty toasts - the guests downing the glass in one gulp - until the last man standing became the 'vodka Tsar'.
Deaths from drinking claimed a thousand people every year in Russia between 1841 and 1859.45 Yet it would be wrong to conclude from this that the Russian drinking problem was an endemic or an ancient one. In fact, it was only in the modern period - starting in the late eighteenth century - that Russian levels of alcohol consumption became a threat to national life; and even then the problem was essentially fabricated by the gentry and the state.* The traditional
* Until the second half of the eighteenth century the annual consumption of spirits was around 2 litres tor every adult male but by the end of Catherine's reign in the 1790s it had risen to around 5 litres (R. E. F. Smith and D. Christian,
drinking pattern had been set in a context where alcohol was scarce -a rare commodity that could only be afforded on a holiday. But in the latter part of the eighteenth century the gentry distillers who were licensed by the state to manufacture vodka increased their production many times. With the 1775 reform of local government, which transferred the control of the police to gentry magistrates, there was little state control of the booming retail business, legal or illegal, which made vodka traders very rich. Suddenly, there were vodka shops in every town, taverns all over the place, and, other than religious proscription, no more limitations on drinking. The government was conscious of the social costs of increased drunkenness, and the Church was constantly raising the issue, campaigning noisily against the drinking shops. The problem was to modify a drinking pattern that had been formed over many centuries - the habit of overdrinking whenever the Russians drank - or else to reduce the supply of drink. But since the state derived at least a quarter of its total revenues from vodka sales, and the aristocracy had vested interests in the trade, there was little pressure for reform. It was not until the First World War that the state came down on the side of sobriety. But the ban on vodka which it introduced only made the drinking problem worse (for the Russians turned to paraffin and illegal moonshines that were far more dangerous), while the loss of tax revenues from vodka sales was a major contribution to the downfall of the regime in 1917.
'The difference between Moscow and St Petersburg is this. In Moscow, if you have not seen a friend for a few days, you think there's something wrong and send out someone to check that he's not dead. But in Peter, you may not be seen for a year or two and no one will miss you.'46 Muscovites have always taken comfort from the image of their city as a warm and friendly 'home'. Compared with the cold and formal Petersburg, Moscow prided itself on its relaxed 'Russian' customs and its hospitality. Without a court, or much to occupy them in their offices, Muscovites had little else to do but visit all their friends and do the rounds of parties, feasts and balls. The doors of Moscow's mansions were always open and the Petersburg custom of set times for visits was regarded as absurd. Guests were expected to show up at any time, and on certain days, such as namedays, birthdays or religious
holidays, or when someone had arrived from the country or abroad, houses were all come and go.
