“Alcohol Controls and Russian Politics, 1863–1876”

Abstract

After abolishing monopolies in alcohol production and sales in 1863, Russian officials struggled to reverse the increased drunkenness and crime perceived to have resulted from the rapid spread of taverns while protecting alcohol taxes. The key actors did so in ways that reflected their differing missions and relationships with the new institutions of local self-government. Responsible for public order and viewing local governments as means of improving rural administration, for a time the Ministry of Internal Affairs sponsored a campaign to replace private taverns with a smaller number of community-owned establishments, winning the support of local authorities and journalists of various political stripes. Responsible for revenues and distrusting resource-poor local governments, the Ministry of Finance successfully opposed this approach on fiscal grounds, an approach that was popular with liberal intellectuals, tavern operators, and their suppliers. In its place, the Finance Ministry favored increasing alcohol taxes to limit consumption while maintaining overall revenues. The Internal Affairs Ministry responded by encouraging and manipulating a tavern-closing temperance campaign that deprived local governments of a revenue source and that journalists exposed as a sham. It did, however, persuade the Finance Ministry to compromise. In 1876 it agreed to share control over the number of taverns in the major cities with the Internal Affairs Ministry’s chiefs of police. This concluded a cycle that illustrated both the potential vitality and the limitations of Russian politics during the Age of the Great Reforms.