Wine monopoly in Russia in the 17th-19th centuries: Fiscal and/or social interests

Abstract

The article considers the wine monopoly in Russia in the 17th-19th centuries. A retrospective analysis of the formation of the “drinking” policy in the Russian state for three centuries is presented. The emphasis is placed on the peculiarities of the combination of social and financial interests in the state regulation of the turnover of alcoholic beverages. The research focuses on the legal means of introducing a wine monopoly in Russia. The features of state regulation of alcohol production and turnover are illustrated, depending on whether the government reserved the right to trade in wine and levy fees for alcoholic drinks, that is, introduced a wine monopoly, or transferred this right to private individuals (farming). Attention is drawn to the duality of the objectives of the wine monopoly introduction - to increase the incoming of the treasury (by adding to the tax revenues of trade profits) and to prevent (reduce) alcoholization of the population through the strict regulation of the turnover and improving the quality of alcohol. The theoretical aspects of the wine monopoly content are identified; they are partly related to the terminological confusion existing in the doctrine, when the concepts “wine” and “vodka” monopoly, “monopoly” and “regalia” are incorrectly identified, the concept “farming” (otkup, revenue leasing) is incorrectly interpreted. A conclusion is made about the differentiation of the concepts of regalia and monopoly; about a more logical representation of farming not as a prototype of excise taxes, but as an independent form of fiscal monopoly. In the research, traditional methods of scientific cognition are used. The dialectical method of cognition and the principle of historicism allowed considering the main stages of the wine monopoly's development. The techniques of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction made it possible to conclude that in the historical periods when fiscal interest prevailed over social there was farming trade. When the level of drunkenness became dangerously high, and the state's income from alcoholic beverages decreased, the authorities established a monopoly, primarily on the retail sale of beverages. Special methods - formal-legal and comparative-historical - formed the basis for identifying restrictions imposed by the state within the framework of monopolization of the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. Methods of observing historical continuity in the development of legal institutions, as well as systematic and historical-retrospective approaches used to consider the instruments of legal regulation of the alcohol industry in the Russian Empire from a historical distance allowed a conclusion that, in Russia of the 17th-19th centuries, state fiscal interests prevailed, they determined the main directions of the state alcohol policy.