Prohibition was repealed. What is prohibition and in what years was it in effect in the USSR? After Prohibition

Prohibition is not a new or unique phenomenon. Even in Ancient China, restrictions were introduced on the production and consumption of alcohol. And if you think that all such decrees and regulations are a thing of the past, remember - at what time does the sale of alcoholic beverages stop in your region? Local authorities often take the initiative themselves, prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages on holidays and at night.

Nicholas II and the First World War

How acute the problem of alcoholism was in Tsarist Russia is evidenced by the fact that in those days it was customary to give cab drivers and waiters not “a tip,” but “a vodka.” 1913 became the most “drinking” year in the history of the country, and already in 1914 the emperor officially banned the sale of strong alcohol in shops.

From now on, drinking a glass of vodka was only possible in restaurants. It was initially assumed that this would be a temporary measure, but Russia's entry into World War I forced Prohibition to be extended until the end of hostilities. But peace never came - the Russian Empire ended earlier.

The government of the new Soviet country was in no hurry to cancel the decree of its predecessors; on the contrary, it supported the fight against drunkenness. Official reports and “ceremonial” journalists extolled this measure, enthusiastically telling how good life had become in the new sober society. They wrote that the peasants no longer beat their wives or drink away their wages in taverns, but bring every penny into the house; an atmosphere of peace and love reigns in families.

The reality, of course, was not so rosy. The number of offenses committed while intoxicated has decreased, it is difficult to argue with this. But on the other hand, Prohibition contributed to the critical stratification of society and the growth of discontent among the “lower classes.”

Only “ordinary” people were subject to the ban - the gentlemen did not deny themselves anything; in first-category restaurants it was still possible to order any alcohol. In addition, nobles often had their own wine cellars with collections of elite alcohol. The decree was not initially aimed at them: it was not the counts and princes who staged drunken brawls in wine bars, skipped work and slept under fences. The social gap has become even wider. As a result, the ban was finally lifted only in 1923.

Another consequence of Prohibition in Tsarist-era Russia was the rise of petty fraud. We are talking about 2nd class restaurants and station tea shops. Officially, they fell under the scope of the decree, but everyone knew: there you could easily order a samovar of cognac or a bottle of supposedly mineral water (vodka). In addition, the number of food poisonings has increased significantly, often with fatal consequences. People drank denatured alcohol, varnishes - anything that contained even a drop of alcohol.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Prohibition in the USSR

In principle, the fight against drunkenness on the territory of the USSR never stopped - to one degree or another, restrictions always existed. However, Mikhail Sergeevich, amazed at the scale of alcohol consumption per capita, “tightened the screws” completely. On May 17, 1985, a decree “On strengthening the fight against drunkenness” was issued, and modern analysts believe that this was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. For his anti-alcohol campaign, Gorbachev himself received two nicknames: “Mineral Secretary” and “Lemonade Joe.”

A massive anti-alcohol campaign developed. Films and books were censored, precious vineyards of the rarest varieties were cut down in the Crimea, Moldova, and the Caucasus. Breweries and wineries closed by the thousands.

The first and main effect of this step was not the sobering of the nation, but the budget deficit - the monopoly on vodka brought up to 50% of all income from the sale of products to the treasury. The number of absenteeism from work and school increased - the wine and vodka departments only worked from 14 to 19, so we had to somehow juggle things around. Well, denatured alcohol and cologne, of course, again took center stage in the home bars of the working class, not to mention the revival of the art of moonshine.

The most popular "cocktails" of the working class were:

1. Denatured alcohol (alcohol for technical needs). The liquid was set on fire and waited until a blue flame appeared, indicating that the methyl alcohol had burned out (a very dubious test method). Because of the painted skull and crossbones on the bottle of denatured alcohol, people called this swill cognac “Matrossky”, two bones.

2. Glue “BF” (aka Boris Fedorovich). To clean, a drill was lowered into a container with glue and the drill was turned on at full power. Gradually, the drill wrapped itself in adhesive, and the remaining alcohol with a nasty smell delighted drinkers.

3. Colognes and lotions. They had a more or less normal smell and taste, so they were highly valued during Prohibition. To remove impurities, a hot wire was dipped into the jar. Such cleansing only helped morally, but without this, drinking cologne was considered uncivilized.

4. Polish (liquid for finishing work). It was considered the drink of builders. To clean, add 100 grams of salt to 1 liter of polish, shake, then remove sediment and foam. Those who liked to drink the polish could be seen from afar - by their characteristic brown-violet complexion.

5. Dichlorvos and shoe polish. The most severe methods, when there were no other options left. Diphlovos was usually sprayed into a mug of beer, since in addition to alcohol, it also caused toxic intoxication. Shoe polish was spread on a piece of bread. After some time, the bread absorbed the alcohol.

Prohibition in the USSR also had a positive effect: the birth rate increased, the life expectancy of men increased, people began to save more money in savings banks. However, the negative consequences more than compensated for this benefit.

Woodrow Wilson and Prohibition in the USA

Prohibition in America, in contrast to a similar project in Russia, was based not on a humanistic, but on a purely economic basis: in the conditions of the global crisis and the First World War, it was much more profitable for the States to export grain, which had sharply increased in price, than to use it for production alcohol products.

In addition, most wineries and breweries belonged to the Germans, and in the wake of the increased patriotic idea of ​​national identity, the Americans did not want to become a source of income for citizens of another country.

In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted, prohibiting the sale, production and transportation of alcohol. It is curious that President Wilson himself opposed this bill and even vetoed it, but Congress managed to bypass the presidential ban, and the amendment came into force.

The most obvious consequence of this step was the emergence of bootlegging - the smuggling of alcohol. Several large mafia clans grew up and flourished on this wave. In the famous comedy “Some Like It Hot,” you can see, tangentially, what the showdown between two bootlegging groups looked like.

Another anti-alcohol problem was corruption - the mafiosi had enough money to buy politicians and silence the police.

The third problem is that the production and consumption of moonshine has increased (such people were called moonshineers from the English moon shine - they say they engage in their dark affairs exclusively at night, in the light of the moon). Moonshine is still called “moonshine” in America.

There was also a positive effect - a decrease in the number of injuries and disasters, a decrease in individual crime (compensated by an increase in organized crime), and an improvement in the health of the nation. However, compared to the negative consequences, this was a drop in the ocean, especially since against the backdrop of the Great Depression, everyone was no longer interested in the war against drunkenness. In 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment successfully repealed the Eighteenth, and everything returned to normal.

Why any prohibition law is doomed to fail

Because the rule “in order for a cow to eat less and produce more milk, she needs to be fed less and milked more” does not work. Giving up your usual way of life can only be conscious, and not imposed from the outside. A person will always find a way to get what he wants, even if it means risking his life or breaking the law.

To reduce the consumption of a product (any product, not necessarily alcohol), it is not enough to prohibit people from buying it. It is necessary to radically change the consciousness of citizens so that they no longer consider this product an obligatory part of life. In the case of alcohol, this task seems virtually impossible.

Russia and America are not the only countries that have tried to limit the consumption of alcoholic beverages. For a long time, dry laws were in effect in the countries of Scandinavia, Finland, and a number of other countries. The result is always the same: the rise of moonshine, smuggling, bribery and the threat of economic isolation from other countries.

In the case of Norway, for example, Prohibition had to be abolished due to the discontent of France, Italy and Spain. These countries - major wine exporters - have threatened to stop buying Norwegian fish if the Scandinavian market is not returned to them.

Ridiculous anti-alcohol laws

In terms of funny laws, of course, America is the leader, but “pearls” can be found in the legislation of any country.

New Jersey: it is prohibited to offer tobacco and alcohol to animals at the zoo (what if they agree, develop a bad habit, and then have to take them to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings).

St. Louis: You can't drink beer while sitting outside (you can stand).

Chicago: Drinking alcohol while standing on the street is prohibited (St. Louis drinkers must switch places with their Chicago counterparts).

Cleveland: You can't pass a bottle of alcohol around.

Topeka: Drinking wine from tea cups is prohibited.

California: The fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” is not included in the elementary school curriculum. In Perrault's original version, the granddaughter brought her grandmother not only pies, but also a bottle of wine, and this was enough to classify the work as propaganda of alcoholism.

Pennsylvania: A husband may not purchase alcohol without his wife's written permission.

Bolivia: Women have the right to drink only one glass of wine in a public place.

Holland: You cannot sell beer and wine on Sunday, but you can offer the same drinks in the form of cocktails.

Vodka labels during times Prohibition 1985

The main state secret of the Soviet Union is data on alcohol mortality. On the balance were: mortality from alcohol and income from alcohol products. It’s no longer a secret that at one time the budget of the USSR, and then Russia’s, was called "drunk budget". Here's a small example: during the reign of L. Brezhnev, alcohol sales increased from 100 billion rubles to 170 billion rubles.
According to closed data from the USSR State Statistics Committee for 20 years from 1960 to 1980, alcohol mortality in our country increased to 47%, which means that approximately every third man died from vodka. The Soviet leadership was seriously puzzled by this problem, but instead of taking action, it simply classified these statistics. And plans on how to deal with this problem matured very slowly, because... the country was heading towards disaster.

Under Brezhnev, prices for vodka were raised repeatedly, the state budget received additional revenue, but vodka production did not decrease. Alcoholization of the country has reached its climax. A mad crowd of alcoholics, using unpopular methods of struggle, composed ditties:

“It was six, but it became eight,
we won’t stop drinking anyway.
Tell Ilyich, we can handle ten,
if the vodka gets bigger,
then we will do it like in Poland!”

The allusion to Polish anti-communist events is not accidental. The alcoholized herd was sensitive to the rise in price of vodka, and for the sake of vodka they were ready to do such things as in Poland. It got to the point that a bottle of “little white” became equal to Soviet currency. For a bottle of vodka, a village tractor driver could plow his grandmother’s entire garden.

Andropov, in the name of Brezhnev and the Politburo, cited objective data that with an average world consumption of 5.5 liters of vodka per capita, in the USSR this figure exceeded 20 liters per capita. And the figure of 25 liters of alcohol per capita is recognized by doctors all over the world as the limit beyond which the self-destruction of a nation actually begins.

In the mid-80s, alcoholism in the USSR assumed the scale of a national catastrophe The people, who had lost their heads, drowned, froze, burned in their houses, and fell from windows. There were not enough places in sobering stations, and drug treatment hospitals and treatment and preventive dispensaries were overcrowded.

Andropov received tens of thousands of letters from wives, mothers, sisters, in which they literally begged to take measures to overcome the extent of drunkenness and alcoholism in society - this was "the groan of the people" from this weapon of genocide. In letters, grief-stricken mothers wrote how their children, celebrating their birthdays in nature, drowned drunk. Or how a son, returning home drunk, got hit by a train. Wives wrote that while drinking drinks, their husbands were killed with a knife by their drinking companions, etc. and so on. And there were a lot of such letters with similar tragic stories!

A special commission was created in the Politburo to develop special anti-alcohol resolution, but a series of funerals of top officials of the state slowed down its implementation.

And only in 1985, with the arrival of Gorbachev, the implementation of this resolution began ( Prohibition).
People continued to drink too much, the decision to take radical methods of combating drunkenness was risky, but the calculation was that the USSR would be able to survive the lost income from the sale of vodka, because... the price of oil at the beginning of 1985 was about $30 per barrel, which was enough to support the Soviet economy. The government decided to reduce budget income from the sale of alcohol, as drunkenness has reached catastrophic levels. Gorbachev personally advertises the upcoming action, but at his first speeches to the people he speaks in riddles.

On May 17, 1985, the Central Committee resolution was announced in all central publications of the country, on television and radio. “on measures to overcome drunkenness and alcoholism, eradicate moonshine” - Prohibition. The majority of Soviet citizens supported the government resolution; specialists from the USSR State Statistics Committee calculated that 87% of citizens were in favor of the fight against drunkenness, and every third Soviet citizen demanded tougher measures. This data lands on Gorbachev’s desk and convinces him that he needs to move on. The people demanded the introduction of " Prohibition" “Societies for the struggle for sobriety” were created in each team. In the USSR, such societies were organized for the second time, the first time this happened under Stalin.

M.S. Gorbachev knew about the scale of drunkenness in the country not only from the data that regularly fell on his desk (notes from extras, letters from desperate parents, wives, children), but also from Gorbachev’s own daughter, who was a physician and was engaged in research work on alcohol mortality, It was she and her colleagues who collected these materials and showed her father materials about the colossal mortality rate in the USSR due to alcohol. The data from this dissertation are closed to this day. In addition, Gorbachev’s own family was not at all comfortable with alcohol; Raisa Maksimovna’s brother was also addicted to alcohol (from the materials of Raisa Maksimovna’s autobiographical book “I Hope”).

And then one fine day, 2/3 of the stores selling alcohol closed, and strong drinks disappeared from the shelves. It was then that alcoholics came up with a joke about Gorbachev:

An anecdote about Gorbachev during Gorbachev’s Prohibition Law:

There is a huge queue for alcohol, drunks are indignant.
One, unable to bear it, said: “I’m still going to kill Gorbachev!”
After some time he comes and says: “there’s an even longer queue there.”.

Inveterate alcoholics did not give up, and began to drink varnishes, polishes, brake fluid, and colognes. These dregs of society went further and began to use “BF glue.” Admissions to hospitals with poisoning were not uncommon.

The authorities mobilized scientists and creative intelligentsia to fight drunkenness. Anti-alcohol brochures began to be published in millions of copies. At the end of the 80s, a famous doctor and supporter of a sober lifestyle, academician Fyodor Uglov, spoke on the pages of the press. He informed the country about his discovery, the essence of which was that the reason for the physical and moral degradation of the population lies in the consumption of even small doses of alcohol.

But then another problem arose: speculators began selling alcohol! In 1988, shady businessmen received 33 billion rubles from the sale of alcohol. And all this money was actively used in the future during privatization, etc. This is how various speculators have earned and continue to earn money on the health of citizens!!!

Gorbachev and Reagan during Prohibition 1985

By the way, our overseas friends didn’t have to wait long! Western analysts were especially interested in the new steps of the Soviet leadership. Western economists put reports on R. Reagan's desk saying that the USSR, in order to save its citizens, abandoned huge profits from the sale of alcoholic beverages. Military analysts report that the USSR is stuck in Afghanistan, there is an uprising in Poland, Cuba, Angola, and Vietnam. And here our “Western friends” decide to stab us in the back!!! The United States convinces Saudi Arabia to reduce oil prices in exchange for the supply of modern weapons, and in 5 months by the spring of 1986, the price of “black gold” drops from $30 to $12 per barrel. The leadership of the USSR did not expect such huge losses just a year after the start of the anti-alcohol campaign, and then a market bacchanalia began! And then in the 90s, under the auspices of the Monetary Fund, so-called experts came to members of the government and said: “You know, the transition to a market will be such a difficult thing. Millions of people will lose their jobs. God forbid, you will have popular unrest Therefore, we can advise you,” - for some reason the Poles especially liked to advise us (and the United States told them in turn), “to completely allow alcohol, deregulate, completely liberalize the circulation of alcohol, and at the same time allow pornography. And young people will busy. That's what she'll be busy with." And the liberals gladly accepted these “advices”; they quickly realized that a sober society would not allow the country to be plundered: it would be better for people to drink than to take to the streets to demand their rights, to protest against the loss of jobs and lower wages. And this orgy of permissiveness led to monstrous alcoholism. It was then that alcoholism began to surge.

In the USSR itself, people still had no idea how the “attack of the West” would turn out. In the meantime no alcohol law gives its results. The sober population immediately began to raise demographic indicators. Mortality in the USSR fell sharply; in the first six months alone, mortality from alcohol poisoning dropped by 56%, mortality among men from accidents and violence by 36%. During the period of the anti-alcohol campaign, many residents began to note that it became possible to walk freely in the streets in the evening.
Women who felt the benefits of Prohibition, when meeting with Gorbachev, shouted to him: “Don’t give in to persuasion to abolish Prohibition! At least our husbands saw their children with sober eyes!”
It was during this period that there was an unprecedented surge in the birth rate. Men stopped drinking, and women, feeling confident in “tomorrow,” began to give birth. From 1985 to 1986, there were 1.5 million more children in the country than in previous years. In gratitude to the main reformer, many parents began to name their newborns in his honor. Misha was the most popular name of those years.

Opponents of Prohibition

In 1988, opponents Prohibition, mainly members of the government responsible for the state of the economy, reported that budget revenues were decreasing, the “gold reserve” was melting, the USSR was living on debt, borrowing money from the West. And people such as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR (1985-1991) N. Ryzhkov, began to put pressure on M. Gorbachev, demanding the abolition of " Prohibition" These people couldn’t come up with anything better than to start replenishing the budget again by getting their own people drunk.

Ryzhkov - opponent of Gorbachevsky Prohibition

So, let's summarize the results of Prohibition

1. No one no alcohol law in our country was not blown up from within, by the people themselves. All cancellations were caused by external pressure from other states (due to a “stab in the back” (agreement on the collapse of oil prices) from the West, which had been waiting for the right moment for so long), the mafia in their own country, the incompetence of bureaucrats who replenished the budget, ruining the health of our own people.
2. History shows that as soon as they begin to lift the ban on alcohol and make society drunk, reforms and revolutions immediately begin, which lead to one goal: to weaken our State. A drunken society becomes indifferent to what happens next. A drunk father does not see how his children grow up, and he doesn’t care what happens in his country; he will be more concerned about the “hangover morning”, where he can get more to get over his hangover.
3. “does not eliminate all the causes of alcoholism, but it eliminates one of the main ones - the availability of alcoholic products, which will help in the future to achieve absolute sobriety.
4. In order to " no alcohol law"was really effective, it is necessary to carry out widespread explanatory work by all media before its introduction and after. The result of this activity should be a voluntary cessation of alcohol consumption by the majority of society, supported by a continuous and rapid decrease in the production of alcoholic beverages (25-30% per year), with their transfer to the category of drugs, as it was before, as well as a comprehensive fight against the shadow economy.
5. We also need to fight against the “alcohol custom”, which has been formed in our country for thousands of years and during this time has formed the “alcohol habit”. This is the result of long-term information influence on the people.
6. Sobriety is the norm. This is the strategic task. All media, all decision-making bodies, all public organizations, all patriots of our Motherland should work for its approval.
7. You can’t follow the lead of those people who shout: look at Gorbachevsky.” semi-prohibition law“, prohibitions only encourage a person to go and do the opposite (by the way, having watched many programs, this is what people say who are not averse to drinking, but are in responsible positions). This reasoning is fundamentally incorrect, otherwise these liberals will soon abolish the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (a thick volume filled entirely with prohibitive measures).

Consequences of Prohibition

1. Crime has dropped by 70%.
2. Beds vacated in psychiatric hospitals were transferred to patients with other diseases.
3. The consumption of milk by the population has increased.
4. The welfare of the people has improved. Family foundations have strengthened.
5. Labor productivity in 1986-1987 increased annually by 1%, which gave the treasury 9 billion rubles.
6. The number of absenteeism decreased in industry by 36%, in construction by 34% (one minute of absenteeism on a national scale cost 4 million rubles).
7. Savings have increased. 45 billion rubles more were deposited into savings banks.
8. For the years 1985-1990, the budget received 39 billion rubles less money from the sale of alcohol. But if we take into account that every ruble received for alcohol incurs a loss of 4-5 rubles, at least 150 billion rubles were saved in the country.
9. Morality and hygiene improved.
10. The number of injuries and disasters decreased, losses from which decreased by 250 million rubles.
11. The death of people from acute alcohol poisoning has almost disappeared. (If it weren’t for the hardened alcoholics who drank everything, there would be no acute poisoning from alcohol at all!!!)
12. The overall mortality rate has decreased significantly. The mortality rate of the population of working age decreased in 1987 by 20%, and the mortality rate of men of the same age by 37%.
13. Average life expectancy has increased, especially for men: from 62.4 in 1984 to 65 years in 1986. Infant mortality has decreased.
14. Instead of the previous dull gloom, working-class families now have prosperity, tranquility and happiness.
15. Labor savings were used to furnish apartments.
16. Shopping has become more expedient.
17. Every year, 45 billion rubles more food products were sold instead of narcotic poisons than before 1985.
18. Soft drinks and mineral waters were sold 50% more.
19. The number of fires has sharply decreased.
20. The women, feeling confident in the future, began to give birth. In Russia in 1987, the number of children born was the highest in the last 25 years.
21. In 1985-1987, 200 thousand fewer people died per year than in 1984. In the USA, for example, such a reduction was achieved not in a year, but in seven years.

Friends, you and I have the only weapon left against corrupt bureaucrats - this is our public opinion, do not close your eyes to the problems in Russia, we need to actively fight these problems on the Internet. The only thing that corrupt politicians are afraid of is our unification with you, and our NO to their laws to decompose society. THEY ARE STILL AFRAID OF THE PUBLIC!!!

More than 2 billion people drink alcohol. The World Health Organization is sounding the alarm: alcohol consumption per capita is growing rapidly and more and more people are falling into alcohol addiction. More than half of the cases of disability and a third of mental disorders in the world are associated with alcohol consumption.

In 2014, the 100th anniversary of the adoption of Prohibition in Russia was celebrated. On the eve of this date, in October 2013, the founding conference of the Prohibition Party of Russia was held in St. Petersburg. And in December 2013, the International Temperance Academy established the Commemorative Medal “100 Years of Prohibition in Russia.”

So what were the pros or cons of the so-called Prohibition Law of 1914? And what did he give to the country then?

No one disputes the fact that drunkenness is the greatest evil, but it is necessary to fight it not with such radical measures as a sharp complete ban on sales. At the same time, as a rule, home brewing, which is not taken into account by statistics, flourishes to its fullest extent. It is necessary to build a system of government measures, primarily of an informational nature, orienting society towards its final eradication.

The ban on the sale of vodka, introduced in 1914, on the one hand, gave rise to drunken pogroms in Russia, the emptying of the “drunk budget”, mass moonshine, the use of surrogates, drug addiction in large cities, and on the other hand, many of those who built Stalin's Soviet Union. There are many questions about the Prohibition Law of 1914.

"Free drinking"

Alexander II gave “freedom” not only to the peasants, but also to vodka. In 1863, instead of a monopoly, he introduced a “wine excise” similar to the current system. Everyone was able to produce and sell vodka and alcohol, paying the state “10 kopecks per degree” (that is, 10 rubles of excise tax were paid for a bucket of pure alcohol). At the same time, alcohol from grapes was not subject to excise tax, but special excise taxes were paid on beer, intoxicated mead and even yeast.

It was the excise tax that gave birth to the 40-proof vodka we are accustomed to. Previously, all “bread wine” produced in Russia had a strength of 38%, but when calculating the excise tax, it was difficult for officials to use this figure, and Finance Minister Reitern ordered the strength of vodka to be set at 40% in the new “Charter on Drinking Duty”.

The excise system with the widespread production and sale of alcohol has almost tripled the “drinking income” of the state budget over 30 years. But by the end of the 19th century, thanks to the rapid development of industry, state revenues increased overall, so alcohol under Alexander II and Alexander III provided only a quarter of the budget.

However, in 1894, Finance Minister Witte, trying to increase state revenues, pushed for the introduction of another “state-owned wine monopoly.” At the same time, he even created a special “Committee for the Study of the Quality of Higher Drinks” chaired by the chemist Mendeleev, the author of not only the periodic table, but also the scientific work “On the combination of alcohol with water.”

In accordance with Witte's system, anyone could produce spirits and spirits, but subject to technical standards and the mandatory sale of all products to the treasury. Retail sales of alcohol were allowed only at set prices, either through state-owned “wine shops” or by private trading establishments that sold vodka and alcohol at state prices, handing over 96.5% of the proceeds to the Ministry of Finance.

According to statistics from 1910, 2,816 distilleries operated in the Russian Empire and about a billion liters of 40-degree “bread wine” were produced. A century later, in 2010, exactly the same billion liters of vodka were produced in the Russian Federation.

On the eve of the First World War, revenues from the “state wine monopoly” were the main item in the Russian budget, amounting to 28 to 32% of all income. From 1904 to 1913, the net profit of the treasury from the trade in alcohol exceeded 5 billion gold rubles - roughly converted into modern prices, this would be about 160 billion dollars.

The First World War and Prohibition in Russia

The origin of the First World War is hidden in the fundamental features of Western civilization, its desire to rule the whole world. Russia was destined to play the role of victim and cannon fodder in this war. The Anglo-German and Franco-German conflict, which escalated into the First World War, was a confrontation between two predators for the right to exploit the resources of other countries.

In this conflict, Russia did not have its own national interests. Its involvement in the war occurred under the influence of two anti-Russian forces - world Freemasonry associated with the Order of the Grand Orient of France, and aggressive circles in Austria and Germany, planning to seize Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish and Baltic lands.

The opinion has been established in the literature that since the announcement of partial mobilization on July 16, 1914, a certain normative act was adopted (who writes the royal decree, who writes the law, who writes the decree), completely prohibiting the sale of alcohol for the mobilization period.

It seems that this was one of the first regional mandatory resolutions dedicated to the fight against drunkenness during the mobilization period, and was taken by some researchers as a royal decree (prohibition)

The second replicated version of the “prohibition law” concerns the Highest Order of August 22, 1914 “On the extension of the ban on the sale of alcohol, wine and vodka products for local consumption in the Empire until the end of wartime.” The text is not long:

The Chairman of the Council of Ministers notified the Minister of Justice that the Sovereign Emperor, on August 22, 1914, deigned to command: the existing prohibition of the sale of alcohol, wine and vodka products for local consumption in the Empire to continue until the end of wartime.

An unusual document, as if the right hand does not know what the left is doing!

Indeed, according to the strategy of the Ministry of Finance of 1914, already in August 1914, all state-owned trade in alcohol - alcohol, wine and vodka products - was stopped. On paper. By this time, local excise officials, at the direction of the St. Petersburg leader, initiated massive popular opposition to government sales.

The imperial palace was besieged by crowds of walkers with the “lowest requests” to stop the sale of alcohol in their volosts and districts forever! The press was replete with petitions and decisions from rural societies and city councils to ban the sales of vodka, wine and beer. The Emperor was touched by the meetings with popular delegations organized by the governors and the cheerful reports of Bark (Minister of Finance - our note) on the successful implementation of the Highest Rescript of January 1914. And this continued almost until February 1917...

At the same time, firstly, according to the current legislation, people were not prohibited from making beer, mead, mash, and other home-made drinks for their own consumption, without the right to have such alcohol in excessive quantities and sell it to others.

Secondly, let us once again read the text of the Explanatory Note of the Minister of Finance for the draft state list of income and expenses for 1917.

By that time, a lot of time had passed since the birth of the famous rescript. What does Mr. Bark state?

The right to sell state-owned drinks is currently granted only to first-class tavern establishments and buffets at meetings and clubs in those areas where the sale of strong drinks is not prohibited by special regulations of public institutions or orders of the authorities. In view of the upcoming extension of the ban on the sale of government drinks to all, without exception, places where strong drinks are sold, the release of government drinks for consumption in 1917 was not taken into account at all.

The question arises: what then is the Highest command prohibiting “the sale of alcohol, wine and vodka products for local consumption in the Empire... until the end of wartime”? Why was the Law “On Grape Wine” of April 24, 1914 not repealed? How, in conditions of a sober lifestyle, could the Order of the Military Department No. 309, May 22, 1914, “On measures against the consumption of alcoholic beverages in the army,” supported by the Sovereign Emperor, operate without editorial changes?

This normative act prescribed:

…2) The appearance of an officer drunk anywhere, and especially in front of lower ranks, is considered a serious offense inappropriate for the high rank of an officer.

But at the same time it was clarified:

…5) Officers' meetings should not serve as a place for revelry; therefore: a) serving alcoholic beverages is allowed only during breakfast, lunch and dinner, at the exact hours set by the unit commander...

In this regard, let us turn to the pages of front-line diaries:

I play cards all the time, often drink vodka and champagne, and from time to time I visit my sisters” (Stepun F.A. (Lugin N.).

From letters of a warrant officer-artilleryman. - Tomsk: Aquarius, 2000. - P. 161).

Or such an unsightly story when officers of the Life Guards. On the days of the regimental holiday, the Lithuanian regiment went three miles from the trenches without weapons to the reserve to celebrate the celebration. The soldiers were left without commanders. The Germans immediately rushed to the offensive and:

all the officers, unarmed and half-drunk, taken by surprise, launched a counterattack with their fists.

Result:

...almost complete extermination of the regiment and loss of an important position. (Wrangel N.N. Days of Sorrow. - St. Petersburg: Neva, 2001. - P. 136).

When teetotaler commanders tried to introduce strict anti-alcohol rules in early 1916:

Don't drink in the trenches!

- complaints poured in to Petrograd. From there, all fronts received the Highest Order of March 8, 1916, about complete military operations throughout the entire theater:

prohibiting the sale of alcohol, grain wine and vodka products and all other strong drinks, allowing them to be sold only for medicinal purposes.

Wherein:

His Imperial Majesty was pleased to cancel all restrictions emanating from the military authorities regarding the sale of light grape wines...

It turns out that it was only in the spring of 1916 that the consumption of strong alcohol officially stopped in the Russian Army with the transition to “light”?!

Some kind of schizophrenia. First, declare prohibition until the end of hostilities, that is, in connection with the war, but allow officers and soldiers to drink, sometimes continuously, right up to 1916. There are many questions.

How did this prohibition affect the life of the empire?

To begin with, the first week after the decree of August 22 was spent in wine pogroms throughout Russia. Thus, in 35 provincial and district cities of central Russia alone, 230 drinking establishments were destroyed by brutal crowds. In a number of settlements, the police fired at rioters. For example, the Perm governor turned to the tsar with a request to allow the sale of alcohol for at least 2 hours a day, “in order to avoid bloody clashes.”

Hundreds of distilleries were closed or repurposed; in total, 300 thousand workers lost their jobs during Prohibition. The treasury not only lost vodka excise taxes, but was also forced to pay compensation to the owners of closed production facilities. Thus, until 1917, 42 million rubles were allocated for these purposes.

Satirical postcard “Philosopher. “To drink or not to drink?!...”, released during the First World War, when prohibition was in effect in Russia. From the collection of postcard collector Mikhail Blinov

In addition, Prohibition sharply divided society. Already in the fall of 1914, the authorities issued an order:

on the exclusive right of sale for first-class restaurants and aristocratic clubs.

Of course, ordinary people - the same soldiers, workers and peasants - were not allowed into these “alcoholic islands of prosperity.” That is, Prohibition, frankly speaking, was intended only for commoners, while the “elite” could drink as much as they wanted.

The government, seeing that such an order could inflame the “class struggle,” backed down, and on October 10, 1914, it allowed local authorities to establish the procedure for banning or selling alcohol. The Petrograd and Moscow City Dumas were the first to respond to this initiative, achieving a complete cessation of the sale of all alcoholic beverages. But in general, the full sale of alcohol affected only 22% of provincial cities and 50% of district cities - in the rest, the sale of wine with a strength of up to 16 degrees and beer was allowed.

The sale of vodka was allowed in the front-line zone - it was supplied to soldiers and officers.

“Prohibition” did not greatly affect the growth of labor productivity - in 1915, on average, it grew by only 5 - 7%, and even then, as statistics stated at that time, it was more likely not due to the sobering up of workers, but due to increased discipline in the military time (although absenteeism fell by 23%).

In 1916, the state monopoly brought only 51 million rubles to the treasury - about 1.5% of the budget. For comparison: in 1913, the state monopoly on vodka amounted to 26% of the budget. Russia's budget, already bursting at the seams due to military spending, was thus completely drained of blood.

The peasant masses (and they then made up almost 85-90% of the country’s population) began to distill moonshine en masse. No one then knew the exact figures for moonshine produced at home. Estimates ranged from 2 to 30 million buckets (i.e. from 24 to 60 million liters, which is significantly less than a billion liters in 1913). And the production of mash, the most popular product at that time (a small share of the population had moonshine stills), did not even occur to anyone to evaluate.

A typical picture of drunkenness in the countryside can be seen from the notes of officer A.I. Chernyatsov, a participant in the First World War, who was recovering from the hospital on his family estate in the Oryol region:

December 12, 1916. Two days ago, peasants from nearby villages, from Oparino, Skazino and Repyevo, visited us. They were so drunk that they could barely move their tongues. Arrogant, self-confident, not afraid of anything - neither God nor the king! They demanded that the old park be given to them for use.

At night, he loaded all his weapons and barricaded himself in one of the rooms, having previously ordered the windows on the first floor to be boarded up.

There is no order in the villages. There are drunken faces everywhere, you can buy moonshine everywhere. In order to get money for drinks, they sell everything, even the roofs of their own houses. I think that they also wanted to use my forest for moonshine. Just a year or two ago you could calmly walk along the streets of villages. Now everything has changed dramatically: they can easily strip you, beat you and even stab you to death. And all this - in broad daylight.

December 16, 1916. Last night, it turns out, my neighbors the Shingaryovs were burned. Everyone - Ivan Ivanovich himself, his wife Elizaveta Andreevna, children - 16-year-old Sofia, 12-year-old Elena and 10-year-old Nikolai.

The entire park was cut down (overnight!), all the cows and horses were slaughtered, and everything they could not carry away was destroyed. All the attackers were drunk, even there - at the fire - they drank moonshine they had taken with them. The three attackers froze to death, and their comrades forgot about them.

January 5, 1917. My cup is full, that’s it, I’m leaving. The last straw was the events of the last night, when I myself was almost nailed to the wall with a pitchfork. Thank God I didn’t get confused and fought back. He shot 15 rounds, killed one, and wounded three.

I am writing, already sitting in the carriage of the Orel-Moscow train: passing through villages at high speed, I saw everything the same - the evil look of the peasants, drunken curses and drunken whirlwind.

In cities, the population began to switch to using surrogates. For example, in the northwestern regions of Russia, the production of varnish and polish in 1915, compared to 1914, increased by 520% ​​(!) for the first and by 1575% (!!!) for the second. In Central European provinces this increase was 2320% and 2100%, respectively.

In addition to varnish and polish, people also drank alcohol-containing products from pharmacies. In Petrograd, for example, during the first year of the war, 150 pharmacies sold 984 thousand liters of such liquids, converted into pure alcohol (lotions and painkillers). There were queues of drunks at the pharmacies.

Pharmacist Lipatov sold poison under the guise of vodka. The district court sentenced him to 6 years of hard labor. 14 people died from consuming its poison. An autopsy and chemical analysis revealed poisoning with a mixture of denatured alcohol, kerosene and essential oil. This mixture was sold under the name “Riga Balsam”. According to witnesses, the sale of these “balms” was carried out in the pharmacy “widely, like at a fair,”

— the newspaper “Zemskoye Delo” wrote in 1915.

There were also drunken pogroms throughout the country. So, in 1915, in Barnaul, a drunken crowd of thousands of conscripts stormed a wine warehouse, and then destroyed the city all day. Military units were sent to quell the unrest. As a result, 112 conscripts were killed.

On the night of May 28 to May 29, 1915, a similar pogrom occurred in Moscow. It was initiated by anti-German sentiments - when townspeople smashed and killed everyone and everything with German roots - from offices to people. That night, the crowd looted Schuster's wine warehouses, and then they began to break into the private apartments of the Germans and kill them. Only on the afternoon of May 29 were the police and troops able to pacify the rioters.

The peasants also began to withhold grain from supplies to the state - it was needed for the production of moonshine. It was also for this reason that the government was forced to introduce surplus appropriation in December 1916 (the forced seizure of grain was not invented by the Bolsheviks). Moonshine was distilled from whatever was available - rotten fruit, potatoes, sugar. These homemade drinks were called “kumyshka”, “sleepy”, “gvozdilka”, “kinder surprise”, “smoke”, “hypocrite”, etc.

By the summer of 1916, sugar had practically disappeared from circulation. It has become difficult to find even in expensive restaurants in Moscow and Petrograd.

Finally, it was the First World War that gave rise to the first, terrible wave of more severe drug addiction - primarily in large cities. Already in 1915, the Greeks and Persians began supplying Russia with opium, and their Entente allies with cocaine. In Moscow, drug addiction, as a result of Domostroev’s habits, almost did not take root, but intelligent Petrograd, on the contrary, seized on “virtual reality.” By the end of 1915, it became scary to walk the streets of the capital in the evenings, and Petrograd firmly took its place as the leader in crime rates in Russia per capita. Sailors made a special contribution to the criminal world of the city. According to police reports, in 1916 they accounted for up to 40% of all crimes.

The Governor-General of Kronstadt, Viren, wrote to the Main Naval Headquarters in September 1916:

The fortress is a formal powder magazine. We judge sailors convicted of crimes, exile them, shoot them, but this does not achieve the goal. You can’t bring eighty thousand to trial!

The introduction of the “prohibition law” in the form in which Bark implemented it, and in the structure of budget revenues, when alcohol brought in up to 30% of it, largely served as one of the supporting factors in organizing and implementing the bourgeois February revolution of 1917, after which, due to the administrative failure of the Masonic provisional government (only three were not Freemasons), socialists of various persuasions, including the Bolsheviks, had to take power into their own hands in October 1917.

Finance Minister Bark - the initiator of the Prohibition Law of 1914

Let us ask ourselves this question: what role did almost billions of wine income play in the imperial economy? Huge! Planned receipts and deductions for 1914 are a balance of 3,558,261,499 rubles. Of these, spending on military needs is more than 849 million (23.74%). For the police - 1.69%, courts - 1.56%, Separate Corps of Gendarmes - 0.22%. For comparison: expenses for the line “Education, science and art” are 7.6%. For healthcare - 1.15%. In the economy of Nicholas II, vodka was a significant means of replenishing the budget.

In January 1914 The building of the state-owned wine monopoly, which had stood firmly for two decades, showed an unexpected crack. Who encroached? Dexterous and energetic Pyotr Lvovich Bark (1869 - 1937), comrade (deputy) Minister of Trade and Industry. He managed to make a favorable impression on the emperor when, in the first month of 1914, he presented at an audience a project on ways to increase budget profitability, including by abandoning the sale of vodka and replacing lost wine income with profits from other sources.

Among them was the introduction of a single income tax (introduced in 1916). These ideas turned out to be close to the king. Nicholas II was alarmed by the scale of drunkenness among his subjects, “pictures of popular weakness, family poverty and abandoned farms, the inevitable consequences of a drunken life.”

In the pre-war period, a tightly put together budget from reliable, sober sources was required. In addition, large industrialists engaged in the production of non-alcoholic commercial products, and authoritative representatives of the intelligentsia, who saw the “drunk budget” as a threat to the existence of the state, grumbled.

Bark, who was appointed on the same day as Governor of the Ministry of Finance (Minister Pyotr Lvovich was confirmed in May 1914), Nicholas II gave his instructions.

The Highest Rescript set two goals.

• The first was to support “the people’s labor, deprived in difficult times of the need for monetary support through properly delivered and accessible credit.”


• The second was determined by the revision of the “laws on the state sale of drinks,” in which the tsar hoped for a response from the State Duma and the State Council.

There were no words in the document about curtailing the state-owned wine monopoly. It was proposed to modernize this area of ​​government policy through the adoption of corrective laws. However, Bark, in all Explanatory Notes to the projects of the state list of income and expenses for 1915, 1916 and 1917, public speeches, and other official situations associated with the actions he took to close the “breech”, constantly referred in his actions to the Highest Rescript . He waved it like a flag.

So, after the arbitrarily interpreted Highest Rescript, the rather strange Barka wine reform began under the guise of the imperial name.

Yes, official alcohol consumption per capita has fallen (the statistics seem to be good), but illegal handicraft production has increased, which, however, did not prevent the generation that built the Stalinist Soviet Union from being born during these years.

In 1917, excise taxes on drinks and revenues from the state-owned wine operation were projected in the amount of 94,992,000 rubles, while in 1914 alcohol revenues were calculated at 545,226,000 rubles. or 5.7 times more.

However, contrary to the rapid decline in state revenues on these lines, both the police and the public, journalists observed an eerie spread of moonshine in villages and surrogates in cities. Nothing could be done about this terrible phenomenon! The shadowy, vile thing was revealed:

...there are also drunkards. Instead of vodka, they drink denatured alcohol, varnish and polish. They suffer, they get severely ill, they go blind, they die, but they still drink.

And this was the hidden rationale behind the reform initiated by Bark. The reform revealed itself to be a skillfully constructed time bomb.

Here's what really happened

At the instigation of the Minister of Finance, the lost multimillion-dollar revenues from the state monopoly began to be intensively compensated by increasing the tax burden on matches, salt, firewood, medicines, etc. For example, tobacco income in 1914 reached 92.8 million rubles, and in 1917 it was expected to reach 252 .8 million. Over the same period of time, sugar income increased from 139.5 million to 231.5 million rubles.

They came up with a tea tax with budget revenue of 23 million rubles. Duties for passengers and cargo have increased - from 31.4 million rubles. up to 201.7 million rubles. And so - along all the lines of the painting. Is it permissible, in troubled times, in the rear, to so quickly inflate prices, incite inflation, and provoke discontent among the population? In a society that has been welded together by the state for centuries, will it be possible to suddenly decide, on the eve of a war, by order from above, to quickly get rid of this disease? This is pure madness!

An even greater provocation occurred with food products, for which the government and governors set maximum prices throughout the country; raising them was strictly forbidden. For example, in August 1914 in the Arkhangelsk province for one Russian pound (490.51241 g) the price of grade I beef was set at 20 kopecks. (For comparison: in Petrograd - 27 kopecks, in Novgorod - 20 kopecks, in the Cherepovets district of the Vologda province - 13 kopecks). Chicken eggs for a dozen - 22 kopecks. Butter - 45 kopecks. Granulated sugar - 13 kopecks. Cod - 8 kopecks. It is assumed that no disruptions in the supply of food would have occurred if only the agricultural sector, in response to the credit support required by the Tsar from Barka, had begun to modernize. As urgent as the liquidation of the state-owned wine monopoly.

The Minister of Finance ignored this Highest directive. And the Russian village was many times behind the agrarian economy of its main opponents in terms of mechanization and labor productivity.

While in Germany the grain yield per hectare (in terms of Russian tithes) was 20 - 24 centners, or even higher, in the Russian Empire it reached 8 - 9, at best - 12 centners per hectare. Without peasant ploughmen, who were en masse called up to the front, food production for the domestic market began to decline sharply, which led to a shortage of bread, meat, butter, eggs, fruits and vegetables, flour and cereals, and other products. This is how total speculation in products arose, which was barely recovered only during the years of the NEP.

Why did Nicholas II, the Council of Ministers, and the State Council treat him so trustingly and laxly control his activities? Only the State Duma tried to be indignant...

And one more fact. In order to make up for the lost wine profitability, the Minister of Finance in 1915-1916 successively increased the volume of paper money (emission) four times, which led to a drop in the purchasing power of the ruble by 1917 by one third compared to 1914. The growth of money emission has become a significant pretext for obtaining foreign commercial and government loans in England, the USA, Japan, and France. The guarantee of repayment of foreign loans was the transfer of part of the Russian gold reserves - “physical gold” - in particular, to the UK.

By 1914, the empire had accumulated over 1,533 tons of gold reserves, of which a third was in circulation in coins among the population, and by 1917, our country transferred 498 tons of the precious metal to the Bank of England in three passes.

Of these, 58 tons were sold, and 440 tons “lay in the vaults of the Bank of England as collateral” for the loans received. In addition, the Russian population stopped circulating gold coins and left the precious metal for a rainy day, which deprived the treasury of another 300 tons.

As experts note, “the last shipment abroad in February 1917 of about 147 tons of gold was not reflected in the official statistics of the State Bank” - these tons became the costs of the February and October revolutions. Imperial gold from Foggy Albion, as well as from all other allied states, never returned to the Russian Empire-USSR-Russia, “although most of it (75%) was not used to finance military purchases”...

Bark passed away as a subject of the British Crown: he was treated kindly by it, awarded an honorary order, elevated to knighthood, and received the title of baronet...

There is information that he was a member of the Masonic lodge, was secretly connected with English secret societies and American bankers who financed the revolution, and participated in a conspiracy against Emperor Nicholas II. In 1920 he emigrated to England, where he received a knighthood and took British citizenship.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Russian Freemasonry represented the highest form of Russophobia and the organization of anti-Russian forces. Setting themselves the goal of destroying the original principles of Russia, the Freemasons sought to unite all anti-Russian movements both in the country and abroad. In its original source, Freemasonry served as a conductor of the destructive anti-Russian impulse of the West, focused on the dismemberment of Russia and the exploitation of its natural resources.

So was the Minister of Finance P. L. Bark.

God bless him, no matter who he is, the results of his state activities are important. And they turned out to be disastrous for the state. The wine reform modeled on Bark deprived society and the state of enormous financial resources in those fateful years.

In conclusion, we present the historical testament of the largest imperial specialist on issues of state-owned wine monopoly, economist and politician, Prof. M.I. Friedman, the covenant he suffered in 1916, and through a century addressed to us in the 21st century:

Either no sale and no consumption of vodka (and this, of course, is the most desirable), or government sales (which is what Stalin did - our note when quoting). Private trade in vodka in Russia is not permitted under any circumstances.

Russian demographic crisis

Yes, alcohol is an evil that must be fought, but fight systematically, for the good of the state and, most importantly, for the good of Man.

We all remember the 80s and 90s.

The post-perestroika period in Russia was marked by a demographic catastrophe, called the “Russian Cross” (Vishnevsky 1998; Rimashevskaya 1999).

And to make the situation clear about how harmful alcohol is and how much people drink, we will present statistics, since numbers are always eloquent.

Excluding homemade alcohol

According to the chief psychiatrist-narcologist of the Russian Ministry of Health, Evgeniy Bryun, there are numerous cases of socially conditioned alcohol use in the country, which then leads to addiction. The ratio of drinking men and women in Russia is one to five: one woman for five men, the expert specified.

According to the doctor, currently in Russia 2.7 million people suffer from alcoholism, and about 700 thousand in the country are drug addicts. However, he noted that the exact number of dependent people is unknown.

In addition, Bruhn criticized American politicians who advocate the legalization of marijuana, noting that such people's tolerance for drugs is dangerous.

However, over the past five years, alcohol consumption in Russia has decreased by almost a third.

Now an adult consumes an average of 12.8 liters of absolute alcohol (ethyl alcohol) per year. Five or six years ago the official figure was 18 liters,

- Brun said, linking it with the introduction of a ban on the sale of alcohol at night, the economic crisis, the work of drug addiction specialists and restrictions on advertising.

Brun also noted a decrease in the number of alcohol poisonings by 25 - 30%. According to Rosstat, in the first quarter of 2016, 23.9 million deciliters of alcohol were sold in Russia. A year earlier, 0.7 million deciliters more were sold (http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/1703572.html).

And now in comparison with other countries

And here is another table that shows during what periods of the country there was natural population growth.

Afterword

Indeed, drunkenness in Rus' and the fight against it are rooted in ancient history. History is full of myths and folklore about the supposed “special broad character of Russian nature,” thirsting for revelry and libations, although this is far from the case. This story and its myths largely shape drinking traditions today and influence attempts to reduce the alcoholism of the people.

Is there a problem?

Judging by all the data, the problem is acute. In fact, alcoholism and other drug addiction are the most pressing social problems about which there is no real public information. The authorities talk little about them, and the population does not understand the seriousness of the situation. People either don’t realize the tragedy of the situation or think that it won’t affect them. The fact that we are the record holders for the consumption of strong drinks in the world is perceived with irony, and even with pride: “where are they, weaklings, compared to us,” and at this time in the morning our brains are flushed down toilets. And everyone can only get rid of drug addiction on their own, thereby making the whole society better.

It is necessary to fight this evil, but as experience shows, not with radical “dry laws”, but with consistent informational preparation for their natural introduction.

Alcohol is an obstacle to social development and it is necessary to raise the question of its complete eradication from the life of society. However, this needs to be done systematically, accompanied by information work with the population. It is necessary to develop a clear plan for increasing distances at the municipal level, up to the transfer of trade to specialized places, and then outside the cities, coordinating it with regional policies for improving the health of the population. Only in this case can we achieve success once and for all, solving one of the most problematic issues in Russia.

The prohibition of wine is a law that takes into account
Who drinks, and when, and how much, and with whom.
When all these conditions are met,
Drinking is a sign of wisdom, and not a vice at all.
(Omar Khayyam)

At midnight on January 16, 1920, an amendment to the US Constitution took effect, making the production, transportation and sale of alcohol illegal throughout the United States. Time has begun Prohibition - Prohibition.

Two amendments

Almost all of the adopted amendments are still in effect, and this demonstrates the wisdom of American legislators. But why "almost all"? Because in one case, and the only one, the amendment was repealed, and another amendment had to be adopted to do so. The amendment numbers are the Eighteenth and the Twenty-first, and they relate to the “valiant” American social experiment.

Alcohol in America

The history of American drinking began with beer and gin, to which were later added rum, whiskey and vodka.

Beer The Mayflower Pilgrims were originally bound for Virginia, but landed in Massachusetts because they "ran out of food... and beer"In the colonies, men, women and even children drank beer with meals, as well as between meals - as a light drink.

Gin It was made by distilling wheat alcohol with the addition of juniper. Gin was invented in Holland and brought to England in the 17th century as a replacement for enemy French brandy. Originally used by colonists as a medicine.

Rum Rum was first developed in the Caribbean when the Spanish landed there and planted sugar cane. After the introduction of rum to New England, rum production became so prosperous that rum was exported to other colonies and even to Africa - until taxes of the pre-Revolutionary years stifled the business.

Whiskey (whiskey/whisky) Fortunately, by this time Scotch-Irish had arrived in large numbers, taking with them the ability to make whiskey from rye. This whiskey replaced rum, but soon rye whiskey met its fate. The high taxes already established by the American government even caused unrest (Whiskey Rebellion).
The next whiskey was made from corn - Bourbon whiskey. If it was made at home, it was called moonshine (moonshine).
The most noble whiskey is Scotch whiskey, made from barley. This whiskey is from England, it has appeared in America since the end of the 19th century.
Two words about the spelling of "whisky" in American English. Whiskeys of Irish or American origin are written whisk E y, English - whiskey.

Vodka The Anglo-Saxon world became acquainted with this miracle during the Crimean War (1853-56), but mass consumption of vodka began only after the First World War.

Spirits labels from the 1930s

How did it become possible in a country with such long and varied drinking traditions? thirteen year old No alcohol law?

The Road to Prohibition

Attitudes towards alcohol in America have varied - from sharply negative to more than favorable.

The early colonists drank often, but they believed that wine came from God and drunkenness came from the devil. Hell awaited heavy drunks. To save their souls, punishments were used, from stocks to public flogging. Drinking in moderation was not a sin.

This attitude continued after the American Revolution, but now excess alcohol was considered harmful not only to the soul, but also to the body. In 1808 the first Temperance Society was formed, and others followed.

Lithograph "Women's holy war"

At first the name corresponded to the goal of the movement - “to encourage moderation”, but then the call to “abstain from harmful things” (read alcohol) was added, since then the word “moderation” has come to mean “abstinence from alcohol”, i.e. complete sobriety.

At the end of the 19th century, America was undergoing a dramatic evolution—massive “new” immigration changed the Anglo-Saxon face of society, and the Industrial Revolution transformed rural, one-story America into an urban nation. Immigration turned a homogeneous society into an explosive mixture of different cultures and values, and with urbanization came the decline of patriarchal morals. Many blamed alcohol for everything, and considered the alcoholic devil to be the embodiment of Saloons (saloons - American style bars).

Temperance societies were initially small in number, but soon a large number of people began to join them - at various times such celebrities as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Upton Sinclair, Jack London were members of them.

The largest organizations were:

Prohibition Party Born out of the temperance movement, the political party is the oldest of the so-called third parties trying to destroy the American two-party system. Influential at first, after the repeal of Prohibition it turned into a dwarf organization.

Women's Christian Temperance Union (Women's Christian Temperance Union)
The main way the union fought for complete abstinence from alcohol was the siege of saloons by groups of women singing psalms.

Carrie Nation was distinguished by extremely aggressive behavior, who did not limit herself to psalms and prayers, but acted physically, destroying furniture in saloons and breaking bottles with her hatchet.

Anti-Saloon League
This organization played a key role in the implementation of Prohibition. Her motto is Saloon must go (the saloon should disappear). Created later than everyone else, the Anti-Saloon League quickly took a leading place in the movement. It is deservedly considered one of the forerunners of modern PR.

Several posters from the Anti-Saloon League

One of the popular slogans of the movement was a line from a poem and song
Lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine
(Lips that touch alcohol will not touch my lips)

There is a well-known parody of an anti-alcohol advertisement from a 1910 silent film based on this slightly modified line.

By the beginning of the 20th century, temperance movement organizations were active in all states.

Introduction of Prohibition

In 1913, the Anti-Saloon League announced that its ultimate goal was not just the closing of saloons, but all-American Prohibition.
By 1916, half the states had already passed local Prohibition laws.

Poster commemorating the passage of Prohibition in North Carolina in 1908.

Finally, in 1919, while thousands of male potential opponents of the law were still in the American Expeditionary Force (in Europe, after World War I), the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified.

Prohibition was expected to improve the health and morale of Americans and reduce crime and corruption in society. In addition, in the popular consciousness, alcohol was associated with immigrants, primarily the Germans, Irish and Italians. Prohibition could hasten the Americanization of “outsiders.”

On January 16, 1920, the Volstead Act, which prohibited all drinks containing more than 0.5% alcohol, came into force, and sixteen days later federal agents conducted their first raid on a speakeasy in Chicago.

Life under Prohibition

Prohibition seemed to many to be a simple solution to accumulated social problems.
Alas, the implementation of Prohibition was hampered primarily by the fact that too many people wanted to drink. They looked for any opportunity to get the desired product, even if it was prohibited. Such massive disregard for the law forced local authorities not to notice obvious violations. On the other hand, for many reasons (due to corruption, primarily) the federal government was unable to properly implement the law.
This combination of demand for liquor and an already corrupt political system meant that Prohibition was doomed from the start.

Thirsty people could obtain alcohol through both illegal and legal means. Yes, yes, legal! There are many loopholes left in the law.

The possession and consumption of alcohol was not prohibited, so if you managed to buy or produce alcohol before the law began, it was at your complete disposal.

Detroit. Last hours before Prohibition

Last Call - last order (an order that is placed before the bar closes)
You have little time left, and we have little supplies.
Hurry up, otherwise you will be left with nothing

Whiskey was treated as a medicine - having this recipe on a special form, you could buy the coveted drink at the pharmacy (the word whiskey is clearly visible in the left half):

The label on the “medicine” warned that it was for medicinal purposes only and that other uses were illegal. But doctors wrote out such “prescriptions” quite freely and the number of “patients” jumped sharply.

Another source of alcohol was weak drinks that were not included in the 0.5% ban, which after some “homework” turned into strong ones. Some even came with detailed instructions detailing how NOT to get illegal alcohol from the product! All that remained was, without paying attention to the particle “not”, to carefully follow such instructions.

And of course, it was possible to distill moonshine at home with a small risk of being detected, but with a high risk of exploding or poisoning


Try it on the dog first

If you didn’t want to bother with all this, there was an extensive network of speakeasy bars at your service.

To the underground bar - here

Approaching the door, you should have said Sesame, open
Joe sent me (I'm from Joe)

You had to speak quietly so as not to attract unnecessary attention, hence the name - speak easy. You were let in, and if no federal agents were stopping by that day, you could have a fun time.

Who created and kept this considerable business afloat?
A holy place is never empty. When the thriving industry was shut down, underground production flourished.

It was prohibited to legally produce alcohol - illegal enterprises arose.

Police with moonshine stills seized during a raid

Tower of Babel made from barrels of alcohol destined for destruction

It was forbidden to transport alcohol - smuggling flourished: across the Canadian border (by land or through the Great Lakes) or by sea. In the latter case, schooners filled with alcohol waited for boats from the coast, drifting outside the 30-mile zone.

And thus the alcohol was hidden under clothes

It was forbidden to sell alcohol - a network of underground bars appeared. According to some estimates, the number speakeasy exceeded the number of saloons that existed before Prohibition.

By the mid-20s, the effect of the law was practically reduced to nothing.
Alcoholic Eldorado brought huge profits, which led to fierce competition and its extreme manifestation - gangster wars.

Of course, speaking of Prohibition, one cannot fail to mention the number one gangster Al Capone,

Opposing him is Elliot Ness, leader of The Untouchables.

And two artistic, top-performing federal agents - Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith.

Izzy Einstein, a retired postman, 165 cm tall and the same size in width, had extraordinary artistic abilities. Moe Smith, a former cigar salesman, slightly taller but just as stocky, was second fiddle. Their task, like the other 1,500 federal agents, was to find violators of Prohibition and stop their activities.
The problem with speakeasies was that an agent had no right to enter without permission. The agents used all sorts of tricks, and here there was no equal to Izzy Einstein, about whose talent for transformation the New York Times wrote that “next to him, a chameleon would blush with shame for his inability.” Add to this the knowledge of six languages ​​- and the result: 4392 arrests and the confiscation of 5 million bottles of illegal alcohol over 5 years.
Their day was very busy - getting up at dawn, the couple could intercept a rumrunner (courier) before breakfast, close an illegal outlet at noon, raid a pharmacy selling “medicinal” whiskey after lunch, and end the day with a raid on a speakeasy.
The duo would transform for each raid, and this is where Izzy shined. He could go to a sports bar in a football uniform (football is American!), to a Harlem club with a black face, to a hot beach place in a bathing suit. At a music club, dressed as a musician, he even played the trombone before delivering his catchphrase. There's sad news here(I have bad news for you).

Izzy and Mo soon became national celebrities. They were sent to other cities to train federal agents. Izzy bet that he could arrest a bootlegger within half an hour of arriving in a new city - and he never lost.
They fell victim to their own successes and the envy of others and were fired at the same time in 1925.

Mo Smith and Izzy Einstein. Before and after changing clothes

But even such dashing super agents could not stop the wheel of history - the era of Prohibition was coming to an end.

Repeal of Prohibition

Almost immediately with the entry into force of Prohibition, organizations were formed that fought for its abolition. Their activities were a combination of lobbying, public action and flashy advertising campaigns

I'm not a camel, I want beer! Repeal the 18th Amendment

Repeal the 18th Amendment. No beer - no work

By the end of the 20s, Prohibition lay in ruins: alcohol flowed like a river, crime and corruption flourished, the authorities were in prostration, and the public was irritated.
The experiment has ceased to be “valor”, breaking the law has ceased to be entertainment, and the law itself has ceased to be law.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the beginning of the Great Depression forced the authorities to look at things soberly - people needed work, the government needed money. Alcohol, once legal again, would create thousands of jobs and generate tax money for Uncle Sam.

On December 5, 1933, the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. This amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, restoring the legality of the production, transportation and sale of alcohol. This was the first and only time so far that an amendment to the Constitution was repealed.

The good old days are back!

Evaluation of Prohibition

Alcohol consumption has decreased by 30-50%, according to various estimates, since the law was in effect. Only in the 60s did consumption levels return to pre-legal levels.

Mortality from cirrhosis of the liver fell from 29 cases per 100,000 people (in 1911) to 10 per 100,000 people (in 1929).

Today, alcohol is responsible for half (of the 45 thousand) annual deaths in car accidents. Most domestic homicides are also alcohol-related.

Contra

The government's tax losses reached $500 million annually (let's not forget that these are 1920s dollars).

50,000 deaths and many cases of blindness and paralysis were caused by drinking ersatz alcohol

There was a transition to the consumption of stronger alcoholic beverages, which were more profitable to produce and transport. As they said then, Prohibition successfully replaced good beer with bad gin. Consumers, accustomed to high temperatures, did not want to return to pre-legal habits.

The beer industry was destroyed. After the repeal of Prohibition, many of the small beer producers that existed before it did not return to the market. Only large firms survived - this explains the poor taste of American conveyor beer.

After Prohibition

The "valiant" experiment failed. The carnival-like “Roaring Twenties” was replaced by the hopelessness of the Great Depression. If before it alcohol was needed for euphoria, then in the 30s it was the opium of the people in that very Marxian sense.
And then the Second World War began.
The fifties and sixties brought rock 'n' roll and black rights, hippies and drugs, the sexual revolution and Vietnam. American society had enough problems - the struggle for sobriety has shifted to the periphery of public life...

Post Scriptum
Rudiments of the Prohibition era are still found today - in America, local prohibition is in force in some areas, in New York it is forbidden to drink alcohol on the street, and until recently you could not buy alcohol on Sunday.

At midnight on January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution went into effect, making the production, transportation and sale of alcohol illegal throughout the United States. Time has begun Prohibition - Prohibition.

On May 17, 1985, an event occurred that outraged the entire adult population of the USSR; the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On strengthening the fight against drunkenness” was published in the newspaper “Pravda” and came into force. This was the beginning of Gorbachev’s “prohibition law”.

After the adoption of Prohibition in the USSR, most stores selling alcoholic beverages were closed. Vodka prices have increased several times. The remaining stores could satisfy the alcoholic demand of the hungover population only from 14.00 to 19.00.
However, the state did not stop at these measures, and began a comprehensive struggle under the motto “Sobriety is the norm of life.” Strict measures were taken against public drinking of alcoholic beverages in public places. Those caught drinking alcohol in the workplace faced fines, dismissal and expulsion from the party. “Komsomol” - non-alcoholic weddings - were very popular (among the authorities, but not at all among the people). At which, however, the bride and groom and their guests sipped cognac from teapots. “Sobriety zones” appeared in cities where alcohol was not sold. Alcohol drinking scenes were removed from films. I remember the canceled film “Mom Got Married,” where the key scene of a conversation between a teenager and his stepfather took place in a pub, and was mercilessly cut out by zealous censors. On the contrary, films praising a sober lifestyle were in favor. One of them is Lemonade Joe. The same witty people dubbed the author of the “prohibition law” the general secretary of the party M.S. Gorbachev “Lemonade Joe” and “mineral secretary”. In the queues, citizens amused themselves by making the “Gorbachev seal” - by folding a 5-ruble banknote in a certain way, they received the word “drink.”
Restricting the sale of alcohol did not have the effect that legislators expected. Instead of sober people, they saw huge queues in stores. Those who did not want to stand in lines began to use various substances containing alcohol: pharmaceutical tinctures (they say hawthorn was especially good); colognes and lotions (for example, “Cucumber” - a drink and a snack in one bottle, or for ladies - “Pink water"); glue; various detergents. During Prohibition, moonshine and the sale of counterfeit vodka flourished.
But there were also positive moments. In the period 1986-90, the life expectancy of the male population of the state increased by 2.5 years and reached 63 years.
Crime while intoxicated has decreased several times.
The period of Prohibition in the USSR was called the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. Only in the first years of Gorbachev’s Prohibition, the production of vodka, the main national drink, decreased from 806 million to 60 million liters.
Mass consumer dissatisfaction and the economic crisis (largely provoked by ill-considered actions of government officials) forced the Soviet leadership to abolish Prohibition in 1987. But the situation largely remained the same, for example, the sale of alcohol from 14:00 was abolished only on July 24, 1990 by a resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers. Active promotion of sobriety was stopped, and alcohol sales increased.

Tatiana Voronina