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'Living Water' - Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation (Hardcover)
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'Living Water' - Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation (Hardcover)
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This is a study of the social, economic, and political role of
Vodka in nineteenth-century Russia. Since the `Green Serpent' first
appeared in sixteenth-century Muscovy, it has played a vital part
in Russian life. Vodka became an essential part of Russian
working-class celebrations: personal, religious, and commercial.
Trade in Vodka redistributed wealth upwards through Russian society
over several centuries. Indeed, Russia's status as a great power
was underpinned by it: by the nineteenth century, it generated
one-third of government revenue - enough to cover most of the costs
of the vast army. The dependence on Vodka of both people and state
has endured into the Gorbachev era. But despite Vodka's key role in
Russian history, and the complex network of corruption associated
with it, the subject has been ignored by most historians until now.
This study concentrates on an important transitional era in the
history of Vodka: the early nineteenth century. During this period,
Vodka taxes played the role that salt taxes had played in the
ancien regime in France. The abolition of the tax farm in 1863
should be seen as one of the most important of the `Great Reforms'
of the 1860s, an era which, in many ways, parallels the glasnost of
the 1980s.
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