The King of Vodka (13 page)

It was one in a series of infomercial-like ads purchased by Smirnov over the next several years in a variety of publications and regions. Some of the ads announced store locations and products for sale; others pounded on the makers of fraudulent alcohol. Increasingly, too, Smirnov grew more sophisticated in his announcements, buying up space in newspapers to brag about his industry track record and the superiority of his beverages. His ads, which appeared in numerous issues of the
Moscow Sheet
starting in 1881, dominated that newspaper. One ad from 1882 ( January 7, 1883, Gregorian calendar) in the
Moscow Gazette
used the copycat problem as an opportunity to tout Smirnov's own successes.

Smirnov's boastful claims did not go unanswered or unimitated. His leading rivals, also victims of counterfeiting to one degree or another, joined the battle for public opinion. Each
distiller lambasted the copycats and then tried to make his or her alcohol concoctions sound the most pure, the most delicious, or the most revered. Soon, from almost nothing, liquor industry advertisements were ubiquitous, with spots running almost daily in publications throughout Russia's major provinces.

Smirnov's competitor Shtriter, for instance, promoted his employment of a doctor at his factory, a man he told readers not only controlled his vodka's quality but could also attest to its superior purity. He then went on, boasting that his cinchona (an alkaloid similar to quinine) vodka, submitted to the medical administration in St. Petersburg, could be a healthy part of any diet.
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Another of Smirnov's rivals, Koshelev, used the newspapers to brag about his technical prowess, noting that his alcohol was the finest because it was produced with the most cutting-edge machinery of the day.
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Popova, who featured pictures of her awards and highlighted the premiere taste of her vodka, noted its “special mildness.” Popova also carried out a nasty dispute with another distiller through her print advertisements. She claimed that her labels and brand name were being ripped off by another vodka maker of the same last name.
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Smirnov had his own public feuds with which to contend. In 1884 he charged a female factory owner named Zimina with producing table wine falsely promoted as having been made “on a special request of Pyotr Smirnov.” Smirnov shot back that all his wines came from his own factory. “We have never made any requests to other companies,” one advertisement read. He then went on to complain about the terrible quality of imitator's drinks—meant to be passed off as Smirnov's own incomparable blends. He also had to fend off a claim by another rival who advertised that “a Master of Chemistry had found turbidity in the table wine of a famous Moscow factory,” a blatant attack on the clarity of Smirnov's popular #21 vodka.
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In truth, liquor in Russia was often as corrupted as the busi
ness behind it. No producer, including Smirnov, escaped criticism. In one report issued a few years later by the Distillers' Congress, an industry group organized to improve the image and operations of the alcohol business, Smirnov's raspberry nalivka #15 was found to contain traces of aniline, a poisonous derivative of benzene used for coloring.
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Ivan Smirnov's ashberry liquor #1 had sulfuric acid. Other chemicals found in drinks produced by most distillers included fusel oil and sulfuric acid. Beyond the potentially harmful additives, the industry report also criticized excessive watering down of products, so much so that a wide range of flavored vodkas contained a third less alcohol than unflavored vodka.

The brouhaha caused by these accusations, the intensity of the vodka makers' mud-slinging, and the hotly competitive environment was something new for Russians. The more liberal policies of the late tsar yielded many of the benefits of a more market-driven economy, particularly in consumer-driven industries such as liquor where the barriers to entry were few. Competition cajoled the most savvy merchants into devising gimmicks and other tricks to win over customers. Chocolate maker Abrikosov was especially creative, announcing that beautiful blonds would sell his candies in one location while beautiful brunettes would man counters at another store. The by-products of this Russian capitalism were not always so playful or positive. Some of them, like the rampant corruption and the vodka wars, were downright ugly. Smirnov now represented both sides.

One man who took notice of the unusual melee was twenty-five-year-old Anton Chekhov, who one day would be among the most celebrated playwrights in Russian history. He had come to Moscow from his birthplace in Taganrog, a seaside town in Southern Russia. His first literary endeavors were mainly satirical stories published in various tabloids or humorous journals. Chekhov, educated as a doctor, enjoyed mocking uncomfortable
social situations or critiquing the pettiness he often discovered in the mundane, routine details of living. The vodka wars, a phenomenon chronicled by Chekhov, was one such case.

Chekhov's piece on the wars appeared in May 1885 in a St. Petersburg humor magazine called
The Shards
. He was a regular contributor to the weekly publication, poking fun at everything from wicked in-laws to excessive eating during holidays to the amusing foibles that accompanied the art of courtship. In a column titled
The Shards of Moscow Life,
Chekhov took on vodka manufacturers. He was merciless in his assessment of Smirnov and his fellow liquor producers, bluntly referring to them as peddlers of “Satan's blood.”

The sharp critique appeared under the name of Ulysses, one of sixty pseudonyms the author used throughout his career. The tactics vodka makers employed against one another as well as the public gushings over how delicious and healthy their liquors were disgusted Chekhov. His negative views were deep seated. The evils of alcohol were a constant theme in his writings, which included several specific references to Smirnov's most popular liquors. In
The Shards
a year earlier, Chekhov summed up his
attitude: “Vodka is a colorless drink that paints your nose red and blackens your reputation.” His byline that time translated as “Man Without a Spleen.”
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If statistics are reliable, Russians were not the most prodigious drinkers in Europe. That distinction went to France, where the annual per capita consumption of alcohol was 15.7 liters compared to just 2.7 liters in Russia.
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But alcohol was built into the French and other Western European cultures, a bit like beer in America. A glass or two of wine with a meal every day was the norm and part of an epicurean tradition. In Russia, however, the objective of drinking was different. “The real problem was not so much the absolute quantities consumed—per capita consumption was lower [in Russia] than most European countries—as the ways in which it was consumed. Instead of drinking small quantities regularly, peasants confined their drinking to a few festive occasions on which they drank to oblivion.”
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Chekhov's charge that Smirnov had something to do with Russia's liquor excess—not to mention his calling vodka makers “fighting spiders”—would have enraged Smirnov. He never saw a real connection between his business endeavors and alcoholism, at least none he publicly acknowledged. Smirnov's self-image was of an ethical, utterly moral factory owner. He viewed himself as a humble, self-made man who had, through hard work and perseverance, achieved great success. To be compared to the most unscrupulous elements within his industry was an unjustifiable, unforgiveable insult. Like it or not, though, many intellectuals did not perceive a difference. To them, Smirnov had prospered at the expense of the weakest elements of society.

There is no record that Smirnov responded directly to Chekhov's attacks, but it may be more than a coincidence that his ads, following the Chekhov article, changed their tenor. For a time, no longer did Smirnov call attention to his opponents or counterfeiters, in general or by name. Instead, he concentrated more
on his own business, his own distinguished record, and his own product line.

Perhaps Smirnov figured that enough attention had been paid to the industry's thorny controversies. The government had weighed in, taking steps to address some of the grievances aired by Smirnov and other prominent vodka makers. The state had raised the excise tax paid by distillers from seven kopeks in 1880 to eight kopeks in 1881 to nine kopeks in 1885. The idea, along with collecting more money for the treasury, was to discourage new entrants into the liquor industry by making the process too expensive and onerous.
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The state also implemented a series of penalties aimed at alcohol abuses. Anyone seeking to sell alcohol without a license would be fined 300 rubles. Anyone producing illegal vodka would be fined up to 1,000 rubles and could face up to three months in jail. For hiding alcohol that should have been taxed, violators could face stiff fines, as much as sixteen months in prison, and a lifetime ban from the alcohol industry. A commission was even set up in the mid-1880s to try to tackle the rampant counterfeiting problem, which affected a variety of consumer products other than vodka including tea, yeast, and chocolate.

Smirnov was relatively unaffected by these efforts, which were at best cursory. More notable for him was the slow mind-shift taking place inside the Imperial Palace. After a steady stride toward more openness since the 1860s, the new tsar's agenda continued to scale back some of the freedoms his father had advanced. Moreover, the tsar was showing a renewed willingness to look at the alcohol issue again, including examining whether changes over the last two decades had contributed to what many argued was a liquor epidemic. Smirnov's fears were coming to the fore.

 

A
MONG THE FIRST
initiatives undertaken by the state to address the alcohol problem was a ban on pubs.
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The government decreed in 1885 that alcohol could be sold only in taverns alongside food. The thinking followed the traditions elsewhere in Europe, where the combination of food and drink led to fewer instances of drunkenness. Russian officials also tried to address drinking in another manner, passing a law in 1886 that made it a serious crime to pay a portion of wages with vodka or other noncash substitutes. Violators of this common practice could face fines of up to 300 rubles.