Soviet Union Fighting the Battle of the Bottle

It was Friday afternoon and the crowd outside the door of Moscow liquor store No. 21 had grown to about 200. The line was especially long because the weekend lay ahead, when it would be impossible to buy a bottle of liquor except on the black market. When the doors opened promptly at 2, the people began inching their way to the shabby counter to buy their vodka. A young man in a padded jacket of the kind usually worn by laborers had been waiting in line since midday to purchase his bottle. “The new antialcohol measures are a hardship for us,” he said. “But our country needs them.”

Across the Soviet Union the scene is being repeated as people discover that their national tipple is harder to buy. The ability to consume large quantities of alcohol and stay upright was long regarded as a sign of manhood, a badge of fraternity in a centuries-old bond of suffering. But no more. Last May, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced laws restricting the sale and production of alcohol. Almost overnight the authorities began a major campaign against a problem that is listed as the third most common ailment in the country, after heart disease and cancer.

Under the new rules, the drinking age was raised from 18 to 21. Many liquor stores were closed, and business hours in the remainder were reduced from eight to five. The government banned sales of hard liquor on weekends (wine and champagne may be sold after 2 p.m.) and restricted restaurants to serving 100 grams of spirits, the equivalent of two stiff drinks, with each meal. Some Soviet officials even began toasting visitors with fruit juice.

The new vigilance verges on obsession. Paddy wagons can be seen prowling Moscow’s streets, collecting drunks and depositing them for the night in sobering-up stations run by the police. Bartenders are measuring out vodka with stingy precision or refusing service altogether when customers reach the legal limit.

Alcohol abuse is estimated to cost the Soviet economy $8 billion a year in lost production because of heavy drinking by workers. A recent newspaper poll revealed that 25% of those surveyed drank before work, and 20% admitted that they drank on the job. The late Soviet leader Yuri Andropov also tried to combat alcoholism, but the campaign petered out after a few months. This time the effort appears to be more intense. But will it work? For one thing, alcohol is considered a cure-all for everything from flu to frostbite. For another, vodka is a traditional refuge from the hardships of Russian life, and that is as true today as ever, says Duke University’s Vladimir Treml, an expert on alcoholism in the U.S.S.R. “Soviet life is so boring,” he says. “Housing is crowded, there are not enough entertainment facilities. So people drink.”

For all the effort, the results of Gorbachev’s sobering initiative have so far been mixed. Sales of hard liquor, mainly vodka, have fallen by 15%, and wine and champagne sales are off by 25%. Because of the restrictions on the sale of liquor, problem drinkers increasingly are resorting to gulping eau de cologne, and many shops have stopped selling cologne. Many Soviets resort to buying liquor on the thriving black market. Others make their own moonshine alcohol in illegal stills, although these have recently become the targets of police raids.

Men unable to sneak away from work frequently delegate the task of buying alcohol to wives and girlfriends. “What makes women stand in line?” the government daily newspaper Izvestiya asked recently. “Is the desire to preserve a good home atmosphere an impossible feat without the usual tipple? Is it a mistaken sense of bravery or of female weakness?” Last month, according to a privately communicated eyewitness report from one shopper, a woman standing at the front of a liquor store line in Moscow was knocked off her feet by a surging crowd when the shop doors opened. Before she could get to her feet, the spike heel of another woman shopper pierced her skull, killing her.

Treatment for the Soviet Union’s estimated 9 million alcoholics ranges from spending a night in a sobering-up center or a factory clinic to a term in a work camp for those who habitually appear drunk at work or in public. Western- style medical detoxification and counseling is still rare: only two hospitals and 23 out-patient centers serve Moscow, a city of 8.5 million people. According to widespread rumors, one recent patient was Grigory Romanov, Gorbachev’s erstwhile competitor for the party leadership. After resigning from the ruling Politburo last July, Romanov, long thought to be a heavy drinker, is believed to have checked into a drying-out program.

That was not the first time Gorbachev had used a rival’s thirst to his own advantage, according to Fridrich Neznansky, who emigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union in 1978 and who, by his own account, attended Moscow State University Law School with Gorbachev. In a speech at Harvard University last September, Neznansky, co-author of the thriller Red Square, recalled that one night in 1950, he, Gorbachev and a third man who was active in the Young Communist League, or Komsomol, raised many glasses of beer and vodka together. Gorbachev stayed sober, but the party activist slipped into a stupor. The next day, claimed Neznansky, Gorbachev denounced his friend’s drinking before the Komsomol. As a result, said Neznansky, “Gorbachev promptly became the new Komsomol organizer, and that’s when his path to the Kremlin began.”