Who owns the term "vodka": the Poles or the Russians?

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the Los Angeles Times

Vodka, elixir of the masses
By Joseph Tartakovsky

JOSEPH TARTAKOVSKY is assistant editor of the Claremont Review of Books.
This piece is adapted from an article in the spring issue.

April 16, 2006

IN FALL 1977, the state vodka monopoly of the Polish People's Republic
filed suit in an international trade court claiming that vodka had first
been distilled in Poland. For this reason, it argued, only Polish firms
had the right to sell the clear alcohol in foreign markets under the name
"vodka," just as champagne produced outside France's Champagne region
usually must be labeled "sparkling wine." An incredulous Soviet Ministry
of Trade initially ignored this as a joke.  Who doubted that vodka was as
Russian as St. Basil's Cathedral? But it was a particularly pernicious
joke, touching the tender parts of the Russian soul, not to mention Warsaw
Pact solidarity. The Soviet trade ministry grudgingly asked the Higher
Scientific Research Institute of the Fermentation Products Division of the
Central Department of Distilling of the Ministry of the Food Industry of
the USSR to investigate. When state archives revealed little about vodka's
Russian provenance, the task fell to a historian named William Pokhlebkin.
After years of painstaking research, he concluded that vodka was probably
first distilled in a Moscow monastery between 1440 and 1478, decades
before its alleged appearance in Poland.

Etymologically, vodka in Russian means "little water." And because the
average Russian guzzles a world-best 5.2 gallons per year, a little water
has gone a long way in damaging the collective body politic. A few years
ago, the Finnish physician directing the Russian office of the World
Health Organization explained: "If you did this in Finland, half the
population would be dead in a year. This is clearly not normal." The
Russian people disagreed. "It's our way of life. How can we stop drinking
with a climate like ours?" said one. From another: "Our people are willing
to live in poverty, but if the government tries to make them stop
drinking, it might lead to social unrest. Nobody can make us stop
drinking." Not that the powers didn't try. In 1917, the Bolsheviks banned
vodka and condemned drunkenness as a "social evil irreconcilable with the
proletarian ideology," perhaps because they believed, as Friedrich Engels
had stated, that drinking was the bane of the working classes. It is
probably closer to the truth to say that work was the bane of the drinking
classes. No vocation without intoxication, cried the workers, and in 1924,
the ban was reversed an early instance of Soviet utopianism succumbing to
Russian reality. It was downhill from there.

Alcohol consumption rose through the decades, and not until the 1980s did
the government try again to limit it. Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika
included a "war on drunkenness." Alcohol consumption began to decline. At
the same time, there emerged unusual shortages of cologne, mouthwash and
other alcohol-containing substances, as well as sugar, which can be
employed in home brewing. Ultimately, instead of defeating alcoholism,
perestroika ended in history's biggest hangover. So, as Lenin asked: "What
is to be done?" Pokhlebkin was not only a historian but a Soviet patriot,
and when his research was published as a book ("A History of Vodka"), he
added a chapter lamenting what he saw as Russia's descent into alcoholism.
Drunkenness, he argued, is incompatible with socialist principles; it
undermines worker morale and productivity.

Some of his proposals were radical by Russian standards revoking the
licenses of drunk drivers, encouraging people to attend clinics
(Alcoholics Anonymous was banned under the Soviet Union)  but he did make
one point that National Rifle Assn. members will recognize and all
votaries of free will can endorse: Vodka doesn't intoxicate people, people
do. It follows that to avoid drunkenness, the people must simply drink
properly. Today, working Russians have as much need as ever to know how
Pokhlebkin's principles might answer Lenin's question. It might go
something like this:  A good proletarian doesn't have a drinking problem,
except when he can't find a drink. Vodka, after all, is the oil that keeps
Russia's gears turning. Funerals, folk holidays and festivals all require
it. The informed worker knows that vodka's therapeutic merits far surpass
those of the Soviet-Russian mental health system. Nor would he tempt fate
by trekking out into the snow best known for destroying invading armies
without a fortifying swig or three. This winter, during Moscow's cold
spell (-30 C and below), one circus trainer served his elephant a bucket
of vodka for warmth. The ungrateful pachyderm lost his sense of decorum
and proceeded to destroy the circus' only radiator.

Russia is a land that has stumbled fatefully from Third Rome to Third
International to Third World, and vodka has always been there to help
things along. In 1982, the tribunal appointed to decide the matter of
vodka's origin ruled in the Soviet Union's favor, affirming that genuine
vodka was Russian  or Russian vodka was genuine, whichever it was. A happy
conclusion, followed shortly by the fall of communism in Europe, to which
we can always raise a glass and say, as they do in Russia, not without a
touch of irony: Na zdarovye  "To your health!"



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