The King of Vodka (34 page)

These leading lights were joined by scores of more typical,
lesser known émigrés. They wanted nothing of the Paris spotlight. They faded away into the city's natural commotion, taking on odd jobs such as driving taxis, sewing dresses, or working in factories. They were just trying to survive and like them, Vladimir had come to France full of hope and in search of a home. Though he was probably better off than many of his downtrodden brethren, he was more like them than the extremely well-to-do.

Vladimir, now fifty, had aged greatly by the time he arrived in Paris. Still remarkably handsome, his looks had taken on the weight of his experience, leaving him under a constant fog of loss and fatigue. According to photos, he had done away with his trademark handlebar mustache, which left his clean-shaven, more fully rounded visage looking a bit fallow. His thick mop of wavy, sand-colored hair had thinned, graying at the temples. His light eyes, once overflowing with aristocratic entitlement and conceit, had mellowed, too. They seemed now to hold only longing and regret.

It is not clear why Vladimir's stay in Paris was short-lived. He spoke the language fluently and knew the local culture well, but he had an already established venture there. Smirnov vodka was being produced at a nearby factory, and it was selling, though it is unclear how well. Vladimir may have felt he needed to cultivate more opportunities elsewhere. Or maybe he just preferred to be away from the big city. After a while, he left a friend from Russia in Paris in charge of that small operation and headed south to Nice.

Nice was second only to Paris in its number of Russian émigrés. Like the country's capital, it also had spawned a little Russia, a bubble-like community full of restaurants, grocery stores, a library, and even a cemetery. Matisse was known to paint Russian émigrés during his regular visits to the beach city. There was a magnificent Russian Orthodox cathedral in Nice, full of parishioners. Part of this infrastructure existed as a result of decades of visits from wealthy nobles who, prior to the revolution, spent entire seasons in the resort.

Now, of course, Nice's Russian population was two-faced. A small minority of the inhabitants managed to escape with a healthy share of their resources. They maintained luxurious lives, residing in opulent villas. They hobnobbed with the rich who arrived from New York, London, Paris, and Amsterdam, went to expensive cabarets, watched Isadora Duncan dance; they had the means to eat in the finest restaurants.

For the vast majority of émigrés, though, the air smelled more of fish, alcohol, and drying laundry. Their lives were simple yet onerous, overburdened by unemployment, poverty, and despair, overwrought by what had been and what could never be again. Wrote one observer: “You can distinguish a Russian person…without words. They have shabby clothes, down-to-the-heel boots, a washed-out hat, and, the main feature, they have unveiled sadness in their eyes, gestures, and gait.”
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Shortly after arriving in Nice, Vladimir met Tatiana Maksheyeva, the woman who would become his third wife. He was likely in search of companionship more than anything, someone to fill the void left by Valentina and the loss of contact with his son and siblings. An attractive woman, though not as charismatic as Valentina had been, Tatiana grew up in St. Petersburg and received a first-rate education at the Yekaterininskiy Institute, a private girls boarding school. Her parents had been, like the Smirnovs, members of the wealthiest social class.

Tatiana, one of eight children, left Russia before the outbreak of World War I. Her first husband was ill and was advised for health reasons to move to the Mediterranean Coast, so the couple relocated first to Turkey before moving to Nice. The string of events—from war to revolution to civil war—kept Tatiana from ever returning to Russia. She yearned for Russia but determined there was nothing waiting for her in her homeland other than misery. For years, she didn't even know the whereabouts of her family, much less its fate.

Alone in Nice after her husband's death, Tatiana probably
ached for a Russian soul mate, someone to keep her connected to her roots. She was fifteen years younger than Vladimir and nothing like the other women who had dominated his life. Tatiana appeared to be a far more independent, less demanding spouse. Instead of coveting diamonds and furs, she was a lover of literature. She was a prolific writer, penning romantic novels and poetry throughout her life. She also made her own way rather than relying on a husband for income. With what little money she saved, Tatiana purchased a small antique shop in Nice with a dingy, two-room apartment on its second floor where the newlyweds would live. She also made and sold Russian dolls and hats, according to her niece, Alfonsina Frantsevna Mekhedinskaya. In her memoirs, Tatiana wrote succinctly, “In 1925, we met, fell in love, and got married.”
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The two managed to scrape by. Vladimir collected a meager income from the concessions of Smirnoff vodka he managed to sell. Tatiana brought in a bit of money from her antique business. It was enough to send money in letters to relatives back home, recalls Alfonsina, who says her family might not have survived without the generosity of Tatiana and Vladimir. The couple kept to themselves, socializing mainly with friends and acquaintances from the old days. One of them was, surprisingly, Valentina. She had moved to Nice shortly after Vladimir and was performing there. Baronowski, still occupied with his diplomatic duties, was often away. In time, Tatiana, Vladimir, and Valentina developed a warm, comforting friendship. Tatiana recalled her interactions with Vladimir's ex-lover:

The affections were not so warm for another woman out of Vladimir's past. Eugeniya had also resettled in Nice. She had grown bitter and desperate, unable to adjust to a life without privilege. She had once been well known to workers in Nice's hospitality trade. She could walk into the lobby of her favorite hotel with her trunk and chambermaid in tow, and the manager of the hotel would greet her almost as royalty. Settled into her usual suite overlooking the Mediterranean, she could call for room service, and make plans to visit her regular crew of socialites.

Now, though, Eugeniya probably never visited her former haunt. She could no longer afford even a dinner there. She relied on charity and on money supplied to her by her daughter, Tatiana, who worked an array of odd jobs, but the money never amounted to much. “She [Tatiana] never tolerated the idea of working in a factory or any kind of nine-to-five job because she loved her freedom,” said her son, Boris. “She was brought up with great freedom and in luxury, the grand life, very pampered. She never really wanted to buckle under and work.”
¹²
For her
part, Eugeniya never tried to earn her own way. When she had a chance to improve her situation when her third husband, the Italian diplomat died, she used the bit of money he left in typical fashion—she went on a vacation to Italy.

Eugeniya was even more disturbed when she learned that Vladimir claimed a right to the Smirnov brand name. It galled her that he or Nikolay would profit from a business that their older brother had bequeathed to her and she argued that she was its legal owner. Now Eugeniya tried to prove her position by making several attempts to contact former Smirnov employees in Moscow, hoping they might have access to the legal documents that would make it clear who owned the trademarks and copyrights. Those efforts were fruitless: Eugeniya stewed. According to her grandson, Boris, neither Eugeniya nor Vladimir spoke to one another directly about the matter. They staked out opposing positions about the vodka business and carried on a silent kind of bout. “I don't think [they ever communicated] because knowing my grandmother, enraged as she was, I would be very surprised that it would have even crossed her mind to get in touch with him. I can't guarantee this but, to my knowledge, that's simply not possible…. For both my mother and grandmother, he was a pariah. He had betrayed the family.”
¹³

Boris says that his mother, Tatiana, on Eugeniya's behalf, once tried to file a complaint against Vladimir with the local chamber of commerce. Her lack of evidence, though, thwarted those efforts. “There was very little she could do, in actual fact, because she had no money whatsoever and, of course, too few connections with the people who could help her to go to Moscow. Of course, this was tough for her.”
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Bit by bit, Eugeniya slid into poverty, isolating herself from the people and world she had once dominated. She lived in a modest retirement home, supported by her daughter and grandchildren who had also emigrated. Eugeniya received assistance
from some Russian charities set up by wealthy exiles to help less fortunate refugees. It was a humbling and humiliating experience for the former aristocrat.

Vladimir was down, too. His vodka business was sputtering—France was not taken by the taste of the colorless spirit, preferring its own wines and cognacs, nor did it seem that the rest of Europe had a thirst for vodka either. By 1930 Vladimir was thought to be receiving little to no income from the various licenses he had sold. With few options, he turned to singing, the only other skill he had. Not since his father had shipped him off to China had Vladimir sung for his supper. Music had been a joyful hobby for him, but now it was work. Making matters worse, Vladimir had to wear a costume harkening back to the days before Peter the Great while he performed. He sent a card to his old friend, Isheyev, who by then had immigrated to the United States. Vladimir made light of his situation, showing off to his friend a photo of himself in a boyar costume. “You see,” Vladimir wrote, “I'm singing!”

Vladimir was running out of options. His bank account depleted, he had few prospects for replenishing it. More worrisome, he began to feel seriously ill. Soon diagnosed with a debilitating and unspecified illness, Vladimir would need multiple operations and significant medical care. The fight before him now was more than financial. It would require all his remaining energy and a good deal of luck. He was dying. If good fortune did not step in, the legacy his father had spent a lifetime crafting, the legacy Vladimir had clung to in the wake of the revolution, would die with him.

I
n 1933 Vladimir was in an almost constant state of agony. His physical condition was deteriorating. Two complicated surgeries had done little to slow the progress of his illness or alleviate his pain. Medications aimed at easing his discomfort were largely ineffective and, worse, accompanied by debilitating side effects. “He would spend long periods of time in hospitals,” recalled Smirnova-Maksheyeva.
¹
“When the doctors allowed it, I would take him home, but he was always on a strict regimen.” Confronted by what he believed to be the inevitable, Vladimir made the tough call. He ceased taking his medicines and stopped visiting his doctors. He would stay out of hospital beds and rely only on herbal remedies to find relief. After all he had been through, Vladimir did not want to spend whatever remaining days he might have in a drug-induced blur. Mostly, though, he did not want to leave his wife and friends in abject poverty. He still felt responsible for their livelihoods and was determined to somehow come up with more funds. In a letter to a Russian émigré, Vladimir ex
plained his calculation: “I was ill the way I wish nobody to be ill. I faced two serious surgeries. So now, after four years of hovering between life and death, I've finally recovered. Now I only drink herbs and have left all doctors and medicines. And I feel fine.”
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The decision may well have shortened Vladimir's prognosis, but it also left him more clearheaded and with enough fight in his battered fifty-eight-year-old body to take a last stab at a Smirnoff renaissance. The family's spirits had been one of the few pre-Bolshevik liquor products exported into international markets: surely there was untapped demand for it somewhere.

Vladimir cast his net. He placed numerous advertisements in
Posledniye Novosti
(The Last News), a Russian language newspaper widely read by the émigré community throughout France. One small, unadorned ad, which sought out businessmen to open up Smirnoff outlets in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Persia, Belgium, and England, gave no hint of the flourish or fanfare that once accompanied the flashy announcements from the tsar's favored purveyor. It was as bland and unpretentious as the gray blocks of cement Stalin erected during the Soviet era—with two exceptions. First, the ad made reference to the old company's honors, including its four coats of arms and special relationship with the Imperial Court. Second, Vladimir, the self-proclaimed head of the revamped company, demanded that anyone wishing to manufacture Smirnoff vodka mimic the precise distillation practices and marketing strategies that had transformed his father's little operation into a powerhouse. He may have been desperate, but he was not willing to sacrifice the hard-earned reputation and secrets behind the Smirnoff name. “Contractors have to pay particular attention to the products' high quality, to distill the products through our charcoal machines; and to keep the established bottle shapes and label designs,” the ad stated.
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A second advertisement was more typical of Smirnoff during its heyday in the late nineteenth century, highlighting the company's accolades and dominant position with the use of a large typeset and darkened capital lettering.

The bait was set, but unfortunately, no one bit. For Vladimir, hope of a revival was quickly fading. It is likely he knew that the remaining Smirnovs in Russia were living ghosts. Like so many of the formerly wealthy and influential who stayed behind, they tried to remain invisible, fearful that their identities would ignite renewed hatred and punishment. Vladimir's own son Vladimir had no affiliation with his father's former profession and had seemingly blended into the new landscape. He served in the Red Army for two years and then attended the now prestigious Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy, specializing in metallurgy. The house by the Cast Iron Bridge, the home in which Vladimir père had grown up, was now the headquarters of the Erisman Research Institute of Hygiene, a scientific re
search facility focused on advancing studies of worker productivity. Ironically, the institute was named for the same chemist who spearheaded the toxicity tests of vodkas, including Pyotr Smirnov's, in the 1890s.

The Smirnovs and their vodka heritage were on their way to obscurity. Then, in a bizarre twist of fate, an enterprising Russian-born American, living thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, intervened.

 

R
UDOLPH
P. K
UNETT
was just twenty-seven years old when he arrived in New York City. He was penniless—and a world away from his agricultural roots and the comfortable life he had once known. He was born Rudolph Kunettchenskiy in Trostyanetz, Russia, now part of Ukraine. His father owned a large plantation and distillery that was believed (in 1912) to be the largest rectifier and blender of liquor in the world. Much of the grain harvested by the Kunettchenskiy family supplied the Smirnovs.

Kunett was an academic sort, believing his best opportunities would grow from a solid education. He studied philosophy at Odessa University and received his doctorate from the University of Berlin. At the outbreak of the revolution, he was in Denmark, working on behalf of the Red Cross. This assignment saved him from having to confront a wrenching choice for many anti-Red Russians—ride out the storm unleashed by the Bolsheviks or to embark on the hazardous journey over the border. Kunett just chose not to return.

He entered the United States like thousands of other Russians in search of a fruitful, new beginning. For Kunett, his arrival in 1920 coincided with the inauguration of America's own experiment with prohibition. The dry laws were in full force, giving rise to a subculture of bootleggers, speakeasies, and bad alcohol—a scenario similar to what Russia had experienced during its anti-alcohol era—and this precluded Kunett
from contemplating a career in the liquor industry, but he readily found other opportunities. He worked as a salesman for the Standard Oil Company and later landed a job in New York with Helena Rubinstein Inc., where in due course he rose to be the general manager of the company's cosmetic enterprises.
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Kunett may not have known the Smirnovs well, but he was certainly familiar enough with members of the family and his own father's strong connection to them. Moreover, he was well acquainted with their vodka, having been a frequent consumer of it. “In Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Serbia, everyone drinks vodka,” explained Kunett in a published interview decades later. “Until I was twenty-one and left Odessa for a German university, I didn't know there was any other liquor.”
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Somehow Kunett heard about Vladimir's offer or his ads placed in France in 1933, the same year prohibition in the United States officially ended. The combination of the two seemingly disconnected events piqued Kunett's interest and gave him what he thought was an ingenious idea. If he could bring Smirnoff's beverages to the United States, he might be able to introduce the spirits to consumers, create demand for it, and make a fortune. Kunett was possibly one of the few people in America who knew something about producing vodka. At the time, of course, most Americans preferred bourbon or beer. Few had ever tasted vodka, straight or mixed.

Kunett made arrangements to go to France, where Vladimir was delighted to meet his former compatriot. The familiarity elicited a rare and deep-seated level of comfort and trust. With few other options, Vladimir was more than pleased to make a quick deal. After some negotiation, they struck a bargain: For 54,000 francs, Kunett was sold “the exclusive right and license to manufacture and sell within the territory of the United States of America, within the territory of its possessions…all the alcoholic beverages and all other products of the firm, together with the exclusive right to use the firm's name, the trademarks
and labels as used and owned by the firm, and the exclusive right to reproduce and use the various models of bottles hitherto in use by the firm or its licensees in France.”
⁷
Kunett also agreed to manufacture all his Smirnoff products using the exact formulas and processes introduced to him by Vladimir. The labels would mention Pierre Smirnoff Sons and use the subtitle “Firm of Pierre Smirnoff formerly by appointment to the Imperial Court of Russia.” The deal was finalized on August 21, 1933.

Vladimir, who continued to try to sell in other countries, signed the documents on behalf of himself and Nikolay, while the three other owners, including Valentina, signed for themselves.

Just after the repeal of prohibition, in March 1934 Kunett opened the first vodka factory in the United States. Located in a long, two-story building near the center of Bethel, Connecticut, a sleepy southern New England town just sixty miles from New York City, the factory's location was perfect for the fledgling operation. It was adjacent to the railroad tracks where boxes of vodka could be easily loaded onto trains for delivery. Kunett touted his new product immediately, exercising the same marketing zeal that had made him a force in the cosmetics industry. The company prepared a history of the business for the American media, highlighting its grand tradition. “The name Smirnoff was known from end to end of the Russian empire, and its product, which was referred to as Smirnovka, became a household standby alike in peasant cottage and Imperial castle,” wrote the
Danbury News-Times
in 1934, citing the company's numerous awards, state emblems, and relationship with the last three tsars.
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Kunett was unabashed in his own advertisements as well. They prominently featured all four coats of arms, the purveyor to the Imperial Court distinction, and an enticing slogan: “Creating a new vogue in cocktails…
VODKA
by Smirnoff.” Each bottle, it was advertised, cost $1.75 and came with a booklet of recipes for mixed drinks. Kunett also emphasized what a good
deal his made-in-America vodka was compared to the imported stuff, which cost as much as $4 a bottle due to tariffs.
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Smirnoff's newest evangelist kept Vladimir apprised of every development, writing to him about the business and about his associates in New York and Bethel. He made sure that Vladimir would have an active role in the factory's future, inviting him to be the chairman of the board and to visit the United States to meet everyone involved in the venture. Kunett, as president of the Smirnoff firm in the United States, wrote to Vladimir in 1934: “I'd love to connect you with my colleagues. That way, you will have relationships not only with me personally but with the company as well, and hence with my colleagues…. I'd love if you could establish relations with them so in case of my death, the connection won't be lost.”
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Clearly, Kunett valued Vladimir's flesh-and-blood footprint on his fledgling enterprise, surmising that it legitimized promoting the product as a Russian original instead of an imitation. He showcased the Smirnoff family connection at every chance, putting out statements from Vladimir testifying to the authenticity of the vodka as well as its superior taste. Vladimir, in a statement, said he was confident that their venture would win over skeptical American consumers. “With [your] flair for cocktails and other mixed drinks, you will find vodka the ideal base. Because of its clarity and freedom from artificial flavor, it blends harmoniously with the Vermouths, Grenadines, bitters, fruit juices, and other ingredients. And it is worth knowing that Vodka by Smirnoff leaves you feeling fit after a convivial evening. It is so matchlessly pure.”
¹¹

For Vladimir, it had been some time since he had been treated with such respect and deference. His other licensing partners had been dismissive of him, forgetting to report sales, sending insufficient money, or mismanaging operations without explanation. Vladimir complained that his surrogate in Paris,
for instance, had been particularly unprofessional, cheating him out of money and botching the running of the vodka franchise. Kunett, though, was different. His ties to the Smirnoffs during their most powerful years stayed with him. He had come of age when all the trappings of old Russia mattered, from social titles to financial stature. The Smirnoffs had been important citizens; their products universally popular. It was natural for Kunett to exude reverence.

Vladimir must have felt like his old self again. He wrote to Kunett expressing his appreciation. In the letter, Vladimir's emotions overflowed as he thanked Kunett for his kindness and accepted the invitation to serve as chairman of Kunett's board.
¹²
Vladimir now pledged to come to America. He wanted to inspect the factory and further instruct Kunett regarding his father's vodka-making innovations. He also wanted to sample for himself the spirits Kunett was making, believing that “the drinks' taste is the most important thing in our business.”
¹³
The trip, though, seems not to have materialized. Vladimir's health took a sharp turn for the worse and he never recovered. In the early morning hours on August 25, 1934, the fifty-nine-year-old, third son of the vodka king died in his apartment above the antique shop. It was almost exactly one year after he had made his pact with Kunett, transporting the Smirnoff name and drinks to America.