The King of Vodka (6 page)

The table head looked closely at Arseniy's application, checking for any inaccuracies or opportunities that might yield
a few extra rubles from the applicant's pocket. Arseniy, knowing better than to take a chance with his future, did not let the man wait for long. Nonchalantly, he had hidden a little something for him between his documents.

The official found everything in order. He waited for Arseniy to unveil his purpose and justify his intent. He had heard so many stories from the never-ending stream of merchant wannabes who darkened his doorway. This one, he yawned, would be the same as all the others. Still, toying with these poor, ex-serfs could be amusing. Arseniy would have presented an ideal target. The exchange might have gone something like this:
Why do you wish to be a merchant? Isn't it a bit late for you?
the official would ask, smirking as he eyed Arseniy's mostly gray beard and lined, sagging face.

Like my brother Ivan Smirnov before me, I was once a serf. Now I am my own man. I look to create a better life for myself, for my family, and for my community,
Arseniy would have replied in his well-rehearsed imagined exchange.

And how will you make such a change
?
Going to shave that beard of yours?
the man might mockingly inquire.

Arseniy would have shown no emotion. He had expected as much from his inquisitor.
I will do what my family does best: I will sell wine. I will sell tobacco. I will sell kefir. My brother Ivan has done this for more than two decades. My brother Grigoriy did it as well. I believe I can do it as well
.
I believe it is in my blood.

The table head would be skeptical. He had heard this kind of answer so many times before—outsized ambition trounced by ineptitude. He stared at Arseniy. This one seemed sane enough; he did not look stupid; he was clean and respectful; he was even a bit literate. Arseniy had also understood how to play the game. The table head tucked his ten-ruble tip deeper into his pocket.

Everything seems to be in order
, the table head would declare, signing his name to Arseniy's application.
Go pay your fees and I will see that you get your guild certificate.

Arseniy moved quickly through the chancellery into another room where officials sat, collecting fees and registering capital announcements. Arseniy settled his accounts there and proclaimed his capital to be 2,400 rubles, or roughly $1,800 in 1858, the minimum allowed to enter the merchant estate at the time.
^*
He was then encouraged to contribute to the “poor fund.” Arseniy threw in several kopeks to satisfy the officer, who then handed him a certificate. It was Arseniy's ticket, the one that would set him on the path already crossed by his brothers.

Arseniy returned to the chancellery. The last paper Arseniy signed that day was an oath. “I, Arseniy Aleksiyev, a peasant freed by Lady Demidova, added to the Moscow Merchants third guild, put my signature in the house of the Moscow City Society which obliges me to pay all the state and city taxes without delay. I pledge not to do anything that may bring harm to my rank. My family and I are of the Russian Orthodox faith. We're neither eunuchs, nor dukhobors, nor molokans,
^†
nor Jews nor any other especially insidious sect. Furthermore, I will bear responsibility if this should prove false.”
⁶

The Smirnov men, all of whom were covered by Arseniy's application, could now cast off their serf history like a heavy coat in summer. They had become Russian merchants.

 

B
ACK AT ONE
of Ivan's shops where Pyotr was working, the conversation flowed. Indeed, it overflowed. In all likelihood, Arseniy and his son rambled on about finding just the right spot from which to peddle wines. They batted around ideas for running the business, what exactly they would sell, and how they would
sell it. They even discussed the possibility of distilling their own vodka. The Smirnovs were now poised to enter the vodka fray. And the vodka industry was getting ready for them, too.

Problems in the vodka business had been bubbling for some time. It was a complicated—and especially corrupt—aspect of Russian life. The government relied on revenue from vodka sales. By the late 1850s, an eye-popping 46 percent of the state's budget came from taxes on vodka.
⁷
This revenue gave the tsar and his top lieutenants every incentive to encourage drinking. The more the people drank, the more the state collected.

The nobility, which enjoyed the exclusive right to produce grain alcohol, had no reason to quarrel with the state's position. They too benefited from prolific drinkers. Then there were the tax farmers. In Russia, these were the two hundred or so enterprising entrepreneurs, often merchants, nobles, or members of the petite bourgeoisie, who paid the government for the rights to distribute vodka within specific regions. They bid on these rights at auctions held every four years. The winner received the vodka, at a fixed price, and a license that allowed them to trade it and collect taxes. It was risky for the licensees because they had to buy their entire lot of vodka and hope to sell it all.

Still, the contracts were as precious for the state as they were for the tax farmers. Demand for vodka was endless while supply could be controlled. Given the stakes, would-be distributors would do almost anything to win the auction, including bribery. It was estimated that successful tax farmers paid off as many as 90 percent of the officials in the vodka trading chain of command. The costs of these payoffs by just one farmer to local officials, according to a study published by the minister of finance, amounted to more than 17,000 rubles a year.
⁸

It was clearly worth the extra payoff since anything a tax farmer collected above his contract went directly into his own account. One estimate put the annual income of tax farmers in the 1850s at 800 million rubles.
⁹
The system practically in
vited criminal activity, which the government tended to ignore as long as revenue continued to flow its way.

One of the most harmful consequences of the tax farming system was the production of dirty, diluted alcohol. To increase supplies and bounty, tax farmers would water down the vodka they sold and use an array of foul additives, from soap to copper to the toxic jimsonweed, to keep the liquor from tasting too bland. This practice not only sickened (and in some cases killed) tipplers but also compelled them to buy more of the bad booze to achieve the desired goal of drunkenness. Making matters worse, the government increased taxes on vodka while farmers routinely charged customers significantly more than the legal, state-mandated price. By the late 1850s, many Russian peasants were paying more than ten rubles for a bucket of vodka—or more than three times the established rate.
¹⁰

The situation was not sustainable and something had to be done. By the end of 1858, just months after Arseniy's triumph at the merchant's department, something was done. Outraged peasants, who paid the dearest price for the vodka trade's corrupt practices, fought back. They began to take oaths of sobriety. Entire communities collectively vowed abstinence. In the southern town of Balashov, for example, townspeople gathered in the main square and prayed on their knees. “With tears of repentance and joy, repenting of the great sin of drunkenness, they then took an oath of sobriety, after which guards were posted at all the taverns, and punishments were established for those who broke the oath.”
¹¹

The protest, of course, did not stem from any moral awakening that liquor was bad. Rather it grew simply out of a desire to force tax farmers to sell better—and cheaper—vodka. As one observer explained: “Vodka in itself is alright…. The real harm is done when it is costly, and of poor quality, when in order to get ‘carried away' you've got to give the tavern keeper your over-coat, hat, axe, and cart as security, and the vodka itself is such
that it only makes you feel bad, like a poison. This is what the people could not bear. This is why they boycotted vodka.”
¹²

The movement, which soon spread to thirty-two provinces throughout Russia, tore at the foundation of the country. Newspapers reported about it in a special section titled “The Spread of Sobriety.” The state, tax farmers, grain harvesters, and tavern owners fretted about what to do. Some tax farmers relented, lowering the price of vodka and improving its overall quality. It was an important first step, albeit a small one, in the direction of a more open, market-driven vodka economy. But it was not enough to overcome the people's growing unrest—and raw bitterness.

In May 1859 the vodka boycott turned violent. People attacked and destroyed drinking houses, smashing bottles of liquor and furniture, and beating up police and state officials. In just one three-day period, sixty-one pubs in the southeast province of Penza were crushed. That was just the beginning. The riots spread quickly, unleashing a torrent of pent-up anger to some thirty-eight different regions or districts in Russia. By the end of that year, 260 liquor establishments had been attacked in two hundred different communities. Nearly eight hundred people were arrested and prosecuted for their participation in the violence, as the government and its army moved in and, eventually, brutally suppressed the offensive.
¹³

But the point had been made. The antiquated, thoroughly corrupt system that had ruled vodka commerce in Russia for more than one hundred years was broken, a crippled reminder that reforms were well past due. Like serfdom, tax farming had to go.

 

W
HILE
T
SAR
A
LEKSANDER
II formulated what later became known as “the great reforms,” Pyotr and his father prepared for the coming change. Pyotr had stopped working for his uncle in 1859 and was spending his time making plans with Arseniy.
They had limited capital and were restricted in the scope of their merchant license. But nothing could quell the enthusiasm shared by the two men. It was a happy time for them. And Pyotr had a new woman in his life.

Her name was Nataliya Tarakanova. She had much in common with Pyotr, according to local records. She, too, was a former serf from the Yaroslavl region, having been ransomed from her landowner in 1853. Her father, like Pyotr, had come to Moscow to pursue the merchant life. Shortly after joining the guild in 1853, Nataliya's father died, leaving her and her mother to tend the family's affairs. For her time, she was an able businesswoman, competent and serious. This ability must have been appealing to Pyotr, now eager to find a partner who could understand, support, and promote his ambitions.

He may also have liked Nataliya's appearance. She was young and innocent, probably no more than nineteen years of age when they met (Pyotr was twenty-seven). Her exact features are unknown because no photographs, drawings, or paintings of her exist. More than pleasant looks, though, Nataliya offered a winning combination of intelligence and gentleness. For Pyotr, she would make the perfect spouse—and mother of their children.

The two married in either late 1858 or early 1859. Pyotr could now truly separate from his Uncle Ivan—and wasted no time doing so. The couple rented space from a wealthy merchant who owned several homes, according to real estate records. It was right next to the home Pyotr would eventually buy and inhabit for the rest of his life. The living quarters were in a pale yellow, two-story building that the Smirnovs shared with a spice-cake shop. The smell of these glazed cookies, a kind of national sweet, permeated the entire neighborhood. It did not take long for Nataliya to become pregnant, as her belly swelled by the middle of 1859. She delivered Pyotr's his first daughter, Aleksandra, at their home in December 1859.
¹⁴

Aleksandra did not survive for long, dying six months later
from measles. The death of his second child must have left Pyotr distraught and Nataliya inconsolable—a state that prompted the couple to move again. This time, Pyotr and his wife sought solace and comfort. They found it in the home of the sexton for St. John the Baptist Church, the same place that would host Pyotr's funeral years later. It was located in the Zamoskvorechye district, a hub for merchants in general and immigrants from Yaroslavl in particular. Their street was not the bustling thoroughfare of Varvarka. But it was an up-and-coming trading center, ideal for newly minted merchants.

Pyotr felt at home there. It was as close to village life as he was going to get in Moscow. Familiar faces, similar values, sympathetic, devout neighbors. It was also only a five-minute walk to the infancy of an empire.

 

A
RSENIY OPENED HIS
first wine cellar in a house in the Pyatnitskaya district. The business was known as a
renskoviy pogreb
, meaning “the Rhine cellar.” The Rhine valley in Germany was the region from which much of the wine in Russia during the eighteenth century had come. In Smirnov's time, wine came from all over, but the term “Rhine cellar” was still used, generically, to refer to any place selling alcoholic drinks. The street-facing entrance to Smirnov's shop was marked by an oil lantern and a green sign inscribed with gold letters that read:
RHINE CELLAR OF ARSENIY SMIRNOV
. Though the business carried Arseniy's name—and he was the official owner, he handed over much of its operation to Pyotr and his wife.

Arseniy knew comparatively little about the backbone of the spirits industry—its suppliers, pricing, manufacturing. Pyotr, by contrast, knew it all. Years under his uncles' tutelage had taught Pyotr such essentials as where to find the best liquor and to how profit from it. He had contacts all the way north to Uglich as well as right in the heart of Moscow.

The father and son began small—as they had to. Legally, they couldn't distill their own spirits or serve hot meals in their establishment. The Smirnov
renskoviy pogreb
likely sold grape wines by the glass and in bulk, which patrons could choose to drink on the premises or to carry out. They sold vodka, too, produced elsewhere. Wishing to solidify ties to their community, they allowed customers to linger in their small, smoky cellar. But Pyotr was careful not to allow his thirsty customers to drink too much. Unlike some other establishments, his was to be respectable. He nursed his reputation, wanting to be known as someone who cared as much about his patrons as he did about racking up sales. It was an early and unusual commitment to responsible drinking—and the beginnings of a highly cultivated image Pyotr would nurture throughout his career.