The Dedalus Book of Vodka E-Book

Geoffrey Elborn

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

From Russia with love, the history of vodka from the 14thc to today.

Das E-Book The Dedalus Book of Vodka wird angeboten von Dedalus und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

Russian temperance broadsheet (detail) Imperial Russia

Late 19th century advertisement for P. A. Smirnov Trading House

The Author

Geoffrey Elborn was born in Edinburgh where he worked as a librarian before studying English and Music in York.

After publishing a volume of poetry, he was asked by Sacheverell Sitwell to write a life of his sister Edith. He then went on to write several more biographies. He has written for many journals and magazines including The Glasgow Herald, The Guardian, The Times, The Tablet, The Scotsman, Tempo and The Proms Seasons Concert Programmes. He has contributed to several books including The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

To Mark Watson and the discarnate spirits of Ted and I.G.P

Acknowledgements

The standard work on vodka, A History of Vodka by William Pokhlebkin, was first published in Russia in 1991 but was unfortunately shortened when it appeared in a fine translation in the UK in 1992. The author was murdered in his home near Moscow in 2000, and his body was discovered by his publisher, the grandson of Boris Pasternak. The murder remains unsolved. Although biased towards Russian vodka, Pokhlebkin produced a fine, provocative and scholarly book.

40 Degrees East: An Anatomy of Vodka by Nicholas Ermochkine and Peter Iglikowski, writers of Russian and Polish descent respectively, is a balanced and an amusing account of the spirit. I am particularly grateful to the writers of these two books.

I have to thank the many friends who helped in the preparation of this book, not least those who were persuaded to taste many different vodkas and comment on them.

Mark Watson endured a freezing trudge through the Moscow snow and ice. Without his expert navigation of the Moscow Underground, I would probably still be stranded there. Dermot Wilson joined us in St. Petersburg and selected excellent vodkas in some of the city’s taverns.

For help in finding books, I owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Bull and Andrew Kruszelnicki. William Ryan kindly paused his work on the exploits of his fictional Moscow detective Korolev to give me information on sources, and I am grateful for his suggestions.

Jen Gordon of Diageo very helpfully contacted the Smirnoff archivist who located useful information about the Smirnoff label and thus solved a mystery for me. I am grateful to Ekaterina Mikhailovna Kulishova of the Moscow Vodka Museum and her colleagues for their courtesy and help during my visit. I am also in the debt of Irina Karpenko of the State Museum of the History of St Petersburg, who kindly sent me free of charge an otherwise unobtainable book. Patricia Herlihy and Linda Himelstein, who have made their own valuable contributions to the study of vodka, kindly answered my questions. The author of a study on the Russian charka, Karl Helenius of Helsinki, identified some objects for me. Jacob Khokhlov was extremely helpful over a problematical Russian translation, while Stephen Oakes kindly gifted Soviet temperance matchbox labels.

Kyri Sotiri of Soho Wine Supply shared his wide knowledge of vodka and showed me his large stock from all parts of the world. David Youl contributed his expert knowledge of cocktails, while his family cooked delicious meals for us.

Tiko Tuskadze of Little Georgia Restaurants generously shared her knowledge of vodka and I am grateful for her advice.

Riri Girardon and Malcom Barker of The Studio Barker-Girardon photographed vodka cups and the zakuski. For this and many other kindnesses, I am extremely indebted.

Jocelyn Burton, with the assistance of Peter Lunn and Hal Messel produced a new vodka cup for this book. The photograph and the design of the cup are her copyright.

My predecessors in this Dedalus series, Phil Baker and Richard Barnett, wrote books on absinthe and gin respectively which have provided daunting but encouraging standards of excellence. I thank them both and Anthony Lane and the team at Dedalus.

I would like to say thank you to others who have helped me in diverse ways: Eugene Ankeny, Clive and Diana Barrett, Clive Boutle of Francis Boutle Publishers, Steve Broadhurst, Sheena Cameron, Alan Carr, Bill Carrick, Derek Collen, Dan Edelstyn, Gillian Elborn, Dave Ellis, Nick Hare, Ann Hawker, Ged and Maggie Holmyard, Frank and Barbara Joynt, Diana Leslie, Paul and Anne Marie Luscombe, Su McArthur, Bruna Mazzucchi, Craig Mollinson, Georgiana de Montfort, Jean Moore, Maureen Moore, Victoria Moore, Tim Oates, Chris R. Parker, Anne and Terry Parnaby, Jane Poncia, Sandy Robertson, Carole Samson, Paul Sharp, Jane Spiers, Tommy Thompson, Christine Ward, Maryann Wilkins and Derin Young. Finally, it would be remiss of me not to thank a Moscow pigeon fancier who gave me some Russian verse but, alas, not his name.

The extract from Angel Pavement is reprinted by permission of United Agents on behalf of: The Estate of J. B. Priestley, and the extract from Goldfinger by Ian Fleming is reproduced with the permission of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, London, www.ianfleming.com, and is copyright © of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd 1959.

The extract from A Writer’s Diary, by F. Dostoevsky, reprinted by permission of Northwestern University Press. (A Writer’s Diary copyright © 2009 by Northwestern University Press, Published 2009. All rights reserved.)

The images on pages 92, 103 and 109 have been reproduced courtesy of Diageo plc, owners of the SMIRNOFF® brand.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1:The Drink of the Slavs

The Russian Story

Russian Daily Life in Vodka

The Official Birth of Vodka in 1894

Soviet Russia

Vodka in Poland and Ukraine

Part 2: Vodka in the West

Smirnoff to Absolut: The Vodka Houses

Vodka in the UK and the USA

James Bond and Films

Vodka Today

Part 3: Drinking and Preparing Vodka

The Pryzhov Test: A Tasting Guide

Preparing Vodka

Vodka Cocktails and Vodka Recipes

Vodka Drinking Vessels

Part 4: Literature, Music and Vodka

Russian Writers: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Pryzhov

Anton Chekhov

Texts

Vodka and Music

Appendix

How Smirnov became Smirnoff: A History of a Vodka Dynasty

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

Introduction

[Miss Matfield]… had never tasted vodka before, never remembered ever having seen it before, but of course it was richly associated with her memories of romantic fiction of various kinds, and was tremendously thrilling… as the liquor slipped over her palate… it was if an incendiary bomb had burst in her throat and sent white fire racing down every channel of her body. She gasped, laughed, coughed, all at once.

Angel Pavement, J. B. Priestley, 1930

There cannot be not enough snacks,

There can only be not enough vodka.

There can be no silly jokes,

There can only be not enough vodka.

There can be no ugly women,

There can only be not enough vodka.

There cannot be too much vodka,

There can only be not enough vodka.

Russian saying

Vodka is the best-selling spirit in the world. The popularity of the “green wine”, five hundred years old in Russia and Poland, is now shared in America and Europe where it emerged as the drink of the young midway through the 20th century. The sheer versatility of vodka, regardless of where and when it was drunk, has ensured its survival, but it was virtually unknown in Britain until the 1960s.

Tchaikovsky knew all about vodka, for he drank it nearly every day and had set a folk song to music, which began, “Don’t go, my son, to the tsar’s tavern… Don’t drink, my son, any green wine.” When he was in London to conduct his Fourth Symphony for its British premiere on 2 June 1893, the composer’s English was inadequate to convey during a rehearsal exactly how he wanted the orchestra to play in the last, fast movement. “Failing to get the reckless Russian spirit he wanted, [he] eventually obtained it by exclaiming, ‘Vodka – more vodka!!’” It was fortunate that the orchestra understood what he meant given that vodka’s success across the British Isles lay far into the future.

The absence of vodka in Britain was amusingly commented on by the great Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, whose novel of 1859, A House of Gentlefolk, includes a character who has visited England before returning to his own country as a complete “Anglomaniac”. He changes his appearance and household arrangements with the result that, “his passion for roast beef and port wine – everything about him – breathed, so to speak, of Great Britain… breakfast began to be served in a different way; foreign wines replaced vodka and syrups…”

The first recorded mention in the British press of domestic consumption came in a footnote to an account of the Brewers Annual Exhibition in the Agricultural Hall of Islington, London on 16 October 1905. Despite the confident assertion that, “ a point which is perhaps worth a passing mention for those who follow the fashions in such things is that vodka is now coming into vogue”, the writer was mistaken.

It would be another fifty years before vodka became fashionable, and Miss Matfield only experienced her taste of the “white fire” in J.B. Priestley’s 1930 novel, Angel Pavement, because it was given to her on board a Baltic ship that was tied up in a London dock.

Whether enjoyed at home, in the comfort of a luxury bar or a scruffy pub, vodka will contribute to a good, and fairly harmless, night of pleasure. If no other alcohol is mixed with it, the purity of the spirit lessens the chance of a hangover the following day.

The fruit-flavoured vodkas now widely consumed in Europe and America began life in Russia and Poland, where the best of its kind was made with fresh fruit. In 19th-century Moscow, the fruit destined for the vodka distilleries arrived by the cartload, drawn by horses struggling through filthy, narrow and boggy streets. Brightly alluring in a beautifully-shaped bottle, a Smirnov fruit-based speciality such as rowanberry vodka might be destined for the tsar’s table or a high-class restaurant. It would then be devoured along with zakuski, the carefully prepared traditional snacks, which formed a delicious prelude to a main meal. Foreigners’ lack of familiarity with zakuski in the 19th century was noted with amusement when some English visitors were invited to a reception in one of Moscow’s imperial palaces. They devoured so many of the small snacks intended to be eaten with the vodka that the waiters had to replenish the supply on several occasions. The visitors were embarrassed to discover that a banquet awaited them in the next room.

Such culinary refinements would not be particularly appreciated by the hardened vodka drinkers of Moscow. Many were homeless beggars who drank the spirit neat and would drink it whenever and wherever they could find it. The most squalid dosshouses typically catered for the kopek-less vodka drinker. The foul Khitrov market, located in present-day Gorky Park, was constantly packed with thieves and down-and-outs. If they could part with a few coins for something hot, one notorious canteen supplied a tasty soup made from scraps of meat and bones that were salvaged from restaurants’ pig bins. Chopped and mashed to a pulp with added bay leaves and generous spoonfuls of pepper, it was a gourmet feast for the half-frozen alcoholics who suffered through the winter wandering the icy Moscow streets.

But there was no need to feel desperate if you had spent nearly all of your money on the soup and thought for a dreadful moment that the rest of the evening would have to be endured without vodka. Although it could not match the quality of the spirit on offer in the imperial palaces, vodka was in plentiful and cheap supply in the dosshouses situated in illegal premises across the city.

Like the tasty soup, the vodka was the product of leftovers. In many taverns, a man was employed to open the bottled vodka with the aid of a corkscrew. Usually an old drunk, he sat with a mug, which he used to accumulate dribbles of vodka that had been left behind in cups and bottles. Once he had collected a measure of about half a bottle, approximately 300ml, it was bought by anyone who could not afford an entire bottle, which was the only container in which vodka could be legally sold.

The same filthy vodka waste was also supplied to dosshouse landlords for a small payment, guaranteeing euphoric nights on floorboards or filthy mattresses for the residents. Although food was supposed to be available in the dosshouses, a female inmate’s remark at the time – “there wasn’t nothing to eat but I drank three glasses of vodka!” – probably typified the general situation.

For the homeless who loved vodka in the 19th century in Russia, only the fiery spirit mattered in their otherwise barren lives. Indeed, from the 15th century onwards, vodka had mattered to all Russians from Peter the Great and his fellow tsars to the merchant and peasant classes. It has always had more of an impact in Russia than other neighbouring countries such as Poland, which also claim to be its rightful birthplace.

As the American actor and political commentator Will Rogers wrote in 1927:

Nobody in the world knows what vodka is made out of, and the reason I tell you that is that the story of vodka is the story of Russia. Nobody knows what Russia is made of, or what it is liable to cause its inhabitants to do next.

This book aims to tell that story of Russia and its relationship with vodka and the experiences of all the people who have loved it, those who have hated it as well as those who have simply enjoyed vodka wherever the spirit has been served – from palaces and the lowliest taverns to Hollywood bars and London nightclubs. As will become apparent, no spirit has influenced affairs of state to the extent achieved by the green wine.

Part 1

The Drink of the Slavs

A Russian Kabak in the 19th century

Russian Imperial Vodka late 19th century

Part 1

I

The Russian Story

Oxford English Dictionary definition of vodka:

Forms: Also vodki, vodky, wodky; y. votku, votky

Etymology: Russian vodka (genitive singular vodki), pronounced ‘votka’.

An ardent spirit used orig. esp. in Russia, chiefly distilled from rye, but also from barley, potatoes, or other material.

The “other material” could also be: whey, molasses, soya beans, grapes, rice, sugar beets, the results of oil refining or wood-pulp processing. Use of the latter ingredient almost verifies the claims of a Soviet comic hero that vodka can be made from a stool.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition is all very well, but it does not mention that vodka means “dear little water”, a diminutive of the word “voda”, or “water” in Russian. To be fair, it may not be Russian in origin as Poland called the same liquid “wodka”.

A Mr Kohl, a German visitor to St. Petersburg in the 1840s, was fascinated by vodka, and without realising it, not only described the whole problem of the spirit itself as consumed by Russians but also the confusion over what it was to be called:

Among all the Slavonic nations, and especially the Russians, brandy is becoming so mighty a divinity, that in the same sense as we say, “Money rules the world”, we might say of it, “Brandy rules the Russians”. The usual douceur in Russia is a rumka wodki (a glass of brandy); the ordinary recompense, the ordinary medium of bribery with the common man, is not money, but brandy. It is worthy of remark that the people of the lower class are not so thankful for the former as the latter: neither Sunday nor any remarkable day, neither Easter nor Christmas, passes without it. With brandy the soldier is primed for the battle; with brandy the listless labourer is incited to exertion. The avidity of the Russians for this fiery poison is astonishing. Brandy is a liquor introduced by foreigners among the Russians, though they have now a name of their own invention for it; they call it wodica … [which] is become the principal and almost exclusive soother of the cares of the common Russians. Wodka! wodka! wodka! rumka wodki, ought to occur at least ten times on every page of a Russian dictionary which should pretend to convey a proper idea of the frequent use of a word and its importance. Thousands of persons in Russia become rich through the immense consumption of brandy and millions poor.

Kohl’s confusion of the actual name, calling it brandy, then vodica and later wodka, was not the ignorance of a foreigner. For if he had looked the word up in a Russian dictionary, he would not have found it, even though it was used in speech to describe a particular kind of flavoured vodka. “Vodka” was not a fixture of Russian dictionaries until the 1860s. This proved to be a headache for translators of foreigners’ accounts of visits to Russia, who found there no word they could use, and many simply used “whisky” or “brandy” to mean “a spirit”, with confusing results.

The word “vodka” probably first appeared in English in 1780 when a book on Russia written by a German writer was published in London. It appeared as part of a footnote to explain the word kabak:

Kabak in the Russian language signifies a public house for the common people to drink vodka (a sort of brandy) in.

It was first mentioned in an original English language text by two Scotsmen who perhaps used it in order to avoid confusion between their own native drink and Russia’s. A Captain Cochrane, who drank vodka while travelling through Russia in 1820, described it as “vodka (whisky)”. The earliest descriptive use of the word in English was by Robert Lyall in 1823. He noticed a crown-bonded warehouse in Moscow, which was so large that it took up two immense squares, and its thick walls were covered by a vaulted roof. It contained thousands of barrels of vodka transported to it by distillers from across the country. Their contents were then sold to the taverns and people living in the Moscow area. In anticipation of the arrival of Napoleon’s marauding troops, orders were given in 1812 to empty the warehouse. Rivers of vodka ran down the street in rivers before being drunk by a mob of the city’s poorest who licked the pavement for the last drop. According to Lyall, the spirit was:

Precious votki, the nectar of the Russian peasants, which is measured in strength by the hydrometer, and sold according to law. Good votki by no means deserves the reproach thrown upon it by some travellers. As sold in the kabaks and in the shops, it is generally diluted and adulterated, and certainly is a fiery, slowly operating poison. It resembles Scotch whisky. It is a kind of proof spirit, according to pharmaceutical phraseology. It is called brandy by the mistakes of travellers, and sometimes Russian brandy…

Lyall examined previous travel writers’ musings on Russia and frequently came across the misuse of “Russian brandy” in all senses of the word. The misnaming of the spirit by foreign travellers would continue through the remainder of the 19th century, but with exceptions such as Lyall, nearly all agreed that it was “vile”.

By 1865 vodka appeared in Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Russia, Poland and Finland and was referred to as “corn brandy”. The book also included useful phrases such as “drink money”, Na vodka; “I will give you drink money”, Dam Na vodku; “I will not give you drink money”, Ne dam na vodku.

The drink was otherwise to be avoided in unmentionable taverns:

Events of a… festive character are celebrated at establishments where the bottle and the glass replace the more steady teapot, especially since the price of vodka has been made very low. Those establishments need not be inspected; their effect will be painfully seen in the tottering moujik [peasant] and the oblivious woman jolting home in a drojky [a low, four-wheeled open carriage] or waiting to be picked up from the gutter.

In Russia itself, a lengthy catalogue of other written names were used to refer to the spirit. They described what was in essence vodka but were in fact different drinks, identified often by the number of times they were refined, the amount of water added, the flavouring used and the strength. The longer the process, the more costly the result, as each refining process reduced the volume of liquid.

Vodka drunk in taverns was the first result of distillation and called raka. The next upgrade was “simple wine”. When three buckets of that were diluted by one bucket of water, polugar was the result. Anyone offered polugar could test its quality by pouring it in a metal container of about half a litre before setting the polugar alight. If burning reduced it to a line marked halfway down, it passed the test. It had a definite bread flavour, which gave rise to the term “bread wine”.

The best vodka produced today is quadruple distilled and often advertised as ultra premium or super premium, although triple distillation, which began in the 18th century, is the typical standard for most vodka. The number of distillations is rather meaningless when it comes to judging the quality of a particular vodka but has become a way for vodka producers to imply that they undertake superior processing techniques.

Each country which produced vodka would use its own methods. Russian vodka is characterised by charcoal filtering, which began with the aid of birchwood in the 15th century. It continues today with charcoal, which has been prepared to make it porous. Raw spirit is diluted with water before being passed through the “activated charcoal” in order to remove impurities and oily deposits known as fusel. As we will see, this is an important feature that contributes to Russia’s claim that it distills the “only true vodka”.

Long before vodka came to Russia, alcohol decided which religion the emergent nation should follow. In 988, Vladimir I, the Grand Prince of Kiev, heard all of the arguments for Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Because Jews had no land and Islam forbade alcohol, Vladimir adopted the Eastern Orthodox faith and declared, “Drinking is the Joy of the Russ”, a remark that has reverberated down the centuries as a commandment that must be obeyed.

Most countries which have become associated with a particular type of alcohol are able to date with accuracy when it first appeared. Whisky, Scotland’s “water of life”, was recorded as being in production in 1494. Although vodka and Russia are always considered to be Siamese twins, there is no surviving evidence of exactly when vodka production began in Russia or even if it was invented there. These questions arose when a trade dispute between Russia, Europe and the United States in 1977 centred around a precise term to describe the spirit. Poland was also a claimant to the vodka throne, and both countries, supposedly Communist allies, scrabbled around in their archives to find supporting evidence for their respective claims.

Russia and Poland launched an official historical search to resolve the argument, and in 1982, Moscow declared that vodka had been established in Russia by the 1430s. Happily for the Soviet Union, an international tribunal concurred and declared Russia to be the inventor of vodka. The researcher W. W. Phoblehkin, a famous food historian who unearthed the evidence, turned his conclusions into a book on vodka. He was later found murdered in his suburban Moscow apartment. It was maliciously suggested that he had been targeted by a Pole, but the crime has never been solved and appears to have been without motive.

To decide when vodka appeared in Russia, the researchers looked at other alcoholic beverages that were commonly drunk, such as mead and beer, to see if anything had affected their production. A disruption or discontinuity might have encouraged the creation of a substitute and would offer support to the traditional story that vodka was invented by an enterprising Moscow monk around the 1430s.

Something akin to vodka had been brought to Moscow by the Genoese ambassador in 1386, an aqua vitae (living water) distilled from grape must, but it was not manufactured anywhere in Russia. As aqua vitae was a Muslim invention, its properties were often considered medicinal rather than for direct consumption, and it was used in the preparation of perfume.

Russia was awash with adulterated mead in the early 14th century, and the consumption of this inexpensive, watery and vinegary concoction infused with narcotic herbs “enjoyed” by the masses was slowly declining.

Beer was brewed domestically and collectively, especially in rural areas, but the Church regarded this as a pagan cult activity because a “March beer” was brewed to celebrate the pagan new year on the first of that month. The new year was moved to 1 September in 1424, and the Church abolished all beer brewing. There was suddenly nothing left to drink that could also match beer and mead for cheapness.

Ironically, the Church accidentally filled the gap. During a visit to Italy at the end of the 1430s, a Russian Church legation was probably shown stills operating in monasteries. An educated monk called Isidor was one of the representatives. His sympathies for Rome, expressed during the trip, offended the Grand Prince of Moscow, Vasily II, who imprisoned Isidor on his return to Russia in the Chudov Monastery attached to the Moscow Kremlin. In the year before he escaped to Kiev, Isidor had an unusually comfortable incarceration, and his enforced leisure allowed him to experiment in distilling alcohol by using rye, which was readily at hand. It was an inspired choice, for grain was in abundance and the “water of life” was produced with an estimated proof of 60 per cent. Two centuries later, the proof was between 15–20 per cent and was drunk in larger quantities.

Isidor has since been appropriately immortalised in a new vodka from Russia called Legend of Kremlin, which includes his name and the year of 1430 on the paper-break seal on the bottleneck.

Vodka was tailor-made for Russia as it did not freeze like other alcoholic drinks in sub-zero winter temperatures and its quality did not deteriorate so it could be kept indefinitely. The financial reward against the outlay of material and labour was magnificent.

It is possible that a second visit in 1426 by the Genoese, again bearing aqua vitae to the Russian court, made more of an impression than it did before and may have suggested the idea of vodka to Isidor. Some sources suggest that the court did not drink the Genoese aqua vitae, but as alcohol was already a feature of Russian life, it seems unlikely. Talk and the taste of the strong liquid from Italy may have lingered in the good monk’s memory and encouraged his experiments in the monastery. For Russia it was a piece of good luck when it was decided that the aqua vitae from Italy was a harmful potion and its importation was banned. Nothing could now compete with vodka and nothing would do so.

Distillation spread to other monasteries but was confined to those in the Moscow region, and in 1474 a state monopoly on the sale of vodka was imposed by Ivan III. As only the state could sell vodka, the spirit became the state treasury’s chief revenue provider, an indication of vodka’s popularity even then.

The Church initially resisted Ivan’s pressure but was finally forced to give up selling vodka in 1478. When vodka later became responsible for widespread drunkenness, the Church conveniently had a memory lapse about its part in creating what it called “the devilish poison”. Since no monastic records of the birth of vodka survive, the Church could not be accused of hypocrisy and certainly not by a merry drinker who was admonished by a Russian priest with the words that his greatest enemy was vodka. “Really,” the drunk replied, “and does it not say in the Scriptures, ‘Love thine enemy?’”

Although vodka was firmly established in Russia at the end of the 15th century, its vast empire lay in the future. Emergent Russia was ruled by tyrants. Poor Vasily II had been blinded by a cousin in a typical example of the savagery inflicted on family members during endless succession struggles. But the ruling power of the grand princes of Moscow increased as they acquired more and more territory in neighbouring lands. The capital was removed from Kiev and established in Moscow, and Ivan III felt confident enough to take the title of “tsar” for himself. A second marriage in 1472 to the ugly and grossly fat Sophia, a niece of Constantine XI, enabled Ivan to incorporate the Byzantine double-headed eagle as part of his insignia. The eagle, familiar to present-day vodka drinkers, more than compensated for the bed that his hefty wife broke when she arrived in Moscow.

Ivan, whose stern, angry gaze made women quake when they saw him, often fell into a drunken sleep during dinner. But aware that his fondness for alcohol was shared by the peasants, he banned all drinking except on high days and holidays because drunkenness interfered with their work.

The rapid spread of vodka did not go unnoticed by foreign visitors to Russia. As early as the 1470s, the Venetian ambassador to Moscow considered the Russians to be:

…great drunkards and take a great pride in this, despising abstainers… Their life takes the following form: they spend all morning in the bazaars until about midday, when they set off to the taverns to eat and drink; it is impossible to get them to do anything afterwards.

Both the Venetian ambassador and Giles Fletcher, sent by Elizabeth I of England to negotiate trade with Russia, commented on what became known as kabaks or “the tsar’s taverns”. These were established by Ivan the Terrible in 1552 and became as much a part of Russian life as the pub would for the British. The Moscow kabaks were at first only for the use of strel’tsy, the palace guard, to whom Ivan granted special drinking privileges whilst charging the tavern owners for the licence.

Fletcher spotted a tsar’s tavern in every large town that he visited. It seemed to him that “to drink [to become] drunk is an ordinary matter with them every day in the week”. The peasants would arrive with all their money and not leave until the last kopek was spent, Fletcher reported. It was not possible for one woman to drag her husband out of the tavern, as he was drinking for “the honour of the emperor”.

The German scholar Adam Olearius, who was on a trade mission to Moscow in 1634 on behalf of Frederick III, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, recorded an unintentionally amusing account of Russia. He noted that there were over a thousand of the tsar’s taverns in which women appeared to have no shame about being drunk. In Narva, he spotted several women who: