Bread and Circuses

Empty vodka bottle on the snow and ice.

Now is the winter of our discontent.
~Richard III (Shakespeare)

There’s a bottle of vodka in the kitchen at the office. Although it’s open, I haven’t seen anyone actually drink it. Still, it sits right there on the table where folks gather with their tea and brown-bag lunches. If the news stories are to be believed, though, that bottle might just disappear soon.

Russia is apparently on the verge of a vodka shortage thanks to inefficient distribution of tax stamps. That’s no small beer, if you’ll pardon the pun. Vodichka (to use the most intimate, familiar term for it) is still an important component of the cultural scene here.

I haven’t noticed any sort of shortage at my local supermarket. There, the vodka section is about 7 feet high, 30 feet long and still, mercifully, several bottles deep. I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that there won’t be any shortages in Moscow itself. The government is well aware of what happens in urban areas when there are shortages. In fact, change the details to “bread” and St. Petersburg” and that’s how the Russian Revolution started in the first place.

It brings to mind the old Russian (Soviet) joke about the breaking point. A man hears on the radio that prices are rising.
“Oh, well,” he says, “We’ll keep buying what we have to buy.”
Then the radio announces that wages are down.
“What can be done?” he says, “I still have to work all the same, no matter what they give me.” Then, there’s a statement about shortages.
Again the same resigned attitude – “We’ll make do.”

Finally, the radio mentions the weather forecast; rain all weekend. The man jumps from his chair. “Those bastards,” he shouts. “Now they’ve gone too far!”

Analysts – granted, the more hyper among them - are actually predicting riots over the vodka situation.

But think of the twisted logic in all this. Instead of problems with mass public drunkenness, people are actually fearful of a sober population. It probably would be a stretch to say that folks would sober up, recognize what’s going on, and demand changes. In fact, it may be more accurate to say that they would demand vodichka in order to return to their normal state of not caring about anything.

That’s not such a wild statement, really. The history of mass involvement in politics in Russia is pegged lockstep to the history of rebellion and revolution. People here are generally even-tempered until they are pushed so far that they just can’t take any more.

So, I disagree that a temporary lack of vodka is just such a potential trigger for regime change. Wide scale disturbance is unlikely given the broad macroeconomic improvements, the rising middle class, and general popularity of the president. Oh, and also the excellent quality and untroubled supply of Russian beer.

Then again, by the end of the day Friday, the vodka bottle was already gone.