From “Heavy Drinking” to “Great Sobering up”: the Alcohol Issue in Pre-Revolutionary Russia on the Pages of Old Believer Journals

The paper is devoted to the history of the alcohol issue in the Russian Empire on the eve and after the adoption of the “prohibition law” of 1914. The author set out to highlight the problems of mass drunkenness as well as the process of combating it through the prism of pre-revolutionary Old Believer publications. The focus of attention was on materials from the “thick” journals “Zlatostruy” and “Old Believer Thought” of 1910—1916. On the one hand, the paper examines the problems of alcoholization of various social strata, child drunkenness and examines the failures of the sober movement in the context of the state-owned alckohol monopoly. On the other hand, the consequences of the unprecedented social experience of forced sobering up during the First World War are shown as they were seen by educated representatives of the Old Believer world. The paper concludes that, being representatives of the sober tradition in Russian culture, the Old Believers’ authors did not cover the implementation of the “prohibition law” fully and objectively. At the same time their publications provide valuable material for thinking about why this law was introduced, what achievements it had and how great was the potential of pre-revolutionary Russia in the struggle for mass sobriety.