The national prohibitionist. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1907-1911, 1908-02-27
February 81, 1908
DRINK TYRANNY IN RUSSIA
The Cars Government Devoted to Perpetual
ton of Liquor Traffic for Revenue
From the Literary Digest.]

Even temperance reform, it appears from the
latest st. Petersburg papers, encounters the OPP
position OF the Russian government. Every other
live question being virtually barred from discus
sion In the Dounla the peasant Ichelysheff made
stirring speech on the ravages of drink in Rus
STA, and accused the government, amid the cheers
of all sections of the deputies, of getting their
revenue by poisoning the people. The Douma has
taken the matter up and various schemes of
form have been brought forward by the different
groups. One plan proposes the appointment OF
commission to consider ways and means of fight
ing alcoholism among the masses In the upper
council there is resolution for the abolition of
the government liquor monopoly or "dspensary
system" All parties blame the government for
the steady increase in the consumption of liquor
The Riech says:
Remembering the traditional policy of the gov
eminent, noting that in day forty per cent. of
the petitions and decisions in favor of closing
looms have been ignored by the government; re-
calling recent ministerial circular which facili-
tated the granting of liquor licenses, the conclu
sion is unavoidable that the great difficulty lies in
the governments interest in the revenue from
drink and, further, that no reform will be posi-
BILE SO long as the budget is based the
ploltation of national vice.
The government monopoly of liquor is not uni
versal in Russia, but where it exists the evil of
drunkenness is just as grave as where licenses
granted to private persons. The monopoly was
introduced over ten years ago temperance
measure, and the ministerial declarations of that
time have been read in the Douma to show how
completely the scheme has failed. The govern
ment organized local boards to fight drunkenness,
but even the Conservative press say that these
boards owing to Bureaucratic control, have proved
than useless Mr. Menshikoff writes in
the Novoye Vyemya est. Petersburg):
These boards cost the government 100000
rubles year, yet the consumption of liquor grows
and grows The rate of the increase of our popu-
lation is and one-half per cent. year; the
growth of liquor consumption is thirteen per cent
This is about the rate of the spread of fire and
flood Why retain the boards? Eight
thousand schools could be maintained at the sum
spent on them"
This writer asks whether the Donna will be
as stupid and impotent as the government has
been in dealing with the evil of drunkenness
Liberal members of the Parliament are demand
ing the abolition of these boards and the organ
ization of private temperance bodies reading
rooms, tea-rooms, popular amusements, etc, to
facilitate the fight against drink But all recog-
nze that the great question, in Russia, is that of
abandoning liquor as source of revenue
The minister of finance in speech in the upper
house, denied that the government had encour-
aged the sale of liquor for fiscal reasons that
the bureaucracy had paralyzed the temperance
boards The increase in drunkenness he attrib-
uted to "the revoluton'-the disorder the excite
ment, the unrest-and to other temporary causes.
The deputies and editors, almost without excep-
tion rldicue that explanation as "ofhciaP' and
optimistic. The liberal view is that drink in
Russia is result of famine, misery, overtaxation,
ignorance and despair and that the problem is
and the question of fundamental broad politico-
social