Appendix C. Vodka production and sales.
The statistical handbook Советская торговля. Статистический сборник, published by the Central Statistical Agency (TsSU) in 1956, alerted me to the exceptionally large and variable role played by vodka in the structure of Soviet retail sales. According to pp. 41 and 49 of that volume, “alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages” (as this did not include dairy products, this category should be assumed to be overwhelmingly vodka; see Appendix D on consumption trends) accounted for the following sales in state and cooperative trade and public catering, in million rubles:
1928 1932 1937 1940 1950 1954
inc. public catering 1342 7828 14457 21663 45998 68122
retail trade only 1232 7394 12797 18453 39524 46664
As further tables (pp. 44-7, 52-5) indicate, this represented an amazingly high percentage of retail sales. For comparison, I have included information on the three largest commodity classes of the 1930s-40s, this time using data from state and cooperative trade alone:
Year 1928 1932 1937 1940 1950 1954
Beverages 10.9 20.8 11.1 12.1 9.8 11.1
Bread, rolls 2.0 2.6 17.7 18.0 12.8 8.3
Cloth 16.6 7.4 7.0 7.4 12.7 12.0
Nor does the picture look substantially different if public catering is included. The 20.8% of retail sales attributable to vodka in 1932 declines to 19.4% of retail trade and public catering, whereas in other years, public eateries add a few tenths of a percentage point. Only in the 1950s did public dining facilities add a significant percentage to beverage sales.
These tables are, in themselves, revealing. The leap in bread sales as a percentage of retail sales matches what we know about the end of bread rationing: from 1933 on, “commercial” sales of bread took over an increasing percentage of bread sales, and the “commercial” (off-ration) price was relatively higher than at any time since the early 1920s. Similarly, the plummeting of cloth sales in relative (though not absolute) terms in the early 1930s is compatible with the picture we have of a renewed subsistence orientation among Soviet consumers (see Appendix D). But what of vodka? I tried to find additional information to flesh out the story.
The best sources turned out to be in the statistical sector of the archives of the People’s Commissariat (from 1946, Ministry) of Trade, RGAE f. 7971, op. 2. Each year, the commissariat published a statistical compendium for internal circulation, entitled Торговля Союза ССР за 19__ г. Copies were numbered and seem to have been in the range of one hundred exemplars. Most were marked “sekretno.” From the mid-1940s, they included statistics on the vodka trade.
Another file in the same opis’, d. 662, ll. 96-8, provided evidence about vodka sales in the early 1930s. This listed volumes rather than ruble amounts:
Vodka sales, urban
and rural, in thousand decaliters
Year Urban Rural Total
1930 20,532 41,433 61,965
1931 28,040 45,412 73,452
1932 32,881 38,422 71,303
1933 31,457 35,694 67,151
These figures can be compared usefully with the sales data in Советская торговля. Статистический сборник. Again, in 1932, “alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages” accounted for 7.828 billion rubles in sales; dividing this figure by the number of liters sold (713,030) gives an average price of 10 r 98 k per liter. Assuming that rural sales were made at the mean price, the 38,422 decaliters sold in rural retail outlets brought in 4.2 billion rubles, or 32.8% of the total recorded rural sales for that year (12.8 billion rubles; see Советская торговля. Статистический сборник, p. 21). According to A. N. Malafeev, though, the average price charged in rural shops was as much as 39% higher than that of urban shops on the major categories of consumer goods (average calculated from История ценообразования в СССР, p. 165). If this differential applied to vodka, which Malafeev omitted from his table, we find an average urban price of 9 r 07 k and an average rural price of 12 r 61 k. At the quantities listed above, this would mean that vodka alone accounted for 37.8% of rural socialist-sector trade.
Another point worth making about early 1930s vodka is that it was an enormous revenue source for the government. Sales taxes and markups in general were far and away the largest source of revenues in that period, accounting for roughly 61% of central government revenues in 1933. Within that revenue category, profits from Glavspirt alone brought in 6.5 billion rubles, or 18.5% of the total state budget (see RGAE f. 8043, op. 11, d. 62, ll. 134-5).
I do not have any equivalent figures for the later 1930s or early 1940s, but the annual trade handbooks give data on the size of the commercial vodka fund from 1944 on. Notably, it was substantially smaller than these early-1930s amounts until 1951, and also markedly skewed towards urban, rather than rural, distribution.
Sales of vodka
(wholesale), in thousand decaliters
Year Urban Rural Total
1944 14,034 11,145 25,179
1945 25,313 17,444 42,757
1946 31,421 18,679 50,100
1947 25,281 14,966 40,247
1948 18,278 10,746 29,024
1949 29,470 17,667 47,137
1950 39,682 23,187 62,869
1951 48,593 28,445 77,038
Sources: Annual statistical handbooks, i.e. RGAE f. 7971, op. 2, d. 210, ll. 61-2; d. 221, l. 61; d. 230, l. 61; d. 251, l. 66; d. 264, ll. 74-5; d. 288, ll. 95-6; d. 310, ll. 105-6; d. 347, ll. 110-11.
Although much less vodka was sold in the 1940s than a decade earlier, it continued to play an enormous role in retail sales. Once again, it may be worth tracking the ruble value of vodka sales against that of sales of another key commodity, bread.
Vodka sales and
bread sales as a percentage of state and cooperative retail sales
1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951
Vodka 28.3 35.4 37.9 22.9 13.0 6.4 6.9 7.2 7.5
Bread 12.1 8.4 6.9 14.6 13.4 18.4 15.9 12.9 10.8
Sources: RGAE f. 7971, op. 2, d. 210, l. 17; d. 221, l. 14; d. 251, l. 15; d. 264, ll. 14-15; d. 310, ll. 13-15; d. 347, ll. 13-15.
Readers may notice that there are a couple of discrepancies between the published data for 1950 and this table, which specified “vodka” instead of “alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.” Household budget data may provide a clue, as consumption of other beverages did begin to increase in the later 1930s and especially after 1948. Otherwise, what we see in this table is a repetition of the pattern of the early 1930s, in which the state manipulated first vodka prices and sales volume and then bread prices and sales volume to weather a multi-year economic and political crisis.