Kremlin Orders End to Curbs on Liquor Sales

The Kremlin today admitted that its anti-alcohol campaign was a dud and said it is time for “normalization” of the sale of liquor.

The call by the Communist Party Central Committee came just two weeks ahead of the long Revolution Day holiday weekend, a high point in the Russian drinker’s calendar.

“Radical changes have not yet been achieved,” the Central Committee said in a resolution carried by Tass press agency. Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev launched the anti-liquor campaign in May, 1985.

“Wide possibilities for strengthening the struggle against alcoholism have not been exploited in many regions in the proper way,” the Central Committee said.

Curbs Failed to Work

The resolution acknowledged that curbs on sales had not led people to stop drinking but instead had merely created lines outside liquor stores and boosted illegal home distilling.

This, in turn, has led to shortages of sugar.

Crime figures published separately by Tass today showed a 20% increase this year in convictions for making moonshine despite an overall decrease in crime.

“The fight against drunkenness is being greatly hampered by its orientation predominantly toward prohibitive and preemptive methods, toward extremes and haste,” Tass said, adding that the resolution criticized cuts in alcohol production.

“A solution to one of the most complex social problems is quite often reduced to administrative measures and to the conduct of short-lived vociferous campaigns.”

Change in Circumstances

Instead, the resolution said, it is necessary “to eliminate in the shortest time the conditions which lead to lines for alcoholic drinks.”

At the same time the media and other methods must be used to increase anti-alcohol education.

A whole string of public bodies, from the Ministry of Sport and Physical Culture to the state Cinema Committee were criticized by the resolution for failing to do this.

The resolution also stressed that these preventive measures should be backed by a firm struggle against home distillers, who according to estimates in the Soviet press now turn out more vodka than the state distilleries.