Soviet Alcoholics Agree to the Effectiveness of AA Technique

As head of the first Soviet Union office promulgating the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous, Helen Kuzmicheva says the approach makes for “reconstruction of the soul.”

“It offers not just recovery from alcoholism, but a program of spiritual recovery,” she said. “It brings out a completely new personality.”

Kuzmicheva, coordinator of the newly opened Soviet-American Alcoholism Center in Moscow, said the Alcoholics Anonymous technique is being found as effective there as in America.

After all, “we are human beings, all of us,” she said in an interview. “Due to the changes being made in our country, we also have been able to acquire the movement.”

Refer to Higher Power

Among participants, she said, believers “speak of God” helping them overcome their addiction. “Others speak of a higher power. They all recognize they need a higher power exerted to help them. As to what kind, they need time to understand it is God.”

Such religious terminology may seem unusual for a health-promoting agency in an officially atheist society, but millions of people there are devout believers.

However, AA itself steers clear of overtly religious affirmations or criteria, acknowledging only that help of a “higher power” is essential in overcoming alcoholism, but leaving that aspect undefined.

Individuals may interpret that power as the group and its mutually supportive associations, or may consider it the Judeo-Christian God who acts in human affairs, or both; whichever involves a spiritual dimension.

Uses Typical Phrase

It is purposely kept vague, in order to take in all comers.

“God as you understand him,” Kuzmicheva put it, using a typical AA phrase, meaning that the power is whatever recovering alcoholics consider it.

“They had lost control over themselves and lost the very quality of being human when they drank,” she said. “When they see life with sober eyes, miracles happen in their lives. They grow spiritually.

“They regain their best spiritual selves.”

Kuzmicheva, a professional educator who served as a factory personnel director before taking the post at the new Moscow center, recently completed a monthlong U.S. tour with three Soviet AA members.

Accompanying them was the Rev. J. W. Canty, a New York Episcopal priest who had established the new Soviet center, and who in 1987 had started the Soviet’s first AA group called Moscow Beginners.

Authorities Dubious

He said Soviet authorities initially were dubious of the project, but their attitude has changed to “cautious respect” now that they are “seeing alcoholics get a second chance at life.”

On the 16-city tour that concluded in late June, the group addressed school and church gatherings, met with numerous AA groups, usually in churches, but also with an atheist-agnostic AA group in New York.

They also toured various health facilities and met with former Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter and their wives, attending a Sunday school class taught by Carter in his hometown of Plains, Ga.

Kuzmicheva said the Scripture lesson, as Carter interpreted it, emphasized that when God gives his promises, they sooner or later are fulfilled.

“This is very promising for our country,” she said, adding that recent liberalizing developments there pointed toward a more fulfilling future.

Immense Problems

However, as in America, the Soviet Union has immense problems with alcoholism. Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in 1985 launched a campaign against it, but popular resistance forced him to ease some of the restrictions.

“Unfortunately the problem is very acute in our country,” Kuzmicheva said, estimating that there are 10 million to 15 million alcoholics in a population of 290 million.

On the U.S. tour, the Soviet AA members often gave their testimony in meetings, using only first names as customary in AA. Two of them said they are atheists, one of them professed to be a believer.