Ebook: Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State

Vodka politics -- Cruel liquor: Ivan the Terrible and alcohol in the Muscovite court -- Peter the Great: modernization and intoxication -- Russia's empresses: power, conspiracy, and vodka -- Murder, intrigue, and the mysterious origins of vodka -- Why vodka? Russian statecraft and the origins of addiction -- Vodka and the origins of corruption -- Vodka domination, vodka resistance, vodka emancipation? -- The pen, the sword, and the bottle -- Drunk at the front: alcohol and the imperial Russian army -- Nicholas the Drunk, Nicholas the Sober -- Did prohibition cause the Russian revolution? -- Vodka communism -- Industrialization, collectivization, alcoholization -- Vodka and dissent in the Soviet Union -- Gorbachev and the (vodka) politics of reform -- Did alcohol make the Soviets collapse? -- The bottle and Boris Yeltsin -- Alcohol and the demodernization of Russia -- The Russian cross -- The rise and fall of Putin's champion -- Medvedev against history -- An end to vodka politics?