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Vodka Martini Cocktails
Vodka martini cocktails history and why it was banned in Russia.
Beverages and Their Adulteration: Origin, Composition, Manufacture, Natural, Artificial, Fermented, Distilled, Alkaloidal and Fruit Juices
By Harvey Washington Wiley
Published by P. Blakiston's Son, 1919
"There is a marked tendency in social entertainment to diminish
the supply of alcoholic beverages. Not only are the more dangerous kinds, such as distilled liquors, cocktails, cordials and other mixtures, more or less under ban, but even the serving of wine and beer is growing more and more infrequent. When these beverages are served the quantities consumed are becoming gradually less. In fact, there are signs which are not without significance of the approach of a nation and perhaps a world-wide prohibition. The Czar of Russia before his deposition under the stress of military exigency forbade the manufacture and use of distilled alcoholic beverages (Vodka) in Russia. Lord Kitchener just before his tragic death appealed to the patriotic citizens of Great Britain to omit any alcoholic beverage of any kind in sending favors to the soldiers. France is considering a further inhibition of the manufacture and sale of certain distilled and compounded beverages. In the United States a number of states have voted for prohibition and five more were added to the dry number by the 1916 and 1917 elections. During the continuation of the war with Germany and Austria the manufacture of all distilled alcoholic beverages in the United States ceased at midnight, September 7, 1917."
The World's Work: A History of Our Time
By Walter Hines Page, Arthur Wilson Page
Published by Doubleday, Page & Co., 1915
"WE ARE fighting Germany, Austria, and drink," recently said the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, "and, so far as I can see, the
greatest of these three deadly foes is drink." A year ago the sophisticated would have laughed to oblivion the idea that the King,
Kitchener, and Lloyd George should be preaching and practising prohibition, that the Czar's government should have given up the great
revenue derived from the manufacture of vodka, and that the cafes of Paris should sell no absinthe...Russia's act in abolishing the
sale of
vodka strikes most observers as one of the most bewildering consequences of the war. For many years the Czar's government had enjoyed a peculiar infamy in the minds of temperance workers. The encouragement of intemperance there seemed to be well established as a definite governmental policy. The grievance was a long-standing one. The temperance enthusiasm of the early and middle nineteenth century reached Russia as well as the rest of the world."
The New York Times Current History
Published by The New York Times Co., 1917
Item notes: v.2 (1915)
Original from Harvard University
Digitized Aug 30, 2007
"A great curse
of the Russian people had been the habit of drinking vodka, a fiery spirit whose sale was a monopoly of the Government. The sale of vodka was abolished by imperial decree, and this meant not only the saving of a thousand millions a year, but the prevention of an unmeasurable flood of wasted energy. ..PETROGRAD, Nov. 18.— There is prohibition in Russia today, prohibition which means that not a drop of vodka, whisky, brandy, gin, or any other strong liquor is obtainable from one end to the other of a territory populated by 130,000,000 people and covering one-sixth of the habitable globe. .." |
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