Battles won - but not yet the war! / by Anatolij Martynov

Banles won-but not vet the war! The writer, a TV reporter in the Ukraine, found during a two- year campaign against alcoholism that there were many pit- falls along the road to temperance. His remarkable report first appeared 1n the Moscow daily newspaper Pravda by Anatolij Martynov Just over two years ago , directly after the new law against alco-hol had come into force, I was invited by Donetsk Television to direct a regular programme entitled "Temperance as a rule of life. " I thought they had made an odd choice in me , as I was neither a drinker nor a convinced teetotaller. But the editor's persuasion pre- vailed : "a lyric poet will not be able to run a programme like this. Drunkenness is a prosaic business , so it is prose writers and publicists such as you who hold the trump cards." I must confess that I have had to delve into the prose of life to the utmost depths-to " cover " lei- sure boozing, the miners ' notorious addiction to the bottle , alcoholism among women and the fate of whole families of drinkers. But the general tone of the programme has remained light and encouraging: we have shown weddings, depar- tures for military service, public events for all the family organized by the city , etc. , where there has been no drink. The themes have of- ten been suggested by letters, for the Soviet Union's turn towards democracy and glasnost (openness) has made people write much more candidly, so we feel we have our finger on the pulse of life. But , after two years-again in keeping with the spirit of the times-I must say quite honestly that the main conclusion I have drawn from my participation in the campaign for temperance generally is-alas! dispiriting. In the first broadcast it was all crystal-clear : there was an enemy, war had been declared and the victory would be ours. But today I no longer have such gallant faith in early victory. 26 It is clear that life is a great deal more complex than this scenario. Assailed by doubts , I decided to play detective : I _found some shabby slippers and an old cap in the garage, I didn't shave for two days, and one morning I went down half-an-hour before the bar opened and sat on the broken block of slag that stood by the door. Dressing up, I thought , will help me gain the drinkers' confidence, they will see me as " one of them" and be more forthcoming. I was wrong! The squalid dive that was alive in my memory had ceased to exist two years back. No one came to queue before opening time , there were no drink-ravaged faces, no one dying of hangover thirst. The people who came were clean and well-dressed and mostly drank only a pint. Soon afterwards , the night-shift miners descended on the place, with rings of coal dust under their eyes , tired and drowsy. Quickly they knocked back a couple of pints , rarely three , and set off immediately for home. Back in the past, the dive would have been a lively buzz of drinkers ! My conclusion after my secret visit to the bar was optimistic : on this front there is victory. With the help of the public, the police and the medical profession have suc- ceeded in isolating from society the chronic alcoholics whom neither temperance societies nor propagan- da can help, for these people are sick and need to be treated. In the past they would , from time to time , be formally admitted to hospital and then discharged . It is hard to sight victory here , and shortcomings are always much more obvious, but I am neverthe- less convinced that the people do consciously perceive both. I shall never forget the letter I received from a stonemason. He was over 50, and a typical "quiet drinker." He had never been in a "sobering- up" station, had never broken the law and did not terrorise his family. He would like to "give it up for ever," but could not: as a young man he had worked on the (post- war) restoration of the mines, where he was "rolling in money and where illegal vodka and beer was for sale in every corner. " And so he got the habit. This is his candid story : "You, as a journalist, do not be- lieve alcoholics when they tell you that their body just has to have vod- ka- and that's all there is to it, there is nothing you can do about it. But in fact , the body reacts very quickly to changes . Take, for exam- ple , my own body. There was a time when we would flock to Katerina's shop on the way to work. At 7 o'clock, an hour before opening time, she would open the back door to give us our tot of " medicine" for our hangovers . We were used to this and so our body would demand it at 7 o'clock , come what may ... " But then the restrictions began . They closed down Katinka's "busi-· ness" and began to sell vodka only at 11. We grumbled among our- selves, but nobody died from not being able to start drinking in the small hours. We would manage to go for it as soon after 11 as we could, diving straight into the shop at the lunch break . We were just getting used to this when there were further restrictions, and drink was not to be sold until 2 o'clock. We began going directly to the shop W ORLD HEALTH , June 1988 Veterans' reunion in Gorky Park, Moscow- a chance for old comrades to exchange reminiscences over a cheering glass of vodka-or two ... Photo WHO/V. Abramov in the middle of the shift, in our working clothes. The bosses no- ticed this and banned anyone from going out in working clothes. Willy- nilly you waited to the end of the shift and changed your clothes . And however much you hurried , you wouldn't get your first drink until six in the evening. At first there was grumbling, but people didn't bang their heads against the wall, and we got used to it. And I myself was surprised - you don't feel the compulsion right from the early hours , all day at work , you even forget about it. .. " Only one small step remained for this highly skilled builder to take -to give it up altogether. But this he cannot- because he does not want to. If he does not drink in the evening, he sees the emptiness and the grind of life, and has never been taught to live differently. It is not so easy to help my stonemason and thousands of others like him. This will be done, it is thought, by combining the legal restrictions already in force with opportu- nities for cultural advancement and educational measures, but, as we know, this is a long-term process. Let us now look at "the enemy" to see where it has withstood our onslaught , and where it has come out openly on the offensive. First we have to admit that mass media , the medical profession and the police have placed too much emphasis on only one aspect of drunkenness-alcoholism. Tele- vision has shown debilitated chil- dren , cinema newsreels have shown scenes in sobering-up stations, health education posters show bot- tles so primitive that they inspire aversion .. . but it is no secret that alcoholism is the extreme expres- sion of the problem and that only part of the general population suf- fers from it. The masses on the whole are healthy, able-bodied people , who from time to time have a drink at their own discretion, but they seem not to have been taken into account. Yet the phenomena we observe today are occurring pre- cisely . among that sector of the W ORLD HEALTH, June 1988 population. People have resorted to home distilling on an unprece- dented scale and , given the extent and refinement of these operations , it would be immensely difficult to combat this practice success- fully. There simply are not enough police! It is not difficult to calculate that the additional annual consumption by the population of an "extra" million tons of sugar, as reported in the press, is the equivalent of 1,000 million one-kilogram packets of sugar. If these find their way into "brewing," then that means 2,000 million bottles ; eight bottles a year for every person , from the tiniest baby to the oldest of the old. At today's vodka price, this is 20,000 million roubles! This is a fa- miliar figure to sociologists and economists-precisely the level of the country's estimated annual rev- enue from the vodka monopoly be- fore the decree. Official statistics show a decline in the consumption of vodka, but these figures do not include home distilling . What was the next shot in our locker after the new restrictions were introduced? We set up tem- perance societies. And how were these societies started? By collect- ing a per capita registration fee of two roubles from practically the en- tire population. Within no time at all, a new bureaucratic apparatus modelled on the old pattern had been established - offices, furni- ture , telephones, typists, a bank account, progress reports... with a "ladder" rising through the local district, city, regional and Republic organizations to the All-Union level. Two years have gone by and, now that they are getting better sal- aries , these "fighters for temper- ance" are already very much con- cerned that "nothing should change"- they are very pleased with everything as it is. Let me make it clear that I have nothing personal against the people who work for the temperance socie- ties-they are very good people , and I also like their candour. When you ask them : "What are you do- ing?" , they quite ingenuously re- ply, "Well, nothing really , writing letters to people in high places." And this in the bracing era of perestroika (restructuring) , with its resolute determination to cut back excessive bureaucracy! I myself, as a rank and file partic- ipant in perestroika, have come to the conclusion that, with the na- tionwide changes that have taken place in the last two years in terms of glasnost , democracy and greater outspokenness , we now need to correct the course of our national battle for temperance to take ac- count of these new developments. We must base our campaign on the scientific views of sociologists , economists , law enforcement or- gans and, most important of all , on the views of the people themselves. Only this approach will give us a realistic and effective strategy. I have met hundreds and hundreds of people and not one has spoken against this drive for temperance on which the country has embarked. All were in favour-even the chronic alcoholics and hardened drinkers. But how to go about it consciously and in a spirit of patrio- tism, so that it produces results without giving offence , without hu- miliating people , nobody knows but the people themselves. We should all join forces to meet this challenge. • 27