Authors
Alexandra Koroleva1; 1 Center for History, Sciences Po Paris, France Discussion
In 1983 in Novosibirsk’s Akademgorodok a few (male) scientists started a sobriety group inspired by lectures of a famous professor of medicine Fedor Uglov. He conceived of alcoholism as an acute public health issue that required immediate action in the form of prohibition and imposition of ‘healthy lifestyle’ that would require individual and communal self-discipline and self-control. At the same time, he posited that the scale of ‘drunkenness’ was a catastrophic societal disorder manifested in alcohol abusers’ loss of sense of shame, conscience, patriotism and cognitive abilities. Ultimately, Uglov and his Novosibirsk supporters explained the alcoholism of Russian people and the failures of the 1985 anti-alcohol reforms by bureaucratic incompetence and lack of responsible oversight, as well as by a plot of ‘international evil forces’ (CIA/Masons/Zionists). Thus, alcoholism as a medical condition acquired the traits of socio-political danger, and became a symbol of Russians’ moral demise and imminent extinction. This vision of alcohol abuse, the need for a change and restructuring, and the calls for a ‘healthy lifestyle’ and prohibition fit simultaneously into the state discourse on alcoholism and into concerns of nationalistic groups in the mid-1980s. Complex processes of negotiations over this ‘societal calamity’ treatment and discourse involved regional social and political actors (individual/institutional) – each with own vision of ‘disciplining’ the population into a ‘healthier’ routine, associated with the ideas of renewal. This paper looks at the memoirs and blog posts of the members of this sobriety movement published after perestroika and reflecting on the perceived failures, opportunities, legacy of the temperance groups and their role in the late Soviet society. 
