Encyclopedia of Russian History

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

VOLKOGONOV, DMITRY ANTONOVICH

With the accelerated growth of the urban working class during the rapid industrialization of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1933), the practice of treating with vodka took on greater significance, and in most factories it became nearly impossible for workers to receive training or secure the proper tools without bribing foremen with vodka. It was quite common for skilled workers to demand payment in vodka for training new recruits. As with rural communities, in the factories custom set firm limits on the amount of drink required. So prevalent was the practice of treating, a nationwide survey conducted in 1991 revealed that the workplace was the primary place for imbibing. Moreover, in 1993 average consumption levels were placed at one bottle of vodka for every adult Russian male every two days. See also: ALCOHOLISM; ALCOHOL MONOPOLY; FOOD

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Christian, David. (1990). ’Living Water’: Vodka and Russian Society on the Eve of Emancipation. Oxford: Clarendon. Christian, David, and Smith, R.E.F. (1994). Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Herlihy, Patricia. (2002). The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia. New York: Oxford University Press. Phillips, Laura. (2000). The Bolsheviks and the Bottle: Drink and Worker Culture in St. Petersburg, 1900-1929. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Transchel, Kate. (2000). “Liquid Assets: Vodka and Drinking in Early Soviet Factories.” In The Human Tradition in Modern Russia, ed. William B. Husband. Wilmington, DE: SR Books.

KATE TRANSCHEL

VOLKOGONOV, DMITRY ANTONOVICH

(1928-1995), Soviet and Russian military and political figure, historian, and philosopher.

Colonel General Volkogonov was born in Chita province, the son of a minor civil servant who was shot in 1937. Without knowledge of his father’s true fate, Volkogonov entered military service in 1949 and rose rapidly in rank. As a political officer after 1971, he held various posts within the Soviet MinENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY istry of Defense, eventually becoming deputy chief (1984-1988) of the Main Political Administration.

Although known as an ideological hardliner, Volkogonov’s foreign experiences gave rise to grave doubts about the Soviet system. Travels in the Third World taught him that revolutionary leaders sought only cynical advantage from the Soviets. An academic visit to the West convinced him that capitalist societies had produced greater equalities than their supposedly egalitarian socialist counterparts. He was already reading suppressed writers when he learned the truth about his father’s death-that he had been executed as an enemy of the people. Hence sprang the desire to expose the truth about Stalin and his times.

Estrangement from the military-political leadership precipitated Volkogonov’s transfer to the USSR Institute of Military History. There, while chief from 1988 to 1991, his subordinates’ revisionist draft history of the Great Patriotic War, coupled with his growing adherence to democratic ideals and an unorthodox evaluation of the Stalinist legacy, provoked clashes with the Mnistry of Defense. Following the Soviet collapse, he served from 1991 to 1995 as security adviser to President Boris Yeltsin, while simultaneously championing democratic causes and chairing several parliamentary commissions as a Duma deputy associated with the Left-Centrist Bloc. Before his turn against Soviet convention, Volkogonov’s more significant works, including Marxist-Leninist Teachings about War and the Army (1984) and The Psychology of War (1984) reflected orthodox zeal. However, his subsequent conviction that the Soviet system had been flawed from the beginning permeated his historical works, including a revisionist biography of Stalin, Triumph and Tragedy (1990), and later volumes on Trotsky, Lenin, and other significant early Soviet leaders. See also: STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Menning, Bruce W. (2003). “Of Outcomes Happy and Unhappy.” In Adventures in Russian Historical Research, eds. Catherine Freirson and Samuel Baron. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Volkogonov, Dmitri. (1991). Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, tr. and ed. Harold Shukman. New York: Grove Wei-denfeld. Volkogonov, Dmitri. (1994). Lenin: A New Biography, tr. and ed. Harold Shukman. New York: Free Press.

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VOLSKY, ARKADY IVANOVICH

Volkogonov, Dmitri. (1998). Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime, tr. and ed. Harold Shukman. New York: Free Press.

BRUCE W. MENNING

VOLSKY, ARKADY IVANOVICH

(b. 1932), political leader and industrial lobbyist in the 1990s.