This thread is inspired by two videos stating that government nationalization of vodka production in Russia, started by the czars and continued by succeeding autocrats, was not only meant to raise revenue but also to lessen the incidence of popular revolt. Apparently the reasoning was that the drunk don't riot, even though way back in the Classical Era authors noted how strong drink 'inflamed the passions'. Was continuous public intoxication every truly a consciously pursued strategy of control, and if so who else besides the Russian autocrats attempted it? For ATL purposes, can you speculate a nation or empire that could have employ this control technique and what drug they would have chosen for the purpose?
Opiates for the masses: government booze and drugs for social control
- Thread starter cincpac overboard
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Have the Mongol Empire introduce Opium to the masses to quell civil unrest?
WI: Mongol States become Drug Cartels and get the Old World addicted to Marijuana and Opium?
1. Mongol Empire and it's successor states spanned from China and Korea to Eastern Europe and much of the Middle East. This means they rule over much of the old world. 2. In the center of this empire lays Central Asia, and it's here that we see some of the first recorded cases of Marijuana and...
www.alternatehistory.com
I'm not sure if the Tsars ever saw booze as purposely as way of social control. Certainly, vodka had become part of the Russian mythos, and the government monopoly began in the 1470s. High vodka prices also occurred during time of political trouble, such as the Time of Troubles. The social control was perhaps a benefit, but with a myriad of issues; during the Russo-Japanese war, recruits would also often show up to recruitment stations drunk and riotous. Alcohol also effected the cohesion of the Russian army in Mukden. Japanese soldiers reported seeing Russian troops so stone cold drunk that they were able to bayonet and kill them without any issue.
I believe the Russian government promoted vodka heavily in the 1860s, but they also repealed government control of the distilleries in 1863, causing prices to plummet and making it more readily available. The end of serfdom also meant an end to estate distilleries, where aristocrats had been allowed by Catherine the Great to make the stuff on their own estates... often of dubious quality. Taxes on alcohol provided the Tsarist regime with 40% of it's total revenue at times, which was needed during for military expenses and also their modernization and reform efforts. Certainly more issues arose from the heavy consumption of alcohol (seen in Soviet times especially, with most crime, domestic violence and hooliganism tied to alcohol consumption, not to mention the heavy effect that drinking had on production in the economic sector).
Alcohol also perhaps played a role in both the collapse of the Russian Empire and the USSR. Nicholas II introduced prohibition so that grain could be conserved for food, which introduced a myriad of issues, the most important being depriving the empire of much needed money when it was mobilizing for war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Gorbachev tried the same thing, with disastrous results; all he did was make it more expensive and time consuming to drink. Russians started making their own homemade hooch, which meant sugar and all sorts of other items needed for homemade distilling flew off the shelves... making the food supply within the late USSR even more problematic.
I believe the Russian government promoted vodka heavily in the 1860s, but they also repealed government control of the distilleries in 1863, causing prices to plummet and making it more readily available. The end of serfdom also meant an end to estate distilleries, where aristocrats had been allowed by Catherine the Great to make the stuff on their own estates... often of dubious quality. Taxes on alcohol provided the Tsarist regime with 40% of it's total revenue at times, which was needed during for military expenses and also their modernization and reform efforts. Certainly more issues arose from the heavy consumption of alcohol (seen in Soviet times especially, with most crime, domestic violence and hooliganism tied to alcohol consumption, not to mention the heavy effect that drinking had on production in the economic sector).
Alcohol also perhaps played a role in both the collapse of the Russian Empire and the USSR. Nicholas II introduced prohibition so that grain could be conserved for food, which introduced a myriad of issues, the most important being depriving the empire of much needed money when it was mobilizing for war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Gorbachev tried the same thing, with disastrous results; all he did was make it more expensive and time consuming to drink. Russians started making their own homemade hooch, which meant sugar and all sorts of other items needed for homemade distilling flew off the shelves... making the food supply within the late USSR even more problematic.
This sounds a lot like soma in Brave New World, but that is a fictional book, so it does not qualify. There's a joke about a pharmaceutical/government complex in the USA, but that's a current politics topic and will not be expanded on further.
Maybe some futurist South American country could do this (perhaps an alternate Columbia, given its reputation as a drug dealing country?)
In communist Czecheslovakia, people used to joke that any government which raised beer prices would be overthrown. In WW2, Churchill called things like tobacco "necessary luxuries", on the grounds that even in a situation of total war people needed some creature comforts to keep their morale up.
Well, continuous public intoxication would run into the problem that drunk/stoned people aren't generally very good at doing work, and you kind of need people to do work for society to function. The less extreme version of ensuring a ready supply of alcohol or other socially-accepted recreational substances in order to keep people happy has been done probably since governments first arose.
Nobusuke Kishi, de facto Economic manager of Japanese-occupied Manchukuo during World War II, was heavily involved the opium trade. His contemporary, Yoshio Kodama, distributed opium to break the resistance of the local population. This could become official Japanese policy. It arguably already was.
IIRC one estimate shows about 20% of all sugar went to the shadow economy in the USSR, and most of that was going to moonshine and other homemade liquor, so this was an isssue long before Gorbachev.
It also makes you stupid and uncoordinated, so it's a great way to push potentially rebellious individuals over the edge and easily kill/capture them, or get them on some lesser crime like causing a public disturbance, assault, DUI, etc.
The problem with drugs and alcohol for pre or even post-1900, is you need to have a society organized around them for it to work, and you need a well-defended society to even have that luxury. Otherwise, you run into all sorts of societal issues, that could begin to spill out elsewhere into the population, especially if serious external threats exist.
Alcohol, to me, seems like a pretty desperate choice for a tyrant bent on social control, as it has been known for millennia just how devastating to performance alcoholism is. I certainly wouldn't want to go into battle with a hungover army. More than that, alcohol is so easily produced you will always be losing revenue to home producers. I think a truly addictive euphoriant with a complex production process is more suited to a social control role, but probably beyond the technical capabilities of a pre-1900 society.
All the same, that doesn't mean no one ever tried with the drugs at hand to achieve a compliant populace, which is why I started the thread. Certainly various historical authors have speculated that a limited amount of drug use (usually alcohol) leads to a productive and well-ordered society. Given the breadth of psychoactive compounds that have been know for centuries, it's interesting to speculate about their ATL use for social control, such as perhaps by a Mesoamerican-derived empire using peyote in mandatory-attendance religious ceremonies.
All the same, that doesn't mean no one ever tried with the drugs at hand to achieve a compliant populace, which is why I started the thread. Certainly various historical authors have speculated that a limited amount of drug use (usually alcohol) leads to a productive and well-ordered society. Given the breadth of psychoactive compounds that have been know for centuries, it's interesting to speculate about their ATL use for social control, such as perhaps by a Mesoamerican-derived empire using peyote in mandatory-attendance religious ceremonies.
Getting everyone addicted might be a bit hard, but maybe an authoritarian government could try getting suspected or potential dissident leaders addicted to drugs (have the police bring them in for a few days of questioning, and during that period make sure to give them plenty of injections). Ensure it's difficult to make or buy, so they can only obtain their fix from the same government that got them addicted in the first place, and hey presto, all your most dangerous potential rivals are now dependent on you.
If everyone is intoxicated, you can't get efficient work out of the population and they have fewer inhibitions about causing problems. Even if it helps with avoiding revolutions, it cuts into the ability of the upper classes to maintain an orderly society and extract revenue.
True, and obvious to any ruler with an ounce of foresight, but short-sightedness has never been lacking historically. I framed my opening post poorly. Intoxication isn't the end goal, pacification is. Basically the scheme is the biochemical equivalent of the Roman 'bread and circuses', something to keep people amused and distracted while the leaders of the realm conduct their unpleasant business. It doesn't even have to be nationwide, perhaps limited to just the capital and other strategic cities where the stress of urban crowding makes civil unrest more likely.
It's true that many rulers have been short-sighted, but I don't think any of them would be quite that short-sighted.
Outside the time frame of pre-1900, but the Soviets did this with dissidents. Not necessarily getting them addicted, but dissidents were accused of being mentally ill and Soviet Psychiatrists invented a whole mental disorder that flat out didn’t exist, so-called “sluggish schizophrenia” the idea was because the USSR was a communist country and provided what their citizenry needed (even if that wasn’t true) the line of thought was that only someone mentally ill would attempt to dissident against the system. Dissidents were often locked up in psychiatric hospitals, given injections and psychiatric medications that they didn’t need.
Obviously this wouldn’t be possible for a pre-1900 country, given the state of psychiatric care was a rudimentary field, and the first anti-psychotics weren’t introduced until the 1950s.