Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/36

 buy alcohol, it is not forbidden to have it in one's possession, and when one is willing to pay the price, in certain restaurants, contraband champagne may be purchased at sixty roubles per bottle.

A moujik, who has procured some raw spirit somewhere, may be seen occasionally in the streets abominably drunk. But that is the inevitable leakage of a system that is otherwise most strictly observed. Indeed, it is literally a fact that it is almost impossible to obtain in the cafes or restaurants not only whisky, but wine or beer. Only water is to be seen on the tables, or kwass—white, red, or black kwass—which is made by fermenting bread, and in which the degree of alcohol does not exceed 1 per cent., or at most 2 per cent. Total abstinence, consequently, is almost obligatory, and perhaps the leaders of the old regime, who have at least the merit of this radical reform, owe their lives to that fact.

We have so far noted some of the most obvious aspects, but also the most superficial, of the Revolution at Petrograd. It may be said that these impressions have nothing sensational in them.