Meat-dumplings in champagne and walking on Olivier salade: what were the drunken amusements of Russian merchants

The following meme has been circulating on the Web for several years now, sometimes more or less actively:

“Merchants were allowed to take a leave during a binge. According to the existing charter of the merchant guild, signed by Alexander the First in 1807, any merchant had the right to an annual vacation due to the "illness of the soul". That was the name of the binge.

The "small" (lasting 2 weeks) and "big" (lasting a month) "illness of the soul" were allowed.

How beautiful it sounded - Sickness of the soul!

And now it’s just an alcoholic.

There is no poetry in our time..."

In fact, of course, there can be no talk of any "binge drinking" in the merchant charter, but the problem of drunkenness in Russia has not gone away from this. Historians note that the Russian people began to drink themselves especially actively in those years to which the appearance of this document belongs - at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries, and this is due to the beginning of the development of capitalism.

It was not only the merchants who drank at all, the people, the nobility, and even the clergy drank, and such attention to the merchants is explained simply: it was especially noisy, because there was something.

Historian Vitaly Polikarpov, for example, writes in his History of the Morals of Russia:

“For the mores of the merchant, drunkenness is characteristic, and the merchant, according to his charter of 1807, had the legal right to binge, interpreted as a “sickness of the soul”. A week was allotted for a "small binge", up to a month for a "big" one; on the door of a 19th century shop, in such cases, an ad was posted "Tit Titich is in a drinking state".

The millionaire merchants also indulged in drunkenness in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it was accompanied by exorbitant extravagance. M. Pylyaev in "Old Petersburg" cites as a vivid example the life of Savva Yakovlev, who squandered more than a million rubles a year (we are talking about the middle of the last century). His life is the most awesome drunkenness, no one could surpass him in this matter. At home, on the table he had a "silver coffin" - a goblet made of silver in the shape of a coffin; it held a bottle of champagne. At the end of each drinking session, Savva shouted in a hoarse voice: "Coffin !!!"; then the servants brought in a box of champagne and a "silver coffin", one of the servants also brought a pistol loaded with a bullet. Then the butler pronounced the name of one of the guests, he had to go up to the owner, who raised the pistol above his head, drink to the bottom and, kissing Sawa, go home. After treating all the guests in this way, the owner drained the cup and fell asleep in his sliding chair. In the end, the case ended in suicide: having drained the cup to the bottom, Yakovlev turned the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and fired..."

The author of the "Leta. History without pseudoscience” channel, for its part, explains these vicious habits by the fact that a merchant who has attained a certain status must have had some costly“ hobby ”to demonstrate his status. It could be:

• Collecting objects of art (without understanding it)
• Harem content of favorites, gypsy orchestras, serfs or real theaters or ballet
• Gambling, usually cards where the city's annual budgets were played
• Horse breeding and horse racing
• Weekly unrestrained carousing in the best restaurants in Russia and Europe, with a mention of it in newspapers or public rumors.

“Reckless life went on all over Russia: small merchants smashed mirrors in restaurants, crushed passers-by in troikas, beat peasants in a drunken stupor, bursting into villages. In Omsk, a merchant rode the streets in a sleigh pulled by "some unfortunate women" - they were allegedly paid 25 rubles "for the disgrace".

Siberian merchants chose one restaurant in Moscow, where they drove in for the whole day, demanding to cook only Siberian dumplings - at least 2500 pieces, and not only meat and fish dumplings, but also fruit dumplings in pink champagne!

...Drank all the champagne and were discharged from Tomsk with the relay race. With joy, they gave drink not only to men, but also to ladies; to whom that did not drink, they poured alcohol on the head, and the next day the owners sent gifts with the messengers to the guests whose dress was damaged. They gave champagne to the servants, and then to the horses. At one picnic, a drunken company of gold miners almost roasted one of the authorized Golubkov instead of a lamb.

The merchants were especially proud to throw out some wildness: for example, to give champagne to horses, and in Siberia to perch and sturgeon, to beat in the face of all passers-by, giving a ruble to everyone who does not fall from a blow. Or, like the merchant Dudkinsky, gathered being drunk all the coachmen of the city, loaded them into several carriages and forced them to play instruments that they could not play. With a terrible roar, the procession rushed through the city, and the merchant threw copper coins into the crowd..."

And the St. Petersburg ethnographer Alexey Shishkin mentions another merchant fun of the beginning of the last century:

“The most intemperate revels, along with students and guards, were arranged by merchants. In St. Petersburg, their places of entertainment were traditionally considered the restaurants "Villa Rode", the garden-restaurant "Aquarium" on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect, the restaurant "Samarkand", famous for its gypsy choirs. Merchants tried to outmaneuver each other in generosity, squandering, often rolling the strangest entertainment. For example, there are cases when the pavements were watered with expensive wine; the waiters, pianists and singers of the choir were inundated with banknotes. Perhaps the most colorful fun is the so-called agony, which was practiced primarily in Moscow restaurants. At the end of the feast, a huge dish with salade components from the famous chef Olivier from the Hermitage restaurant was brought into the hall, and the merchant in boots walked on this dish accompanied by the sad music..."