Russia’s vodka king

Once upon a time, in the village of Kayurovo, Yaroslavl Province, there lived five brothers. Their father was a peasant serf. In the 1810s, many of the serf peasants in the Upper Volga area obtained permission from their landlords to drop farming and do seasonal work instead. The two elder brothers, Yakov and Arseny, went into the wine business. The successful wine dealership enabled the brothers to buy their freedom from the Demidov family that owned them, and they adopted the name Smirnoff, which in Russian means "quiet" or "submissive." Arseny's son Pyotr was born in 1831.

Pyotr Smirnoff started to work for his uncle at a wine-cellar on Varvarka Street at the age of seven. Like any other apprentice, Pyotr did all sorts of jobs about the house, swept the floors, washed up, polished samovars and boots for the prikazchiks and ran errands in Moscow. In reward for his zeal, he received a few kopecks a day.

Pyotr's father Arseny purchased the family's freedom in 1857 and became a merchant of the Third Guild the next year. At the time the family was headed by Arseny's brother Ivan. He was an active philanthropist and helped the local church and commercial school. The pa­triarch of the family died unexpectedly in 1873.

By then Pyotr's career was on the rise. He had be­come the head salesman at his father's wine-cellar opened in 1859 on Pyatnitskaya Street. He transformed his father's wine-cellar into a vodka distillery, which em­ployed nine workers. In 1863 Pyotr moved up to the Sec­ond Guild after having declared the required capital.

In the mid-1860s Pyotr Smirnoff owned several wine-cellars and the vodka distillery, which now had 25 work­ers. In 1871 he became merchant of the First Guild. He was now the leading supplier of liquor in Zamoskvorechye in Moscow. The house at 1 Pyatnitskaya became his headquarters and residence. Today the building has been restored basically as it was in Smirnoff's time.

By 1871, the Smirnoff company was among the 30 Moscow enterprises that supplied their goods to all parts of Russia, including Central Asia. It won its first award at the World Fair in Vienna in 1873. The company's output that year was 1,299,000 liters worth 600,000 rubles. In 1875 the output went up to a million rubles' worth, and the number of workers to about 100.

Pyotr had never received a formal education and, indeed, had never learned to write properly, but like many self-made men he had immense respect for education. He sent his children to elite schools, after which his sons joined his business.

Pyotr Smirnoff made up for the shortcomings of his own education by hard work and high moral standards. He always kept his word and demanded the same of his partners. Gone were the times when cheating and swindling were the road to success (like they are today).

When hiring prospective job-seekers, Pyotr would subject them to a test during the interview. He would offer them some of his choice vodka. At first the applicant would refuse, claiming to be a teetotaler, but Pyotr would continue to press him. If the hapless fellow finally agreed to down a couple of glasses, that was it: "I thought you said you never drank," Pyotr would say. "I can see there's no way I can do business with you. Get out."

As to the workers, they didn't even pretend not to drink, but there were two golden rules at the Smirnoff distillery: don't steal and keep your drinking under control.

High profits enabled Smirnoff to take a paternalistic attitude to his workers and provide them with social ser­vices and facilities, which were later introduced on a na­tional scale in the country by the Soviets. Smirnoff built cheap housing for his employees, and the largest apart­ment building also had a kindergarten, laundry, bath­house, pharmacy and out-patient clinic. After working for 25 years, employees received a life-long pension, and children from needy families had access to free education.

In the mid-1880s, Pyotr Smirnoff expanded his distill­eries and became the largest distiller not only in Russia but also in the world. The number of workers he em­ployed reached 1,500, and the number of labels printed for his bottles rose to 60 million a year. At the turn of the century the Smirnoff Company offered 400 different kinds of alcoholic drinks. The most famous and popular was the 21 vodka and the Nezhinskaya Rowanberry. The Smirnoff Company became the official alcohol supplier for the Czar's court in 1886. In addition to vodka, Smirnoff stocked a broad range of wines. The secret of Smirnoff's success lay in the high-quality spirits and top-grade fruit, grapes, and berries used in making liquor.

In 1895, the state monopoly on hard liquor was rein­stated, first in the eastern provinces and later throughout most of Russia. This was a terrible blow for the Smirnoff Company, whose output plunged 15 times, and for Pyotr Smirnoff personally. His health deteriorated, and his condition was diagnosed by some as monopolies. In 1897 he drew up his last will and testament. Pyotr Smirnoff died in 1898 and was accorded a regal funeral. In addition to his family and colleagues, thousands of common folk and workers followed his coffin.