By the beginning of the 20th century, receipts from the sale of vodka made up more than a third of the annual revenue of the Russian state. Of course, with all that vodka around, this statistic may be somewhat unreliable. Cooking with Vodka

By the end of the 19th century, many Russians were producing their own cheap homemade vodkas. This resulted in an epidemic of drunkenness throughout Russia and led to state control of the production and sale of vodka by 1894. (Because… Cooking with Vodka

After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks confiscated all private distilleries in Moscow. As a result, a number of Russian vodka-makers emigrated, taking their skills and recipes with them. One such exile, Vladimir Smirnov, revived his brand in Paris, using the French version of his family name – Smirnoff. Smirnov later sold his family recipe to [...]

Obscure Vodka Fact #15 – During WWI the sale of vodka in Russia was strictly prohibited. And the Soviet government of 1917 continued the ban on vodka throughout Russia’s Civil War – when vodka and wine were considered detrimental to the Revolution. (As if the Soviets weren’t sobering enough.) Cooking with Vodka