Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 3 – Seven years
ago, the Russian government shut down the last Soviet-style sobering up
stations, Valery Burt says; but in recent months, ever more voices have been
raised in support of the idea that they should be re-established because
Russians “as before drink often and a great deal and not only around the New Year’s
holiday.
Those who lived in Soviet times know
the sobering up stations from songs, movies, novels or perhaps even personal
experience, the Svobodnaya pressa commentator says; and they have formed a
remarkably positive image of an institution that was often anything but good for
those held in it (svpressa.ru/post/article/220782/).
And consequently, when they raise
their voices in favor of reviving the sobering up stations, be they members of the
Duma or journalists or anyone else, they are often calling for the restoration
of something that rarely existed outside of films or songs, something that should
be remembered in assessing their proposals.
The militia gathered up drunks on
the street, often so inebriated that they were unconscious, and deposited them
at one of the hundreds of such institutions across the USSR. Some of those
running them treated their inmates with respect; while others were anything but
that.
Those so incarcerated were forced to
pay a fine when they were subsequently released, usually but not always sober
and often into the hands of a spouse.
But the most horrible aspect of these institutions was that those who
ran them informed the bosses of those who had fallen into them, something that
often constituted a black mark against these people.
Now at a time when so many Russians
want to revive the Soviet past, they are seeking to revive these institutions
as well, all too often forgetting the ways in which the sobering up stations
were a means of social control that those who drink too much even now may come
to regret the existence of.
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