People's sobriety guardianships: from concept to reality

Relevance. The Boards of Public Sobriety were a significant institution of social policy in the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries. Their analysis reveals the mechanisms of state-public interaction in addressing acute social problems and provides practical guidelines for designing modern anti-alcohol programmes. The purpose to systematize the goals of the trustees, to characterize the range of their powers and areas of work, to identify the factors that led to both successes and failures in the activities of these institutions. Objectives: to systematize the goals set by the state for trusteeships, to characterize their powers and areas of work, and to identify the factors that have contributed to both successes and failures in the activities of these institutions. Methodology. The study is based on a set of complementary methods that provided a multidimensional analysis of the activities of the People's Sobriety Trusts, namely, historical-systemic, historical-genetic, historicalchronological methods, and institutional analysis tools. Their combination allowed for a combination of the macrohistorical context of the article with a micro-analysis of specific practices and decisions. Results. The state set a threefold goal for the Boards of Public Sobriety: to reduce alcohol consumption; to educate the public about the harms of drunkenness; to create alternative forms of leisure as a socio-moral counterweight to drinking establishments. The Boards were granted both supervisory powers (monitoring the sale of alcohol) and cultural-organizational powers (opening tea houses, libraries, people’s houses, and holding readings and lectures). Factors contributing to their success included: the initiative of individual Board members; extensive educational efforts. Reasons for their failures included: bureaucratization of management; weak civic engagement; conflicting interests between the fiscal demands of the state liquor monopoly and anti-alcohol objectives; insufficient funding. Conclusion. The Boards of Public Sobriety formally carried out a wide range of tasks, but their activities did not lead to a systemic reduction in alcohol consumption. The stated goals remained largely declarative. The key contradiction that caused the discrepancy between intent and reality was an institutional conflict. As part of the state’s financial system, the Boards were responsible for limiting the sale of a product that provided a significant portion of the Russian treasury’s revenue.