The Boy They Called Vodka

All Russian men, people liked to say, possessed three names. One was for the government, for forms and files and printed lines in ledgers—Alexander Ivanovich Samoilov, in this case, with all the firmness and official stolidity that implies. The second was the diminutive used by parents and those permitted tenderness: Sasha. And the third belonged to everyone else, the name given by the town, by rumor, by memory. In his case, that name was Vodka.

It was a curious name, and one that suggested a story more festive than what truly existed. There was no legendary drinking contest, no tale of some boyish triumph over a bottle. As with most things in Russia in 1938, the truth was less glorious and far more human, woven with suffering, necessity, and a boy’s small attempt to shape the world around him.

Sasha was twelve when the name attached itself to him. It was on one of those unseasonably warm winter days that arrived without warning, lifting the spirits of the entire town like a brief pardon from nature’s harsh side. People poured into the streets and shared the day together. The town was small. One of those places outside Moscow where tale and argument was known to all. And though gossip was condemned in principle, it survived in practice.

Life in this place bore the marks of the era. People disappeared quietly, without ceremony, as though plucked by an unseen hand. A man mending a fence one evening would be gone by morning, the tea in his cup still warm, his boots neatly paired by the door as though he intended to return. The “fortunate” ones were sent to Siberia, where at least they continued to exist. The others were not spoken of aloud.

And yet life went on. Potatoes remained the steadfast companion at dinner. Neighbors kept chickens in their bathrooms in winter, the only place warm enough to keep the birds from freezing. It was an arrangement no one liked, least of all the chickens, but everyone accepted. And the state’s unmet promises of utopia floated above everything like a banner no one dared tug down. We were a nation trained to speak in code. Some would call that lying. But we didn’t. Survival was at stake.

Sasha’s father had once been one of the disappeared. He had fallen into a purge not by conviction or crime. In his case, it was simply geography. He was in the wrong kitchen at the wrong hour surrounded by the wrong conversation. After months of interrogation he was marched, half-starved, to an open field and tied to a wooden post. A blindfold was placed upon him. The cold gnawed at his cheeks. Then the countdown began. He passed out somewhere between numbers and bullets that never came.

He woke in the prison infirmary, surrounded by the smells of cheap disinfectant and bad soup. “Is this heaven?” he whispered.

A guard, peeling an apple with a knife far too large for the fruit, didn’t look up.
“No. You’re still in hell.”

Sasha’s father tried to sit, winced, and asked, “What happened?”

“They were just messing with you. Officially, they said you were pardoned. But you weren’t even scheduled for execution.”

Such experiences change a man. And in his case, the change was alcohol. He drank before. A little here and there. But now he drank Vodka often and from pain. He returned home different after three years in the gulag.

—

And so, on that warm winter day, as bottles were raised across town in rare celebration, Sasha’s father joined with his now customary devotion.

Sasha knew what would come next. His father would come home in fits of rage, his pale face tomato red, ferocity in his piercing blue eyes. Fortunately, he’d never hit anyone. But doors and walls did have holes in them.

That evening unfolded just as expected. Sasha found his father with his knuckles bleeding, a new hole in a wall, collapsed and snoring on the kitchen floor.

It was then that Sasha, all 4’11”, frightened, and yet with a kind of resolve that sometimes blooms in children long before adulthood, stepped outside. He walked through the settling night to the one shop in town that sold vodka, shattered its window with a stone, and climbed inside. He filled a sack with every bottle available. On the counter he placed all the rubles he had stolen from his father’s coat pocket and added a note that this wasn’t theft.

Then, he carried the sack deep into the woods, dug into the thawing earth, and buried the bottles.

In the morning, the town woke to the scandal. But soon it simply turned into a story. And for the young boy, a name. He was now Vodka.

But life soon shifted in a way that made nicknames and childhood mischief seem trivial. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Suddenly the rumors people had dismissed about the possibility of war, the question of who would be crazy to attack such an immense land, became reality. Though it must be said that some were actually hopeful. Anything would be better than life under Stalin some presumed.

Sasha’s father was drafted immediately. Sasha remained at home, still too young to serve. He listened to stories of battles, and felt the worries of his neighbors as the war drew closer.

By 1942, the constraint of staying behind had grown intolerable. Perhaps it was because he was sixteen and boys at that age often feel an acute need to prove themselves to the idea of their own courage. Or perhaps, he was simply courageous. In a country that was rapidly losing sons, the reasons no longer matter. The army’s interest in birth certificates had withered. They wanted only to know whether a young man could hold a rifle steady and direct it westward.

And for Vodka, that was a resounding yes.

—

Notes

• This is Part I. Part II will be published next week.
• “The Boy Called Vodka” is a historical fiction snapshot. While based on real events, the story, characters, and incidents are fictitious.
• Read another historical fiction snapshot.