Free The King of Vodka by Linda Himelstein

prospects, neither spoke a word about it. Like so many others in Russia, they were superstitious and did not want to jinx their prospects.
    It was just a fifteen-minute walk from Ivan’s home, down noisy Varvarka and through Red Square to the Moscow State Chamber. There Arseniy would proclaim his finances, pay his taxes, and buy the necessary licenses and tickets required to operate a business. The building was a maze of bureaucratic agencies. It housed the state treasury department, tax collection agencies, and some military offices. Arseniy headed to the “Second Census Department,” which handled merchant affairs.
    Despite its important official functions, nothing about the building was plain or governmental. The Moscow State Chamber was located in a grand classical mansion that once belonged, ironically, to a wealthy noble family. The rooms still dripped with the riches usually reserved for the highest echelon of the upper crust; there were ornate marble interiors and extravagantly painted ceilings. Pushkin and other leading intellectuals had visited there before the home was sold to the state in 1845.
    Now Arseniy and Pyotr stood inside, awed by the building’s majesty. Little else, however, felt intimidating. Low-level civil servants scurried from office to office like the cogs they were. Peasants, merchants, and aristocrats with various matters that needed attending shuffled about, rarely taking the time to ingest their impressive surroundings. For Arseniy, this moment was a means to an end: He needed the proof that he paid city and social taxes; he needed certificates that would allow him to open a wine shop. And he also needed a few extra rubles to “tip” the men as he made his way through the bureaucracy. The entire process took the better part of a day, but Arseniy got what he came for.
    Things were not as easy two weeks later when Arseniy made his way to the Moscow City Society’s house—the Merchant Department. This organization managed the merchant guilds themselves. It was an excessive, hierarchical bureaucracy, which operated more like an exclusive country club than a professional organization—and not just anyone could become a member.
    Arseniy got an early start again on May 14. The sky was clear and it was already warm by the time he walked down Varvarka Street toward the Moscow City Society. It took Arseniy only about seven minutes to reach Yushkov Lane, a nondescript speck of a street with little to boast about except for a rather lovely church that stood directly in front of the municipal building.Arseniy, walking alone this time as Pyotr needed to work, instinctively paused before this church, crossed himself and softly mumbled a prayer that God would help him succeed on this momentous day. Then he walked through the iron gates and entered the building.
    Arseniy needed an officially stamped application, the guild certificate, to obtain a merchant license. He cleared his throat, stood up as straight as a pencil, and made the inquiry. The man behind the wooden counter looked every bit the part of the clerical worker he was, hair slightly disheveled, eyes bloodshot from too much booze, and a face like a road map. Menial pay and sheer boredom had turned him indifferent to his job and to the people he addressed. The clerk looked up, almost sneering. Great , he thought, wiping the beads of sweat from his brow with a dingy kerchief, another village nobody come to Moscow to seek his fortune. *
    It was indeed a trend. The number of serfs and ex-serfs filing into Moscow had grown exponentially after the end of the Crimean War. Some, like Arseniy, were looking to jumpstart the freedoms they saw unfolding. Others sought better seasonal work in the factories and industries that had begun to sprout up all over Russia.
    That will be 1.80 rubles, the gatekeeper said. † Arseniy was ready. The application was supposed to cost 90 kopecks—the sign said as much. But everyone