technical grape varieties

Defining the category

The term "technical grape varieties" (технические сорта винограда) is a viticultural and economic classification rather than a botanical one. Technical varieties are those whose fruit is processed into wine, juice, concentrates and other products, as against table grapes (столовые сорта) eaten fresh, raisin varieties, and dual-purpose (универсальные) types. The decisive feature is juice yield: in technical varieties the juice makes up 75-85% of berry mass. They also tend to accumulate sugar readily, allow easier acid adjustment, and have smaller, thick-skinned berries with higher levels of pigment, tannin and aroma compounds. Cultivation priorities differ accordingly, table grapes by berry size, uniformity and transport durability, technical varieties by sugar yield per hectare and processing suitability. The European Union regulates grapes for wine, table use and raisins as distinct categories, and the Soviet and Russian agricultural systems likewise planned table and technical plantings separately.

The Soviet structure of viticulture

Soviet grape growing was concentrated in the southern republics: the Russian Federation, Ukraine (including Crimea), Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Wine and grape processing was a substantial revenue source for the state budget, and by the mid-1980s the leadership treated the predominance of wine varieties as a problem in its own right. Most of the crop flowed into wine and juice, while fresh table grapes remained chronically scarce, and numerous contemporaries recall that affordable table grapes barely appeared in the shops before the mid-1980s.

The anti-alcohol campaign and the vineyards

Launched barely two months into Gorbachev's tenure, the anti-alcohol campaign of 1985-1990 struck the vineyards harder than any previous Soviet anti-drinking measure. In May 1985, CPSU Central Committee and Council of Ministers resolutions ordered steep cuts in alcohol output and sales, and the 27th Party Congress directed the republics to carry out a "radical restructuring of the structure of viticulture", orienting it "first of all toward the production of table grape varieties" (P43). Because table grapes fetch less than wine grapes and vineyards could not be replanted overnight, this directive became in practice a mass uprooting. Many publications record that vineyards were destroyed in Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and other republics (P44). Former Ukrainian party secretary Yakiv Pohrebniak recalled that 60,000 hectares of vineyards were uprooted in the republic and that the Massandra winery was saved only by Shcherbitsky's intervention (P48).

What the conversion cost is documented least ambiguously in the varieties themselves. Unique collection varieties were destroyed, including ekim-kara, a component of the famous Soviet wine Black Doctor, and selection work was hit with particular force (P55). Pavel Golodriga, director of the Magarach Institute, took his own life after a campaign of harassment and repeated failed attempts to persuade Gorbachev to halt the uprooting (P55).

Numbers in dispute

Soviet and post-Soviet accounts of the losses diverge sharply. The labour daily Trud reported that in 1985-1987 alone 533,000 acres (about 216,000 hectares) of Soviet vineyards were destroyed, 16% of the total, and that table grapes, not wine grapes, suffered most; TASS called the episode a "human folly" (P112, P113, P114). Moldova lost some 80,000 of its 210,000 hectares (P45). In Russia, vineyard area fell from 200,000 hectares in 1985 to 168,000 by 1990, and the average annual harvest dropped from 850,000 tonnes in 1981-1985 to 430,000 tonnes (P46). By contrast, Yegor Ligachev claimed in 2010 that vineyard area fell only from 1.26 million hectares in 1985 to 1.21 million in 1988, with harvests of 5.8 and 5.9 million tonnes respectively (P52).

Responsibility for the uprooting is likewise contested. The campaign's initiators were Politburo members Mikhail Solomentsev and Yegor Ligachev, who followed Andropov in blaming mass alcoholism for sagging labour discipline and a general moral decline (P29). Solomentsev later insisted in a 2003 interview that the Soviet Union had grown 92% technical and only 2% table varieties, that raising table-grape output was the recommendation, and that vine clearing always proceeded continuously: 75,000 hectares a year before the decree, 73,000 after (P53). Ligachev denied that uprooting had been ordered "from above". Gorbachev, for his part, said he had not insisted on destroying vineyards, complaining that "the vines were cut down as a move against me" (P54). The campaign's archival record, the recollections of republican officials, and the sheer scale of the losses do not settle the dispute, but they do establish that the initiative came from the centre, not only from overzealous localities.

See also

• Massandra Winery
• The Anti-Alcohol Campaign