There were 86,000 registered drug addicts with special treatment in the Soviet Union in 1980. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
There is a widespread opinion that drug addiction practically did not exist in our country until the 90s of the 20th century. However, the medical and police statistics that have been opened today show that this is not entirely true.
Legacy of the Civil War
In fact, the problem of drug addiction in the USSR has always been on the agenda.
First, narcotic drugs were massively used in Central Asia, the Transcaucasus and the North Caucasus, where it was a kind of national tradition.
A dangerous situation existed in Ukraine, Don, Kuban, in Stavropol Territory, in the Far East, where hemp grew mainly.
Secondly, drug addiction developed in large cities of the European part of the USSR.
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In the 1920s and 1930s, there were many cocaine and morphine addicts. This became the legacy of the Civil War, when smugglers and interventionist troops brought huge quantities of cocaine and opium into the territory of Russia.
A negative role was also played by the "dry law" of 1914, under which the state stopped producing and selling alcoholic beverages at retail. All this led to mass drug addiction among wide sections of the population. Thus, practically all the revolutionary sailors of the Baltic Fleet used cocaine. Moreover, both in pure form and diluted with alcohol and water. Such a narcotic drink was called "Baltic tea", or less noble - "Sivoldai".
The party elite and the creative intelligentsia also used drugs extensively in the 1920s. For example, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov was a famous morphine addict, and the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky dabbled in cocaine. According to some reports, even the chief of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky himself took drugs.
After the end of the Civil War, thousands of Chinese demobilized from the Red Army settled in Russian cities. Without a decent job, the Chinese have opened hundreds of underground opium smokers. The main visitors to these establishments were not only criminals, but also young workers and students.
The more affluent part of the population, as well as women, used morphine and cocaine. It was then that the famous thieves' song was born:
We're flying, wings are torn
My heart sank with a quiet pain.
Cocaine silver dust
All my roads were covered with snow.
The use of "marafet" in the 1920s became an indispensable element of criminal and youth culture. Such processes did not at all please the leaders of the Soviet Union, who had already drawn up grandiose plans for the industrialization and collectivization of the country. And the "narcotics levers" were in no way suitable for the builders of socialism. Therefore, in 1929, a tough struggle against drug addiction began in the USSR. The GPU and the police blocked the channels for the supply of imported drugs to the USSR, closed drug den, destroyed cannabis crops. Drug use itself became a criminal offense. Drug addicts were forcibly treated in medical institutions, and the worst ones were sent to “ventilate” to the nearest forced labor camp or to the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal.
By the mid-1930s, the number of "drug addicts" had dropped significantly. The severity of the problem was removed, and the remaining few lovers of "tormenting" went deep underground.
"Glass" - the most expensive
In the 1940-1950s, there were a meager number of drug addicts in the USSR. Mostly these were people who were seriously injured at the front during the Great Patriotic War. With the help of morphine and other illicitly purchased medications, they lessened their physical distress. The police turned a blind eye to such violations of the law, understanding the suffering of the former front-line soldiers.
A new round of drug addiction in the Soviet Union began in the 1960s. And this was due to the spread of popular Western music in the style of rock, as well as hippie culture, among the wide masses. As you know, this youth movement arose in Western countries and was accompanied by an almost obligatory intensive use of drugs.
In the Soviet Union, "hippie" citizens also began to take drugs on a regular basis. Opiates, including heroin, were made artisanally in kitchens. Partially from the opium poppy shipped from Central Asia. Partially from oil poppy, which grew throughout the European part of Russia.
Also, medicines plundered in medical institutions were widely used. Medical drugs on a special drug fire were called "glasses", as drugs were packaged in glass ampoules. It was the most elite form of Soviet drug addiction. Industrial medicinal drugs were less harmful to health, and one could sit on the "glass" for years, keeping fit.
Marijuana, marijuana, hashish, plan, and other "herb" were made from hemp growing in the Chui valley or other southern places.
Of the stimulants, ephedrone, also known as "Jeff", has gained immense popularity. Craftsmen made it from the components available in home first-aid kits. Later, the famous pervitin appeared, aka "screw".
What Soviet drug addicts were deprived of was cocaine. Its deliveries from abroad were tightly stopped by joint efforts of the customs and the KGB. Vladimir Vysotsky is named as an example of a person who used cocaine. But he, apparently, smelled the "powder" only abroad, and at home he was supplemented with other drugs.
From "hanka" to "jeff" and back
During the late USSR, there were about a million drug addicts in the country. Young people smoked pot or cooked from poppy what was called "little black", or "khanka". Those with minimal knowledge of chemistry made a jeff or screw.
Pharmacy preparations could only be afforded by wealthy clients, since one ampoule of "glass" cost 25 rubles - a lot of money at that time. Absolutely reckless teenagers ate "fun mushrooms", sniffed gasoline or "Moment" glue in the basements.
Gradually, drug addiction began to have a significant impact on crime and the state of public order. Drug addicts committed robberies, robberies and thefts to get money for drugs.
In corrective labor colonies, the number of drug-related crimes by 1985 increased in comparison with 1961 more than 3.5 times. Convicts, returning from work at external production facilities to the residential area, often carried drugs through the checkpoint, and also threw drugs over the fences.
In general, the years of Brezhnev's "stagnation" were characterized by a gradual worsening of the drug situation in the country. During that period, a kind of "communes" or "families" of drug addicts became a typical phenomenon. "Families" consisted of a certain number of drug addicts of both sexes of different ages living in one city, but no more than a dozen people. As a rule, these were former hippies or beatniks who were addicted to drugs during their tempestuous youth. All of them worked somewhere and lived by registration, as the Soviet Criminal Code severely punished for parasitism and vagrancy. Many of them had higher education and at times, until they "chipped off", even held prestigious positions. But mostly such citizens worked as simple engineers, architects, and artists. Men, even with higher education, often worked as stokers, loaders and janitors.
The head of the "family" was the one who wore the "straw hat". That is, in other words, I got poppy "straw" for the family.
In the spring, the “head of the family” quit his job and went to the south for three months. There, finding a wild poppy plantation, he got up to ten suitcases of raw materials, depending on the area. Other "earners" often worked with him. They lived in huts, dried poppies there, packed them in cellophane bags, which were tamped into suitcases. Having collected the required number of "straw" suitcases, the breadwinner returned home.
This "gold reserve" was enough for the commune for a whole year. And the next summer everything was repeated from the beginning. After all, there was no Tajik or Gypsy drug trafficking then, and no one brought heroin home. Therefore, Soviet drug addicts had to engage in "wild" procurement of homemade "khanka".
Such "communes" could exist for as long as you want, and they self-destructed only in the early 1990s, for objective reasons, when completely different times came.
World of crime, no.16. Andrey Nikolaev