Drinking Establishments in the Novel Crime and Punishment. An Artistic Detail in the Legal Field of the Drinking Reform of 1861

By the middle of the 19th century, the theme of drunkenness as the cause of the most heinous vices and crimes had become one of the most discussed. Numerous abuses by the owners of drinking establishments led to a spontaneous manifestation of people’s sobriety in the late 50s of the 19th century. This caused significant damage to the state budget. The result of this confrontation was the introduction of a new government policy on drink sales. The terminological replacement of “kabak” with drinking house gradually replaced this name from everyday language but retained its historically negative reputation in the public mind. By the middle of the 19th century, the use of the lexeme “kabak” in the literary language already had a distinct metaphorical meaning. The “kabak”, as the main culprit of drunkenness and depravity, became the embodiment of social evil, and the problem of drunkenness was realized as a religious opposition “righteousness — sin.” The action of the novel Crime and Punishment takes place in the period of the first consequences of the new drinking reform. One of the features of the novel is Dostoevsky’s use of the lexeme “raspivochnaia” as an everyday colloquial name for a drinking house, carrying a pronounced emotional reaction of social rejection. “Raspivochnaia” is a thorough leitmotif of the story. It is an element of the general negative atmosphere of the city along with stuffiness, the smell of dust, lime, and slop. It is associated with descriptions of the psychological state of Raskolnikov. The mention of it accompanies all significant events and meetings for the characters. But the most important thing is its connection with the religious and moral problems of choice, with the inevitability of the fall into sin or the possibility of resurrection. This emotional and semantic image, which determines the further narrative, is built by Dostoevsky already at the very beginning of the novel, in the tavern where Marmeladov and Raskolnikov meet.