A Shot of Memory: Soviet Life Between Cognac, Spirits, and Champagne
*this article is also available in Russian
“The USSR was a country where vodka was currency, Soviet Champagne was the symbol of celebration and aspiration, beer chased vodka (‘beer without vodka is money wasted’), and industrial alcohol was a matter of engineering ingenuity. We drank on holidays and off, with friends and alone, for a reason or out of despair. Behind every glass — a story. Behind every bottle — an era. Let’s open the wine cellar of memory and raise a toast — to our youth!”
Part 1. Intellectuals in the Kitchen
(Moscow, 1979)
“Nobody got drunk in these kitchens — they learned how to speak.”
Friday night. A tiny kitchen in a two-room khrushchyovka apartment in Moscow’s Cheryomushki district — one of those grey panel buildings that had become the default backdrop of Soviet life. The bathroom is combined, the tiles are cracked, the ceilings low. Outside the window — the lights of identical buildings. On the wall hangs a cuckoo clock, and beside it a glossy Japanese calendar with vertical kanji and a girl in a miniskirt leaning on a Mazda. A beautiful calendar — but with a quiet subversion: not a single Soviet holiday marked. No May Day. No November 7th. A kind of aesthetic nonconformism.
In the corner, an old radio quietly drones:
“In his policy address, Comrade Suslov emphasized…”
No one listens, but no one turns it off either — what if the neighbors are listening?
Here, ten or more people gather at the end of a workweek — friends, colleagues, like-minded souls. Intellectuals. The kind who hadn’t yet emigrated but already lived in internal exile. The air was thick, but the thoughts were lofty.
They debated, argued, told political jokes:
• Brezhnev: “They say I’m old. Well yes, I’m Superstar!”
• “Is it true they’re making Brezhnev a Generalissimo?”
“True. And if he can pronounce the word, he’ll get People’s Artist too.”
• Brezhnev arrives at the Kremlin without a single medal on his jacket.
“Comrade Leonid Ilyich, where are your stars?”
“Oh dear — I forgot to take them off my pajamas!”
They whispered updates picked up through static from “enemy voices” — Radio Liberty, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle. Someone brought the latest samizdat: The Gulag Archipelago typed out in fading carbon copies, Doctor Zhivago, Heart of a Dog, or Orwell’s 1984 in translation. Each page passed hand to hand like sacred scripture. In the next room, the hostess pounded away on an old typewriter not registered with the KGB, making five carbon copies. The fifth barely legible — but still in demand.
They talked about Solzhenitsyn (“What did he say in Vermont?”), about Sakharov (not yet exiled to Gorky but already under tight surveillance). A fresh story: during a Bolshoi tour abroad, dancer Alexander Godunov defected in the U.S. “Our ballet stars are so brave — five years ago Baryshnikov stayed in Canada (‘I didn’t leave the USSR — I left for dance’), and in 1961 Nureyev refused to board the plane home from Paris (‘I’d rather die a free man!’).”
No one in that kitchen yet knew that by year’s end the USSR would send troops into Afghanistan.
They recited poetry by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (“No monument stands over Babi Yar…”) and Andrei Voznesensky (“He said words are time bombs. They barely publish him now”), and Bella Akhmadulina (“Love — a habit of being two. A habit of being just with you…”). Brodsky was quoted cautiously — already seven years in exile. His words struck like echoes in a void.
On the table — the only one that could physically fit in this cramped kitchen — sat a 0.5L bottle of Armenian brandy “Three Stars,” with its tilted brown label and notes of vanilla, oak, and baked plum. Thin slices of lemon dipped in sugar “like in restaurants.” Some drank straight. The shots were small, the clinking rare, no toasts — just a way to loosen tongues that by day feared loose words.
There were no seats, so they stood, paired off in quiet chats. A kettle whistled, black tea brewed. In a bowl — baranki and crackers. A dish of strawberry jam sent from someone’s grandmother in the countryside. Spartan, but sincere.
“Where the walls are thin, the thoughts grow dense.”
As the cognac level dropped, voices rose and grew bolder. The hosts whispered: “Shhh — the walls are thin, the neighbors…” Who knows, maybe even ears behind the wall. Everyone laughed, but also listened — an instinct honed over years.
The bottle was almost empty. The conversation far from finished. Time to chip in for another. Who’d go to the store? That was already settled: the two youngest guests in the next room were locked in a blitz chess match (this was the intelligentsia — no cards, dice, or backgammon, but chess!). The loser grabbed a string bag (avoska), some bills and coins, and rushed to the nearby state grocery still open “within walking distance.” One eye on the clock, the other on the line.
Armenian brandy “Three Stars” wasn’t elite — more like an affordable luxury. A bottle cost 8 rubles 50 kopecks. For context: an engineer earned 120–150 rubles a month, a skilled lathe operator 160–180, a new teacher 90–110. It was like wearing a tuxedo on a Tuesday: against the rules, but justified if the occasion was right. You didn’t drink it to get drunk — you drank to speak. Not to forget, but to see clearly what could and couldn’t be said.
Why Armenian Brandy?
In the USSR, “Armenian brandy” became nearly synonymous with “cognac.” Produced in Yerevan at the legendary Ararat Brandy Factory, by the 1970s it was the largest cognac producer in the Soviet Union. Made from Armenian grapes and aged in Caucasian oak barrels.
But more than aging, what mattered was the feeling of authenticity. Not vodka in a faceted glass, but a drink for thinkers — even in a cramped kitchen. It evoked theater, literature, Brodsky, or that scene in Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears where Gosha offers Katya a glass.
It was “our answer to the French.”
It had a reputation.
Stalin reportedly served Churchill Armenian “Dvin” cognac at the Tehran Conference in 1943 — and again at Yalta in 1945 — off the official record, behind closed doors. Churchill liked it so much, he arranged for regular deliveries to London. According to legend, Churchill later complained the taste had changed. It turned out the master blender, Markar Sedrakyan, had been dismissed — perhaps arrested. Stalin allegedly ordered him reinstated. Whether apocryphal or not, this story made it into memoirs and books. Even today, the brand Dvin cites it proudly.
The French Buy the Factory
After the USSR collapsed, the Yerevan Brandy Company was privatized. In June 1998, the French group Pernod Ricard won the international tender, paying about $30 million. The deal was finalized on May 25, 1999, in a ceremony with company president Thierry Jacquillat.
It was the French who insisted that the term “cognac” could no longer be used outside of France — even by their own factory in Armenia. The official name became “brandy.” Yet to this day, it’s still affectionately called Armenian cognac across Russia, Armenia, Ukraine, and in Russian-speaking communities worldwide.
In that Moscow kitchen, alcohol wasn’t for drunkenness. It was a conduit, a solvent, a social lubricant. It gave permission to say what couldn’t be said on a tram, in line, or at work. A kind of password — a gateway into a space where one could speak freely. It was like drawing a curtain — not an iron one, but a velvet one — among your own.
Behind the little glass was a thirst — for connection, understanding, and authenticity.
“Let’s drink to freedom of speech — may it at least exist in this kitchen.”
Late night. Everything’s been said. Time to catch the last metro or trolley. The two empty bottles weren’t tossed — they were gently placed in the avoska hanging on the door. Alongside two empty Borjomi bottles, an old ketchup bottle, and a couple of mayonnaise jars. All bound for the glass recycling center, where 0.5L bottles fetched 12 kopecks, little jars 7 kopecks. Five empties could buy a pack of unfiltered Prima cigarettes.
Nothing went to waste. In that country, even an empty bottle had value.
Over time, those kitchen companions all left — the USSR and its ruins. They spread out across the world — thin in some places, thick in others — to Israel, Germany, the U.S., Argentina, Australia, South Africa. They adapted to local cultures, learned new languages — some well, some not — and spoke with accents. Their children, and especially grandchildren, became full citizens of new homelands. They never tasted Armenian “Three Stars” and don’t understand why it brings such nostalgia to their elders. After all, store shelves now hold drinks from all over the world — often of much higher quality.
But how do you explain that the nostalgia isn’t really for the old country,
but for youth, for dreams, for the enthusiasm and naivety, and belief in the future?
And while those feelings remain,
there will always be a place at the table for that bottle with the three familiar stars.
Continued in Part 2, see here…
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