From Luxury Commodity to National Drink

A History of Tea Consumption in the Russian Empire
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Boris Kustodiev (1878–1927): Die Frau des Kaufmanns beim Tee (1918)
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Boris Kustodiev (1878–1927): Merchant's Wife at Tea (1918). Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons / -, CC0 1.0
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After vodka, tea stands for the very epitome of a Russian beverage. Drinking a strong brew of black tea diluted with hot water from a samovar – often poured into a saucer to cool down and accompanied with biscuits, jam, honey, and fruit – is commonly presumed to be an authentically Russian consumption practice of long tradition.
More than two hundred years passed between the first mention of tea in seventeenth-century Russian sources and its establishment as a national drink. Its gustative qualities were however not the only reason for the tea’s triumph over Russian palates. A variety of political, economic, and cultural factors played a decisive role in promoting a particular form of tea drinking to a central element of Russian everyday culture.
The story of tea’s arrival in Russia is usually told as follows: After 1638, when Muscovy’s envoy Vasiliĭ Starkov received from Mongol ruler Altan Khan of Khotogoid a gift of tea for the Tsar’s court, Russia began to import ever-greater quantities of tea from China until it finally became the true national drink of the Russians. Inspired by the general enthusiasm for tea, ingenious artisans invented the samovar in the mid-eighteenth century to replace the utensils previously used to keep tea hot. Soon, samovars spread all over Russia and found their way, along with tea itself, even into the poorest of homes.
However, the history of both tea and samovars in Russia is considerably longer and more complex than suggested by the master narrative.

“People with wealth [...] drink [...] black tea”: The beginnings of tea consumption in Russia

Historical1 research assumes that various ethnic groups in 
Siberia
rus. Sibir, rus. Сибирь, deu. Sibirien

Siberia covers an area of 12.8 million km² between the Ural Mountains, the Pacific Ocean, the North Polar Sea, China and Mongolia. The Russian conquest of Siberia began in 1581/82. At the time of the Enlightenment, Siberia was primarily a source of raw materials and an area for trade with Asia. From the 19th century onwards, Siberia gained importance as a place for penal colonies and exiles. With the development of the Trans-Siberian Railway and steam navigation at the end of the 19th century, industrialization and thus new settlers came to Siberia. Further industrialization attempts under Stalin was implemented primarily with the labor of Gulag prisoners and prisoners of war.

The map shows North Asia, centrally located Siberia. CIA World Factbook, edited by Veliath (2006) and Ulamm (2008). CC0 1.0.

Sibirien in the Online Encyclopedia of the Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (German)
 who were in contact with Mongol groupings encountered tea even earlier than the sixteenth century. Along the great caravan routes leading from China across Central Asia into Europe, tea was mainly traded in the form of bricks: leaves of lower quality compressed into solid blocks. These bricks were crumbled into milk and boiled up, sometimes with the addition of fat and cereals, to a nourishing drink that could replace a meal. By as early as the eighteenth century, tea had become a staple foodstuff for the Buryats and the Kalmyks – at a time when it was still considered a luxury commodity even in elite circles at the centre of the Russian Empire Russian Empire The Russian language distinguishes between two adjectives that are both commonly translated into German as russisch and into English as Russian. While russkii is generally interpreted as defining Russians linguistically and ethnically, rossiiskii is derived from the name of the country, Rossiia (Russia) and is typically used in connection with the state and its institutions. In German scholarship, the neologism russländisch is increasingly becoming established to express the meaning conveyed by rossiiskii. It allows to distinguish between the Russian nation and the multiethnic, multilingual, and multiconfessional Russian state. Using Russländisches Reich as a translation into German of the official name of the Russian Empire (Rossiiskaia imperiia) has the advantage to avoid any semblance that one is slipping into the diction of Russian nationalists and seeking to depict the dominance of the Russian nation over other ethnic groups in the Empire as legitimate. .
Samples of tea probably first reached the court of the Moscow Tsar in 1616 when the envoy Vasilii Tiumenec returned from his journey to the Mongols. Subsequent diplomatic delegations – including the one led by the oft-mentioned Vasilii Starkov in 1638 – also brought tea from the Mongols and from China. Yet there is no evidence whether this tea was actually drunk or not. The new concoction was eyed with scepticism and initially used for merely medical purposes.
In 1689 and 1727, commercial treaties between 
Tsardom of Russia
rus. Russkoje zarstwo, rus. Русское царство, deu. Zarenreich Russland, deu. Zarentum Russland

The Tsardom of Russia existed from 1547 to 1721 and marks an important period in the development of the Russian state that was characterized by intensive reforms, centralization efforts, and martial expansion. The tsardom emerged from the Grand Duchy of Moscow (1340-1547), starting with the coronation of Ivan IV (1530-1584) as the first tsar. The title of tsar itself is considerably older and was previously also used in southeastern Europe. In the Russian or Old Russian language area, the title had previously been used inconsistently and also in an ecclesiastical context.

The tsardom came to an end as the official name of the Russian state with its transformation and renaming to the Russian Empire by Peter the Great (1672-1725) in 1721.

Zarentum Russland in the Online Encyclopedia of the Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (German)
 and China set the basis for regular tea imports. Generally in exchange for furs, Russian merchants received small quantities of tea at the trading point in 
Kjachta
rus. Troickosavsk, rus. Кяхта, fra. Kiakhta, rus. Kyakhta, rus. Kiachta, rus. Kâhta, rus. Троицкосавск, fra. Troïtskossavsk

The town of Kyakhta (population 2022: 18.007) have probably been founded in 1727 and is located on the border between Mongolia and the Russian Federation. Kyakhta was a center of trade between China and the Russian Empire. The Russian Empire exported mostly furs through Kyakhta, while it imported mostly tea. Kyakhta is designated as Historical Settlement of Russian Federation.

Kjachta at Google Maps
 in southern Siberia and transported the precious cargo to the major annual fairs around Russia: to 
Irbit
rus. Ирбит

The city of Irbit (population, 2022: 36,587) is located on the banks of the river of the same name in the southern Ural Mountains. For a long time, the city was an important trading point and the scene of nationally significant fairs. However, due to the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway - whose route runs about 80 kilometers further south - Irbit lost its importance within Russia. Today, Irbit is an industrial city that is home to the Irbit Motorcycle Works and other manufacturing companies.

Irbit at Google Maps
 in western Siberia or via 
Perm
rus. Пермь, rus. Molotov

Die Stadt Perm liegt ca. 1150 km nordöstlich von Moskau im Uralvorland. Seit dem 19. Jahrhundert entwickelte sich in der Stadt Schwer- und Rüstungsindustrie, was Perm im 20. Jahrhundert zu einem bedeutenden Industriezentrum machte. In der Industrie wurden auch Lagerinsassen aus Gulag und Kriegsgefangenenlager eingesetzt.

Perm at Google Maps
 and 
Moskva
eng. Moscow, deu. Moskau, rus. Москва, rus. Kučkov, rus. Kučkovo, rus. Кучков, rus. Кучково, rus. Moskov, rus. Moskovʺ, rus. Московъ, rus. Москов

Moscow (population 2024: 13,146,907) is the capital of the Russian Federation and the most populous city located entirely in Europe. It is situated in the west of the country. Moscow is also the capital of the Central Russian Federal District. The administrative unit “City of Federal Significance Moscow” includes several other towns and has a population of 13,258,262. The city is by far the most important political, economic, scientific, and cultural center of the country.

Moscow was founded around the 11th/12th century. The construction of the fortification (Kremlin) is dated to the beginning of the second half of the 12th century. In the 13th century, Moscow became the capital of a sub-principality of the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. In the 14th century, the princes of Moscow established themselves as rulers of the entire Rus. However, from 1247 to 1480, it was required to pay tribute to the Golden Horde, which devastated Moscow in 1238. In 1571, the city, which was almost entirely built of wood, was burned down by Tatar troops. By this time, however, Moscow was already the undisputed center of power in Russia. In 1687, the city's first college was opened, followed by its first university in 1775. Peter the Great moved the capital to Saint Petersburg in 1712. Weakened by unrest and plague, Moscow's development lagged behind that of the new capital. The invasion of Napoleon's troops in 1812 brought a deep cut in Moscow's development, with the city's population setting their houses on fire to repel them. The rapid reconstruction gave Moscow a modern cityscape.

After the October Revolution and the relocation of the capital back to Moscow in 1918, the city experienced an enormous expansion of its public infrastructure, and numerous prestigious buildings were erected until World War II. However, the expansion of residential space was never able to keep pace with population growth. This growth could not be slowed down, even by various restrictions on in-migration, some of which are still in force today. However, the city also grew through incorporations, particularly in 1960 and 2012.

In 1980, Moscow hosted the Summer Olympics. In the years that followed, however, the growing crisis in the Soviet Union also affected the city, which, following decentralization movements in the republics and unrest in Russia itself, was ultimately directly affected by the attempted coup in 1991. After the final collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, Moscow remained the capital of Russia. Since then, the city center in particular has been increasingly characterized by modern, prestigious buildings. Other features of the city's development in the post-Soviet era include the reconstruction of churches destroyed or repurposed during the Soviet era, the renovation of pre-Soviet buildings in the city center, and the expansion of transport infrastructure on the outskirts.

Moskva in the Online Encyclopedia of the Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (German)
Moskva at Google Maps
 to 
Makar'evo
rus. Makaryevo, rus. Макарьево, rus. Makarjewo

Makarevo (population 2010: 178) is a settlement on the Volga in the Nizhny Novgorod oblast. It developed in the 17th century as a trading center in the immediate vicinity of a monastery, where the Russian Orthodox Saint Makarios is said to have founded a hermitage in the 15th century. The Makarios Market was established here in 1641, which was moved to Nizhny Novgorod after a fire in 1816 and is considered the forerunner of the local fair. After this, Makarevo became increasingly less important and lost its status as a district seat and eventually its city rights.

Makar'evo at Google Maps
 on the Volga, the small monastic settlement where the largest trade fair in the Russian Empire took place until the nineteenth century – only after a fire in 1816 did this fair shift its location to Nizhniĭ Novgorod. By sleigh in the winter and via the Angara, Eniseĭ, and Ob rivers with some overland passages in the summer, these transports took, on average, between 70 and 160 days. The vast distances were one factor behind the high price of this rare commodity. But trade with China was unstable, and its frequent suspension due to diplomatic wrangles created room for a flourishing smuggling trade in Siberia that met the needs of the local population. Wealthy tea drinkers in European Russia relied more and more on expensive supplies from England, Denmark, and the Netherlands – and imported European tea-drinking habits along with the leaves.
Lager mit abgepacktem Tee in Kjachta. Russland. Stahlstich aus dem 19. Jahrhundert
Lager mit abgepacktem Tee in Kjachta. Russland. Stahlstich aus dem 19. Jahrhundert
Warehouses with packaged tea in Kyakhta. Russia. Steel engraving of the 19th century. CC0 1.0
Warehouses with packaged tea in Kyakhta. Russia. Steel engraving of the 19th century. CC0 1.0

“At Canterbury [...] we drank tea in English style”: Russia’s elites and European tea-drinking fashions

From2 the seventeenth century on, Russian elites increasingly took their cues from Europe. Everyday practices and consumption patterns common among the upper classes in Western Europe emerged in Russian adaptations. The radical transformation initiated at the turn of the eighteenth century aimed to place the Russian Empire on a competitive footing with other European empires and encompassed more than changes to political, social, and economic structures. It also sought to foster greater convergence with Western European cultural and social conventions in what was understood as a process of (self-)civilizing the Russians. Comparable inward-looking civilizing missions unfolded in the second half of the eighteenth century in France, Germany, and Great Britain: here, too, adherents of the Enlightenment set out to improve humanity by refining its mores. Thereby, they promoted a new ideal of a civilized human being: temperate and gentle, guided in his actions by his conscience, i. e. the voice of God in his heart, and rational thinking. This was the wider context in which tea drinking was held to be part of a genteel, cultivated lifestyle: unlike alcohol consumption, enjoying a cup of tea in company appeared to promote polite conversation and appropriate interaction between men and women. Besides, tea encouraged and facilitated sociability across gender and generational borders and was thus believed to strengthen family ties and domesticate men.
Along with other fashions and intellectual trends borrowed from the Enlightenment philosophes, the elites of the Russian Empire embraced the European fascination with China. From the reign of Peter I onwards, Chinoiserie found its way into the palaces of aristocrats. The Anglophilia that reached its zenith towards the end of the eighteenth century in Russia also promoted the spread of tea consumption. Afternoon tea established itself as a new element structuring the everyday lives of the upper classes. Tea tables became an essential piece of furniture and some wealthy households set up entire tea rooms. Teacups, tea glasses, teapots, teaspoons, tea strainers, and tea canisters – along with additional paraphernalia such as milk jugs, sugar bowls, and sugar tongs – reached the status of prestigious objects that served to demonstrate not only the wealth of their owners but also their refined civility.
Tea may still have counted as a luxury commodity in the second half of the eighteenth century, but by the early decades of the nineteenth century, it had begun to be taken for granted, at least by the elites. Not having tea to hand signalled either poverty or a conscious rejection of novelty and comfort that was often justified on religious or moral grounds. As tea drinking in the European style gained its first foothold in the higher social classes, its geographical distribution in the Empire long remained unbalanced: until the middle of the nineteenth century, about half of the imported tea was consumed in Moscow. Tea-drinking habits also varied regionally: the tea sold in central Russia and in the major cities in Siberia was mainly loose-leaf tea, whereas in Central Asia and in large areas of Siberia, demand for compressed tea was much higher. The style of tea drinking widespread among the indigenous ethnic groups of Siberia found little favour in the western part of the Empire. The imperial elites believed themselves to be culturally superior to the nomadic peoples and acted as bearers of the European civilization which they promoted as a model for the whole of the Empire. Adopting everyday practices from nomads would have run drastically contrary to the fundamentally imperial self-image of these elites.

“The Russian drinks tea on every occasion”: The spread of tea

Following3 China’s defeat in the First Opium War in the 1840s, the price of tea began to decline and tea became increasingly affordable for broad swathes of the population. Tea imports by ship were permitted in the Russian Empire from the 1860s onwards and expanded significantly in the late nineteenth century. Russian tea merchants opened their own factories in the Chinese port of Hankou and produced compressed tea there. The launch of the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1901 seemingly reduced transportation costs and facilitated the import of even larger quantities of tea to the European part of the Empire.
Tea grew omnipresent. Apprentices and shop assistants sweetened their breaks at work with it, and so did carters and market stall vendors. Cooks and nursemaids received fixed quantities of tea from their employers as a top-up to their wages. Tea was part of the everyday catering in lodging houses and poor asylums, and it was provided to military men even when they were kept in detention. Travelogues from the mid-nineteenth century advised visitors to the Caucasus to carry among the most indispensable necessities their own tea with them. Even the first socialist commune – established in St Petersburg in 1863 and scandalously known for rejecting many established conventions – organized the daily life of its inhabitants around common tea hours.
„Teetrinker am Samowar" von Konstantin Makovskij (1839-1915)
„Teetrinker am Samowar" von Konstantin Makovskij (1839-1915)
“Tea drinker at the samovar” by Konstantin Makovskiĭ (1839-1915). CC0 1.0
“Tea drinker at the samovar” by Konstantin Makovskiĭ (1839-1915). CC0 1.0
Gestelltes Gruppenfoto einer bäuerlichen Teegesellschaft - mit Balalaika und Samowar; Library of Congress, LCCN2001705716
Gestelltes Gruppenfoto einer bäuerlichen Teegesellschaft - mit Balalaika und Samowar; Library of Congress, LCCN2001705716
Posed group photo of peasant tea party - with balalaika and samovar; Library of Congress, LCCN2001705716. - / CC0 1.0
Posed group photo of peasant tea party - with balalaika and samovar; Library of Congress, LCCN2001705716. - / CC0 1.0
Tea consumption in merchant circles occupied a very particular place in the discourse. Their supposedly excessive tea drinking became one of the most distinctive features attributed to this class. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, satiric authors created an ever-lasting image of merchants’ wives who allegedly passed the time at home with extravagant tea parties while their husbands did business in taverns – drenched in sweat after emptying several samovars. With the increasing prosperity and wealth, merchants strived to imitate the aristocracy and adopted some indulgent consumption practices. Drinking tea was especially suitable for demonstrating social superiority. Conspicuous consumption of tea distinguished well-off merchants from both their peers of more modest means and peasants who could not afford to linger in taverns and tea rooms.
Boris Kustodiev (1878-1929): Eine Moskauer Taverne
Boris Kustodiev (1878-1929): Eine Moskauer Taverne
Boris Kustodiev (1878-1929): A Moscow tavern. Art-Catalog.ru, CC0 1.0
Boris Kustodiev (1878-1929): A Moscow tavern. Art-Catalog.ru, CC0 1.0

“Our Russian tea with the samovar is so much more comfortable, convenient, and [...] cosier”: The invention of a national tradition

One4 object has attained a particular symbolic significance in connection with tea consumption in Russia: the samovar, a metal urn with an internal heating pipe for boiling water. The first samovars were probably produced in the Urals around the mid-eighteenth century. Samovar factories were established in increasing numbers in the 1770s. By the mid-nineteenth century, more than two dozen companies producing these urn-shaped metal boilers existed in Tula alone, the city at the epicentre of samovar production.
Although many people think of the samovar as a Russian invention, it is similar to other devices used across Eurasia well before the eighteenth century. The countless furnishings and appliances imported from France, England, and the Netherlands into Russia from the eighteenth century onwards and subsequently manufactured there included the bouillotte, a tea kettle with a little stove underneath for keeping it warm. Metal vessels were also commonly used in Russia prior to the invention of the samovar for preparing sbiten’, a hot herbal drink. While the bouillotte and the sbiten’ pot kept water hot after it had already been boiled, the hotpots common in China and known there as huoguo (literally: fire pot) had a heating element built in. The existence of comparable devices in Central Asia is documented from as early as the second century BCE.
While contemporaries were well aware of the connections between the samovar and other appliances, influential voices in the Russian national movement nevertheless soon succeeded in positioning the samovar as quintessentially characteristic for the Russian way of life. In the early eighteenth century, Peter I set the course for the development of the Empire according to political and economic structures and cultural codes borrowed from Western Europe, which triggered an early backlash from countless opponents who preferred to emphasize Russia’s cultural distinctiveness and uniqueness. From the turn of the nineteenth century, Russian nationalists became more influential in parallel with the rise of national movements in Europe as a whole. Writers, ethnographers, painters, and composers searched for characteristics that supposedly distinguished the Russians from other nations. Just like nationally-inclined elites in the rest of Europe, they coded customs, songs, landscapes, clothing, food, and beverages as nationally typical – including a certain way of drinking tea.
Hardly any descriptions of everyday life in nineteenth-century literature missed to mention drinking tea in company around the samovar – even when tea was still being consumed almost exclusively in wealthy houses. Alexander Pushkin pioneered this trend, and other writers whose works are seen as canonical – Fedor Dostoevskiĭ, Lev Tolstoĭ, Anton Chekhov – also connected tea drinking around the samovar with warm depictions of family life, sociability, and feelings of home. Amid these cosy scenes, similarities between the samovar and the bouillotte or huoguo faded from memory as surely as the deep roots in European fashions and consumption patterns of the tea culture now celebrated as Russian. The samovar became inextricably linked to a tea ceremony that was hence read as authentically Russian.
Teetasse und Teller der Manufaktur Gardner
Teetasse und Teller der Manufaktur Gardner
Tea cup and plate from the Gardner manufactory. CC0 1.0
Tea cup and plate from the Gardner manufactory. CC0 1.0

“Appalled by the ugliness of the tea tables in other houses”: Tea drinking as a means of social distinction

National5 identity in Russia has always implied an inherent imperial component: the expansion of the state territory from the Baltic to the Pacific, the incorporation of numerous non-Russian ethnic groups into the Empire, and the belief in the superiority of one’s own culture over others – within or beyond the Russian Empire. With their codification of tea drinking around the samovar as the ultimate Russian everyday practice, the national elites were cementing the dominant status of the Russian culture within the Empire.
The effect was to marginalize other forms of tea drinking in public discourse and mark them as non-Russian. “The pure Russian population drinks tea without any additions, apart from tea with milk, of course,”6 a publication on tea consumption from 1893 stated. The content of a  teacup did not only serve as a marker of ethnicity; as the popularity of tea grew, so did its role in the delineation of social status.
The manner of tea drinking functioned as a marker of social distinction in everyday interactions. Serving guests weak tea was considered an expression of stinginess or perhaps a sign that the host was hard up. Knowing (or not knowing) how to set a tea table marked the social distance between wealthy merchant families and more ordinary traders who were liable to mix “beautiful cups by  Popov Popov The porcelain factory purchased by the merchant Alexei Popov (1760–1860) in 1811 had originally been founded in 1804 by a commission agent of the porcelain manufacturer Francis Jacob Gardner. It produced high-quality porcelain tableware and figurines and received numerous awards for them, but by 1875, the business was no longer viable and the factory closed down. or  Gardner Gardner The entrepreneur Francis Jacob Gardner (1714–1796) founded Russia’s first private porcelain manufactory near Moscow in 1754. From the 1770s onward, he supplied the imperial court. During the Soviet era, production continued under a new name, Dmitrov State Porcelain Factory. Since 1991, the factory has carried on the business, now as a joint stock corporation. Its current name, “Gardner Manufactures in Verbilki” refers to the founder and to the location where the factory was originally built and has always remained. alongside cheap cups in various shapes and sizes [...] bearing such inscriptions as ‘In memory’, ‘On your name day’ or ‘To your health’”7 on their tables what their contemporaries registered as poor taste. Drinking tea on every occasion, outside of socially established times, was also read as lack of sophistication and thus as uncivilized. For the Russian elites of the Tsarist Empire, drinking tea in the proper manner meant the difference between civilization and its absence. The national drink did not only create a sense of togetherness; it was at the same time dividing and exclusive.
English translation: Kate Sotejeff-Wilson
Daria Sambuk
Go to author biography

Footnotes
1.
Source of quotation: Ysbrant Ides: von Moscau ab zu lande durch groß Ustiga, Siriania, Permia, Sibirien, Daour und die grosse Tartarey; gethan durch den Moscovitischen Abgesandten Hrn. E. Yßbrants Ides: Nebst einr landcharte und vielen kupffer-stichen so von dem abgesandten selbst auff der reise auffgezeichnet worden; wie auch einer beschreibung von China durch einen Chineser in seiner sprache geschrieben. Alles aus dem Holländischen übersetzt. Franckfurt, bey Thomas Fritschen 1707, in: Beschreibung der dreijährigen chinesischen Reise. Die russische Gesandtschaft von Moskau nach Peking 1692 bis 1695 in den Darstellungen von Eberhard Isbrand Ides und Adam Brand. Ed Michael Hundt. Stuttgart 1999, 191–342, here: 255.
2.
Source of quotation: Nikolay Karamzin: Letters of a Russian Traveller, 1789-1790. An Account of a Young Russian Gentleman's Tour Through Germany, Switzerland, France, and England. New York 1957, 265.
3.
Source of quotation: Faddei Bulgarin: Ocherki russkikh nravov, ili Litsevaia storona i iznanka roda chelovecheskogo. Part III: Russkaia restoratsiia. St Petersburg 1843, 39.
4.
Source of quotation: Khoroshii ton. Sbornik pravil i sovetov na vse sluchai zhizni obshchestvennoi i semeinoi. Ed. by German Goppe. St Petersburg. 4th edition n.d., 383.
5.
Source of quotation: Ekaterina Andreeva-Bal’mont: Zapisi proshlogo. Vospominaniia. Ed. by A. L. Panina. Moscow 1996, 31.
6.
K. Dmitriev: Kakoi chai pit’ krest’ianam? Moscow 1893, 13.
7.
Ekaterina Andreeva-Bal’mont: Zapisi proshlogo. Vospominaniia. Ed. by A. L. Panina. Moscow 1996, 31.

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