Samagon

Some months ago several young men accused a shaman of faking and in the argument which followed he was killed. They had been drinking samagon, doubly violating the laws, but it shows a changed public opinion from the old belief that anybody who laughed at or touched a shaman would be struck dead.

He shut the door, pulled out from a sack a flask of samagon and offered it to the chairman with the words, ‘Take it, tovarishtsh. I’ve made it myself, excellent brew, you will like it.’

The swarthy young delegate from the sheet-metal shop reported: “Zaporozhe is surrounded by an ocean of samagon. The kulaks distill it in tons from last year’s surplus harvest. They flood it into the city through a joint behind the Peasants’ House.[…]”

Beer was still home-brewed and only the strictest fiscal control could prevent the distilling of samagon, the Russian equivalent of poteen.

If the young men got tipsy with such frightening regularity, it was chiefly because the family earned its living by the distilling and selling of samagon, home-made vodka.

There were many familiar faces around the table; the meal was lavish and instead of the stinking samagon Bobkov used to drink so heavily, there was good vodka from Moscow and excellent wines from the Caucusus.

Mothers all around the Soviet Union were making samagon and giving it to their sons and daughters.

I drank a bottle of samagon with Loesha before lunchtime, blacked out, and woke up cold, huddled on a bench on the top deck at six thirty this morning.