The Kremlin is considering re-establishing its 400-year-old monopoly on alcohol production and sale, to the alarm of Russia’s private alcohol manufacturers.

In the past two weeks the Government and state-controlled media have conducted a campaign against instances of alcohol poisoning, which has killed 17,000 people in the first nine months of the year.

The number of deaths has led senior members of the Government to call for greater state control in the alcohol sector. Boris Gryzlov, Speaker of the Duma, said last week: “It’s not enough to ensure a state monopoly on the production and circulation of pure alcohol — I think it’s also time to raise the issue of a state monopoly on the sale of products that contain alcohol.”

President Putin has supported such an idea in the past as a way of protecting consumers against counterfeit vodka and other spirits, which analysts believe account for between 40 per cent and 80 per cent of the spirits market.

However, private alcohol manufacturers are alarmed by the prospect of the state nationalising an industry worth about £10 billion a year for spirits alone. A spokesman for SUAR, a lobby group of spirit producers, said: “It would be very hard to organise a state monopoly in practice. The State has no experience of the industry and it wouldn’t stop people dying from alcoholism.”

The vehemence of the Government’s campaign against alcohol poisoning has raised suspicions of it having ulterior motives. Indeed, the number of alcohol poisonings this year is down on the year before. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet President, has suggested that “someone wants to achieve something” by the outcry.

Some analysts believe that the Government is trying to deflect criticism from the failure of its new alcohol registration policy, called EGAIS, introduced in July. Confusion over the new system led to huge shortages of alcohol, and even of alcohol-derived products such as perfume, throughout Russia. Hundreds of small wine, spirits and perfume manufacturers have been forced out of business by delays in getting new licences.

The lack of legitimate alcohol has also led some alcoholics to drink dangerous substitutes, such as white spirit or lighter fluid.

Sergei Stepashin, head of the government audit chamber, said last week: “The lack of co-ordination between [government agencies] in the introduction of the new law is the reason behind not just the deaths of people, but the loss to the state budget of around 14.7 billion roubles [£300 million].”

Other politicians argue that the state budget stands to benefit if a state monopoly is introduced.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Kremlin-connected Liberal Democratic Party, said: “If the production and sale of alcohol were in the State’s hands, the poisonings from alcoholic substitutes would stop and the Government would receive a hefty windfall.”

The Russian Government has enjoyed a monopoly on alcohol sale and production as far back as the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the mid-16th century.

As late as the Brezhnev era, vodka sales were the main source of government revenues, leading some historians to dub the Imperial and Soviet eras as “alcoholic empires”.

Some historians believe that the fall of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union were at least partly connected to misguided attempts by government leaders to limit the sale of vodka, leading to swift budget deficits and wide unrest.

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