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This article is part of the TRAFO series Emerging Topics. Insights from ‘Behind the Scenes’. Today, we put the spotlight on the workshop “Drink and Power. Alcohol and the Making of Illiberal Regimes in the Long 20th Century” that will take place March 15-16th 2019 at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. We have been talking to the conveners, Sina Fabian and Botakoz Kassymbekova, about the upcoming workshop.Why did youdecide to explore illiberal regimes through the prism of alcohol practices andpolicies?Photo: Tam Connors-Sadek, CC BY-ND 2.0; Soviet poster by Viktor Govorkov, 1954Alcohol is a very particular consumer good which isdifferent from most or any other goods. It has been a feature of mostsocieties’ social and cultural life for thousands of years. It is apsychoactive substance which affects the consumer’s body and mind. In contrastto most other psychoactive substances it is a legal and socially acceptedintoxicant in most societies. It is embedded in and connected with many aspectsof life. Alcohol is consumed in connection both with positive and negativepersonal events. It therefore offers glimpses into the everyday life.Alcohol practices and policies are further intertwinedwith central aspects of modern societies, such as questions of health, of economicwealth, and of social order. Thus, negotiating processes in vital areas ofmodern societies come into view when looking at alcohol practices.While all regimes claim the right to govern theirpeople, illiberal regimes attempt to exert more direct or even total controland allow less freedom than liberal regimes. Alcohol consumption challengesthese aims to total control and subordination as it might lead to a loss ofcontrol and unruly behavior.We think that illiberal regimes perceived alcohol as athreat, but also actively used it to strengthen their rule. We are interestedin the ambivalences and contradictions alcohol created. The prism of alcoholallows interesting insights into ambivalences and contradictions of illiberalregimes themselves as well as their governance tactics.Why do youfocus on illiberal regimes and do not examine alcohol practices and policies inboth illiberal and liberal states?We want to find out whether there was a particular“illiberal” way of dealing with alcohol. We already know quite a lot of howalcohol was perceived and managed in liberal regimes such as the United Statesand Great Britain. How illiberal regimes handled alcohol has been much lessresearched so far. By “illiberal” regimes we mean autocratic, authoritarian,dictatorial, and colonial regimes. Liberal political regimes such as the UnitedStates could have illiberal alcohol regimes, such as prohibition, for example. Wedecided to focus on political illiberalness, however.Liberal regimes will serve as a comparativeperspective for which we can rely on valuable existing research. Some workshop participantsalso analyze how alcohol policy changed during the transition from a liberal toan illiberal regime, or they compare alcohol policies of liberal and illiberalregimes. By focusing on illiberal regimes, we might also gain new perspectiveson how liberal regimes handled alcohol.How is thistopic relevant for understanding contemporary illiberal regimes?By focusing on the “long 20th century” thequestions and topics we are interested in are essentially related to “modernregimes”. The question of how illiberal regimes deal with alcohol and the waysthey promote or prohibit production and consumption in order to stabilize theirrule is still relevant today. One participant looks at recent anti-alcoholpolicy in China and contextualizes it with a long-term perspective.By analyzing colonial alcohol regimes, for example,long-lasting effects might also help to explain current alcohol policies andpractices in the former colonies.How is yourown research connected to the topic of the workshop?Sina Fabian and Botakoz KassymbekovaSina Fabian: My project deals with alcohol in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. I am interested in governance practices which I am analyzing through the prism of alcohol policies and practices. In order to achieve a multifaceted perspective, I focus not just on governmental policy makers, but also on producers, consumers, and the anti-alcohol movement. Differences between liberal and illiberal regimes will play an important role, as well as conflicts between traditional drinking customs and concepts of “modern” ways of life and social orders. Botakoz Kassymbekova: I am interested in cultural adaptations under illiberal regimes. In my work on Stalinism in Central Asia I, among other things, investigated how discourses on alcohol were used by “ordinary” citizens and officials to exert influence upon each other and express grievances about each other. Alcoholism among Soviet officials was a widely discussed phenomenon in various reports and I am fascinated by its role for Soviet governance. Issues of cultural change and everyday food practices are interesting because they also play an important role in discussing Soviet legacy in Central Asia today, but alcohol is also a prism to discuss contemporary questions of individual choice, social responsibility and nationalism. About the ConvenersSina Fabian is has been lecturer in 20th&#160;century German History at the Humboldt University of Berlin since October 2016. Prior to joining she was PhD candidate at the Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF) and the University of Potsdam from where she received her PhD in 2015. Her first book entitled “Boom in der Krise. Konsum, Tourismus, Autofahren in Westdeutschland und Großbritannien, 1970-1990” was published in 2016. Her current project focuses on alcohol governance in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. It deals with the regulation and promotion of alcohol, and the corresponding negotiation processes between different actors. Botakoz Kassymbekova&#160;received her Ph.D. from the&#160;Humboldt University in Berlin. Her first book&#160;Despite Cultures: Early Soviet Rule in Tajikistan&#160;was published by the&#160;University of Pittsburgh Press&#160;in 2016. She is a Project Development and Initiatives coordinator at the&#160;Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin&#160;and teaches at the&#160;Center for Metropolitan Studies at the Technical University Berlin. Citation: Sina Fabian, Botakoz Kassymbekova, Drink and Power. Alcohol and the Making of Illiberal Regimes in the Long 20th Century, in: TRAFO –  Blog for Transregional Research, 14.03.2019, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/18220.