Social Foundations of Tobacco Smoking in Russia

Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia By Tricia Starks

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; 2018 336 pages; $42.95 ISBN-13: 978-1501722059

It is relatively well known that Russians are big hard alcohol consumers relative to the rest of the world. Vodka consumption has partially contributed to a high rate of cardiovascular disease among men and a persistently high rate of male mortality over the past century. The health focus on alcoholism, however, tends to overshadow the equally pervasive and dangerous addiction of Russian men and women to tobacco. Indeed, Russians are among the most committed smokers in the world. In 2009, more than 60% of Russian men older than 15 years smoked, which gave Russia the dubious distinction of having one of the highest rates of smoking in the world at the time (matched by Greece and challenged by China, to be sure).¹ At the same time, 21.7% of Russian women smoked, and of particular concern, smoking among women had gone from 5% in the mid-1980s to 12% in the mid-1990s to more than 20% by 2008.² The Tobacco Atlas noted in 2012 that among Russian youths, smoking rates were similarly high: the percentage of male and female student smokers (aged 13–15 years) was just below 30%. Even members of the health care profession in Russia who smoked as recently as a few years ago hovered at about 35%. Not surprisingly, therefore, Russia also had one of the highest smoking-related death rates in the world.³

In view of this, on June 1, 2013, the Russian government began the first phase of an ambitious attempt to cut smoking rates nationwide, and by 2016, the last year in which a comprehensive tobacco survey was done, smoking rates had declined somewhat. Still, as of 2016, about 50% of Russian men and about 15% of Russian women older than 15 years smoke.³

TSARIST MODERNITY

The history of tobacco smoking and addiction described in Tricia Starks’s lively new book Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia underscores how deeply ingrained the habit is in Russian history and culture and the difficulty the contemporary Russian state faces in trying to persuade more people to quit. Starks has researched and written on tobacco since 2002. Her study investigates how tobacco smoking went from an occasional indulgence to “a mainstay of Russian identity by the eve of World War I.”^(p5) She focuses on the rise of the mass use of tobacco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the eventual ubiquity of the Russian cigarette—known as a papirosa (plural: papirosy)—which closely resembles the modern cigarette but had no filter and was filled (at least initially) with domestically produced tobacco.

One of the particularly interesting aspects of Starks’s exploration of the development of the Russian tobacco habit is how tobacco smoking paralleled the rise of industrialization. Russia became more urbanized, and papirosy, she argues, became a hallmark of modernity—for all social classes and both genders. Papirosy were easily available, came in cheap and expensive versions, and efficiently—and intensely—delivered nicotine to the user. Tobacco consumption became more pervasive in Russia following the reforms of Tsar Alexander II in the 1860s and 1870s, such as the emancipation of the serfs and the modernization of the Russian military. Stark notes that by the start of World War I (and just three years before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917), “almost every urban male consumed about a pack a day.”^(p16)

One fascinating aspect of Stark’s study is the role late imperial military campaigns played in advancing tobacco use among Russian men. Following the Crimean War and Alexander’s reforms, which allowed soldiers furloughs between campaigns, returning soldiers who had picked up the habit to alleviate intermittent boredom and the pressures of battle became the conduits of tobacco into civilian society. Furthermore, smoking became inextricably tied to a romanticized notion of the military and the epitome of the masculine Russian patriot in the minds of many Russian men in the late 19th century. The vibrantly colorful illustrations that Starks inserts throughout the book include many early advertisements for tobacco that depict a Russian soldier, sailor, or fearsome Cossack puffing away on his papirosy of choice. Starks notes, “The marketing of tobacco with soldiers undoubtedly would have appealed to soldiers and former soldiers, just as it served as an incentive to future soldiers.”^(p54)

Starks’s study also tells us how tobacco was produced in the last few decades of the Russian Empire. Working conditions were terrible in the fast-growing Russian tobacco factories during the late 19th century. The labor force in the tobacco industry was dominated by women and, later, children, who toiled 12 to 16 hours per day rolling papirosy by hand. Wages were low, living conditions were terrible, and illness was endemic. Some of the tobacco factory workers, however, were among those who joined labor strikes between 1905 and 1917. Tobacco use pervaded all social classes as well: poor men and women smoked the stronger tasting but less expensive makhorka tobacco, whereas wealthy Russians could afford more subtle blends in pleasant flavors. Gradually, marketing efforts developed tobacco varietals meant to appeal to women, and the share of women who smoked in Imperial Russia rose dramatically (an interesting parallel to contemporary Russia).

MEDICAL DEBATES

Starks’s study also covers the debates in the medical community of late Imperial Russia regarding the health effects of smoking. Some articles in the medical journals of the day argued that smoking had positive health effects—including that smoking calmed intestinal problems, asthma, and incontinence. But there was also a strong community of antitobacco advocates in 19th- and early 20th-century Russia that produced pamphlets on the negative effects of smoking. The Russian Orthodox Church joined intermittently in the condemnation of tobacco consumption, painting it as morally corrupting. But Starks does an excellent job of reminding us that there was, at the time, a lack of medical consensus regarding the health effects of heavy tobacco consumption.

BOLSHEVIK AMBIVALENCE

Starks ends her comprehensive study of the social, economic, and political history of tobacco’s rise in Russia with an epilogue that covers the resurgence of tobacco smoking among Russian soldiers well into World War I. She notes that the Bolshevik regime, however, following the Revolution of 1917 had a “conflicted” relationship with tobacco and the tobacco industry. Lenin was evidently a vehement antismoker; in 1920, he attempted to ban any expansion of agricultural production of tobacco and restricted the purchase of tobacco by children. These efforts failed, however, as revenue from tobacco sales and taxes became more important to the nascent regime’s survival than Russians’ long-term health. Indeed, it was not until 1978 that the Soviet leadership (under Leonid Brezhnev) undertook any sort of antitobacco policy. By that time, however, as Starks’s fascinating book argues and Russia’s contemporary tobacco problem demonstrates, the social foundations of tobacco smoking were far too well established.