Tobacco in Russian History and Culture: The Seventeenth Century to the Present

by Romaniello; Matthew

• ISBN13: 9780415996556
• ISBN10: 0415996554
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781135842888
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-14
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Summary

According to the World Health Organization, approximately seventy percent of men and thirty percent of women in Russia smoke, and the WHO estimated that at the close of the twentieth century 280,000 Russians died every year from smoking-related illnesses #xE2;#xAC;#x1C; a rate over three times higher than the global average. The demographic crisis in current Russia has occasioned interest by President Putin in health care efforts and by historians in the source of these problems. Tobacco in Russian History and Culture explores tobacco#xE2;#xAC;"s role in Russian culture through a multidisciplinary approach starting with the growth of tobacco consumption from its first introduction in the seventeenth century until its pandemic status in the current post-Soviet health crisis. The essays as a group emphasize the ways in which, from earliest contact, tobacco#xE2;#xAC;"s status as a "foreign" commodity forced Russians to confront their national, political, and economic interests in its acceptance or rejection and find there markers of gender, class, or political identity. International contributors from the fields of history, literature, sociology, and economics fully present the dramatic impact of the weed called the "blossom from the womb of the daughter of Jezebel".

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Tabak: An Introduction	p. 1
Muscovy's Extraordinary Ban on Tobacco	p. 9
Sex, Drink, and Drugs: Tobacco in Seventeenth-Century Russia	p. 26
Tobacco and Health in Early Modern Russia	p. 44
Regulating Virtue and Vice: Controlling Commodities in Early Modern Siberia	p. 61
"I Smoke, Therefore I Think": Tobacco as Liberation in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture	p. 83
Smokescreens: Tobacco Manufacturers' Projections of Class and Gender in Late Imperial Russian Advertising	p. 102
Tobacco Prohibitions as Ritual Language	p. 120
Papirosy, Smoking, and the Anti-Cigarette Movement	p. 132
Tobacco Production in Russia: The Transition to Communism	p. 148
"The lads indulged themselves, they used to smoke...": Tobacco and Children's Culture in Twentieth-Century Russia	p. 158
"Tobacco Is Poison!": Soviet-Era Anti-Smoking Posters	p. 183
The lava Tobacco Factory from the 1960s to the early 1990s: An Interview with the Former Director, Leonid Iakovlevich Sinel'nikov	p. 203
Smokes for Big Brother: Bulgaria, the USSR, and the Politics of Tobacco in the Cold War	p. 225
Tobacco and Transition: The Advent of Transnational Tobacco Companies	p. 244
Up in Smoke? The Politics and Health Impact of Tobacco in Today's Russia	p. 267
Contributors	p. 283
Index	p. 285
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