ABSTRACT
During much of the nineteenth century, the consumption of tobacco in Russia was associated with the educated people of the upper and middle classes who adopted the habits and mores characteristic of Western-style secular society. The distinctive aspect of the history of Russian smoking was the relatively slow pace of tobacco’s penetration beyond the educated elites, metropolitan areas, and major trade routes. An expensive and primarily imported product in an expansive country whose communication infrastructure unavoidably lagged behind those of its Western counterparts, tobacco took a relatively long time to permeate rural areas. Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Church and, to a lesser but signifi cant extent, the government saw smoking as seditious with regard to religious and social norms of native life.
