It has long been smoked in Russia, since the time of Peter the Great, because it was he who first brought tobacco to the country. However, the real cult of cigarettes in the USSR began after World War II, after our country got acquainted with the products of both allies and enemies.
Soon, after twenty years, dozens of different types of cigarettes were already sold in the country. Even a joke appeared among smokers that there was more tobacco in the USSR than sausages.
Before the Second World War, the people usually smoked self-rolls from shop rustic tobacco and strong homemade and house-grown tobacco.
Only people from the government who were regularly abroad could buy themselves something more expensive and decent of high quality.
The first domestic brand of cigarettes, which received international recognition, was the brand of cigarettes «Java». However, since the tobacco industry for the USSR was new and unexplored, the quality of this product left much to be desired, it was not at the highest level. The first cigarettes often got worse, and tobacco fell out in them and this tobacco tasted only slightly superior to the taste of old Soviet rustic tobacco.
In the 1970s, the country’s government provided the people with the opportunity to start inhaling really high-quality «smoke»: imports of Bulgarian cigarettes appeared in the Soviet Union.