Red Star/Black Lungs: anti-tobacco campaigns in twentieth-century Russia

This paper examines two major Soviet anti-smoking campaigns -- one in the 1920s and the other in the late 1970s. Each occurs in a period of demographic crisis as part of larger pubic health efforts. Each ultimately fails. In 1920, the leader of the People's Commissariat of Health, N. Semashko, began a campaign against tobacco with the support of V.I. Lenin. He proposed restrictions on access, use, and production of tobacco. Faced with the needs of the new state for economic stability, government officials abandoned the plan by 1921. In 1970, internal demographic concerns and increasing international evidence led the Ministry of Health to again attempt to stamp out tobacco. While policy was made, implementation was weak and the economic dislocations of the 1980s saw the vast importation of foreign brands to stabilize the government and the collapse of this second campaign against tobacco.