On February 11, 1697, Tsar Peter I signed a decree allowing the free sale of tobacco in all drinking establishments in Russia.
Until that moment, tobacco was in Russia, but it was banned for peasants and artisans. It was brought to Russia back in the time of Ivan the Terrible by English sailors who, in search of a way to India, entered the mouth of the Dvina. Realizing that they "missed", the British pretended that they had always dreamed of trading with the Russians, and the captain of the ship, Richard Chancellor, was even invited to the king's court.
During the reign of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, smoking was banned, and tobacco itself was declared a "damn potion" that an Orthodox Christian should not smoke with. The next tsar - Alexei Mikhailovich - ordered to rip the nostrils of smokers, beat them with a whip and send them into exile.
But where some kings saw harm to the spiritual and physical health of the people, Peter I saw an opportunity to replenish the budget.
Have you sold the health of the Russians?
By the end of the 17th century, the attitude towards tobacco in the royal palace softened, Peter's brother Fyodor Alekseevich began to smoke, and even Peter himself was "addicted" to the addiction in adolescence. Leaving for the Grand Embassy in Europe, the tsar, by decree of February 11, 1697, gave the monopoly on the sale of tobacco to the merchant Martyn Bogdanov, and forbade foreign merchants to trade in tobacco.
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However, for two years of traveling in Europe, the embassy ran out of money, and the tsar for 12,000 pounds, which amounted to 28,000 rubles and was an advance in customs payments, entered into an agreement with the English marquis Peregrine Carmarthen for the monopoly sale of tobacco in Russia.
The Marquis received the right to annually import 10,000 barrels of goods into the country, each containing 500 pounds, that is, 228 kilograms of "poison". Carmarthen, after deducting all expenses, had a profit of five shillings from the barrel, and the Russian peasants and artisans - undermined health.
In addition to selling tobacco, Carmarthen bought the right to sell pipes and snuff boxes. There was, however, one thing: the money earned for tobacco, Carmartin had no right to export from the country, but had to buy Russian goods.
All smoked
Returning from Europe, Peter I began to introduce tobacco smoking "in backward Russia" as a fashionable element of European culture. He smoked tobacco, he sniffed it and forced everyone around him to do it, generously giving away Indian potion at the assemblies.
The English marquis was soon squeezed out of the tobacco trade: tobacco began to be imported through China, and Peter I decided to start his own production of "makhorka".
Actually, on the sly, in the gardens of Little Russia, self-garden has been grown since the 1610s. Now it was decided to legalize and increase production.
The first factory for the production of cigars and makhorka appeared in 1716 in Akhtyrka. Here 50 acres were sown with American seeds, which brought up to 115 tons of "product" annually. 550 peasant households were assigned to the factory, and Dutch craftsmen trained boys who were recruited in the Circassians. Needless to say that soon all the men without exception "grinded"?
Almost all the emperors also poisoned themselves with tobacco, with the exception of Alexander I and Nicholas I, and the Empresses Anna Ioannovna and Elizaveta Petrovna sniffed tobacco, taking it out of elegant snuff boxes. Peter III smoked, despite his young age, and Catherine the Great became the first woman in Russia to light a cigar. Paul I smoked and sniffed tobacco. It was with a snuffbox that the conspirators broke his skull on the night of March 11-12, 1801. And so on and so forth…